I wonder about the history of INFI myself, though I gather that it might reveal too much and shatter the myticism which surrounds the steel...

yeah, it would be kind of de-mystifying if it turned out to be just something he saw or was reading at the time that referenced it... better left a mystery.

Here is a Link that discusses all kinds of Knife Blade material including INFI that some here may find interesting.

If that is the Real formula why aren't a bunch of other knife makers having this produced?

INFI is a propriety steel used by Busse Combat


jerry owns it

Mr Crab would never give Plankton the Crabby Patty Recipe otherwise there would be Chum Buckets on every corner selling Crabby Patties, Right?

Where's all the INFI unless Mr Crab err I mean Mr Busse purposefully Gave the wrong formula to throw all of the Planktons out there trying to steal his recipe off his trail for a while.

i think the heat treat & legal issues would deter imitators since he owns "INFI" & all the fairy dust used to make it

******The word proprietary indicates that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property.

Having the chemical composition ain't enough. It's how the elements of the steel are combined to form the steel and then subsequently cryo'ed/heat treated that determines how the steel performs. Plus the number of companies that could afford to even try to copy a custom steel like INFI is pretty small. In the grand scheme, knife manufacturing is not a major consumer of industrial steel.

And then there are the elves...

This thread was about the name of INFI and its history or provenience. But however, because it comes about the steel composition, I don't think Mike Stewart knew what he was talking about.

I found in many sources all over the internet a composition like - INFI has: 0.5% carbon, 8.5% Chromium, 0.74% nickel, 0.36% vanadium 1.3% molybdenum 0.95% cobalt and 0.11% nitrogen. The rest is iron (obvious). This was (if I remember well) at some point confirmed by Jerry Busse too. The only unrevealed problem was about how the nitrogen is added and how these elements are mixed together. But the composition given by Mike Stewart's understanding seem to be totally different. I also heard that the 0.11% nitrogen usually cannot be revealed through the normal chemical inspection of the steel, being a very low amount (but it affects the properties of the steel).

Sorry I can't find all the sources at this moment, I will continue searching, for now I found in a hurry only this: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5510876 (look at the fourth post in the page), but there were a lot of forums where I found a similar (or nearly similar) composition for INFI steel.