Edge Retention/Rolling Test Stand

[Mark Reich]

Cast iron may have close to 5% carbon, but that's the only thing that comes to mind. Not very many common blade steels have much more than 1%. A2 has about 1%.

Medium carbon steel, which is the vast majority of knives, are up to 0.5% carbon.

High carbon steels go up to about 0.84 percent carbon.

Above that, hypereutectoid steels basically have an abundance of carbon, in the 1% range.

Elmax and D2 are exceptionally high for common tool steels at about 1.7% and 1.5% respectively. They also have a lot of chromium, which ties up the extra carbon in chromium carbides.

The higher grades of Japanese steel are very high as well, with about 1.2-1.5%. Super Blue is even higher.  

Most of the modern powdered steels have very high carbon, from about 1.3% to 3%, but that is like a different category IMHO.  

That's about the most I can say off the top of my head.