Atkins "Silver Steel"

[Darksev]

I had myself a nice little bonfire this weekend, and towards the end I tossed in a few old worn files so I have some steel to play with in the coming months. I have a few older Nicholson files I believe (99%) are 1095, which is something I'm familiar with (not to different from O1) but one of the files, an older Atkins "Silver Steel" with a unique profile (what I think would be called a Knife file, or a Pippin. It has a V grind and almost a wharncliffe like layout. Call me original, but guess what I'm gonna do with it ;P) Anyone have any idea what kind of steel this could be. It annealed just like the Nicholson's I put in, no real scale or dimensional changes.

Does this sound like I found the right thing?

Silver steel or high-carbon bright steel gets its name from its appearance. It is a very-high carbon steel. It is defined under the steel specification standards BS-1407. It is a 1%-carbon tool steel which can be ground to close tolerances. Usually the range of carbon is in the range 1.10% - 1.20%. It also contains trace elements of 0.35% Mn (range 0.30–0.40%), 0.40% Cr (range 0.4–0.5%), 0.30% Si (range 0.1–0.3%), and also sometimes sulfur (max 0.035%) and phosphorus (max 0.035%). Silver steel is sometimes used for making straight razors, due to its ability to produce and hold a micro-fine edge.

All the old Atkins literature I was able to find made it sound like some kind of special proprietary steel. They used it in their saws and files from very early in the 1900s, though I doubt this file is that old.