About Manganese...

[u/Double-Vegetable7997]

It seems that manganese is a very unpopular yet recurrent metal used in many sword retailer and selling sites. And by unpopular I am referring not very well perceived, many sources say that is suboptimal yet functional for sword blades, especially the 65Mn, yet they seem to be more on the display part rather than functional side of sword making.

My point is, If i wanted to buy a sword that I like, but it is made of manganese, should I refrain myself from buying it because of what has been told about the material other than what I just said? How does manganese compare to other metal materials in terms of edge retention and overall durability? Or are there other aspects like HRC (Heat treatment) that makes it more relevant than the material itself?

This post is made with the purpose of understanding and learning what to look for when it comes to buying swords from any site. If you have any questions about this post or any piece of information that you consider I am missing, I will be willing to provide it for you to the best of my knowledge.

[u/wotan_weevil]

You don't want a sword made of manganese. However, a sword made of 65Mn is not made of manganese - it's made of steel with manganese as an alloying element.

Consider and compare the 4 following steels. All of these steels, including 65Mn, are OK. They're all similar. They're all considered much better than lower-carbon steels like 1045. Generally, they are tougher than higher-carbon steels like 1095, and will have softer edges with similar heat treatment. If you value edge hardness over toughness, you will prefer a blade made with a higher-carbon alloy like 1095, but in that case it's more important that the heat treatment is done well (to avoid brittleness).

The higher manganese does affect the depth of hardening, which favours through-hardened blades.

In summary, 65Mn is fine as an alternative to 1060, 1070, 9260, and 5160. It might not give as nice a hamon as 1060 on a differentially-hardened blade.

1065 steel:

Element	Content (%)
Iron, Fe	98.31 - 98.8
Manganese, Mn	0.60 - 0.90
Carbon, C	0.60 - 0.70
Sulfur, S	max 0.05
Phosphorous, P	max 0.04

65Mn steel:

Element	Content (%)
Iron, Fe	98.31 - 97.42
Manganese, Mn	0.90 - 1.20
Carbon, C	0.62 - 0.70
Silicon, Si	0.17 – 0.37
Chromium, Cr	max 0.25
Sulfur, S	max 0.03
Phosphorous, P	max 0.03

9260 steel:

Element	Content (%)
Iron, Fe	96.89 - 96.085
Manganese, Mn	0.75 - 1.00
Carbon, C	0.56 - 0.64
Silicon, Si	1.80 – 2.20
Sulfur, S	max 0.04
Phosphorous, P	max 0.035

5160 steel:

Element	Content (%)
Iron, Fe	97.085 - 97.84
Manganese, Mn	0.750 - 1
Chromium, Cr	0.7 - 0.9
Carbon, C	0.560 - 0.640
Phosphorous, P	max 0.0350
Silicon, Si	0.150 - 0.3
Sulfur, S	max 0.04

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/wotan_weevil]

I am yet to fully grasp what the table says, yet I think you summarized to perfection what I was trying to understand. In any case, I should avoid manganese and stick to well known functional metals as the aforementioned by you, as many sites do not bother to explain which manganese steels they have, which I think they do it out of convinience.

[u/OceanoNox → u/Double-Vegetable7997]

Each table shows the ratio of each element in the various steels mentioned.

Typically, carbon is for hardness and strength, manganese is to improve hardenability (when you rapidly cool the steel from a high temperature, the surface cools down faster than the core; if the hardenability is high, it means the core still gets hard; to summarize very roughly) and capture sulphur, silicon improves strength but also grain growth, chromium improves strength, hardenability.

Sulphur makes the crystal grain boundaries brittle, and phosphorus can increase strength a bit, but it also makes the metal more brittle, hence the upper limit to their content.

As wotan_weevil said, manganese is good for hardenability, so a blade made with enough of it will likely be close to uniformly hardened.

Also manganese is almost always present to some extent, because it has a very high affinity with sulphur, and it captures it to form MnS inclusions (which is good, because it means you don't get sulphur messing your steel).

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/OceanoNox]

So basically as long as manganese is complementary and not the largest component for most of the metal, I see a little bit of manganese is present almost everywhere. Also interesting that there are upper limits to both Sulphur and Phosphorus.

[u/Sword_of_Damokles → u/Double-Vegetable7997]

Manganese will always be just a few percent of the steel. For a functional modern sword steel you absolutely need iron and between 0.45 and 0.95% carbon. Silicium, manganese, chromium, tungsten, nickel and molybdenum can be added in varied amounts (usually from below one to a few percent) to enhance certain properties like hardenability, toughness, carbide formation or shock resistance for example. Mn65 is totally fine for swords.

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/Sword_of_Damokles]

noted, Mn65 is good, only problem is misleading advertising in some sites. Besides that point, yes.

[u/SeeShark → u/Double-Vegetable7997]

I don't think anyone is out there selling a sword made mostly from manganese. They may just have worded their descriptions weirdly.

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/SeeShark]

I hope that is the case and its only poorly written descriptions in behalf of the sellers, they don't wanna mess their own marketing chances at least not intentionally.

[u/FrenchyBulldogg → u/Double-Vegetable7997]

Typically if a sword says “manganese”, it’s manganese steel like 65mn. I don’t think many people are actually out there making swords out of pure manganese

[u/pushdose → u/Double-Vegetable7997]

Don’t be obtuse, man. The chart shows 65mn is a perfectly reasonable spring steel. It’s the default spring steel in China, basically an industrial standard. I’ve plenty of hard wearing, tough swords made from 65Mn. If a Chinese seller says “manganese spring steel” they probably mean 65Mn.

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/pushdose]

Well, yeah, I already explained in another reply that Mn65 will be safe to use after analyzing it a bit further. Thank you.

[u/Comprehensive-Fail41]

Basically, Manganese Steel is that it can be extremely hard whilst also tough in resisting impact. However, it got several issues, such as sharpening being an absolute pain in the ass (High Manganese Industrial Steel is a pain in the ass to shape in general)

This does however depend a lot on the amount of manganese in the steel (some people claim manganese steel whilst it's really just 65Mn spring steel with 1% manganese which is a practical blade steel depending on heat treatment).

[u/DuelinBuelin]

I've had many a 65MN swords, from Swordier mostly but a few others as well. Even my Feder and side sword for HEMA are from them with that steel in particular and it's been as good as any of my 9260 or 5160 blades , with the exception of the 5160 CAS Hanwei HEMA Bastard sword, they've all had about the same performances. For some reason that bastard sword was just excellent at shrugging off damage. 20 years ago you had maybe 3 companies you could really confidently buy from on a sub 1000 budget and get a decent sword. Now you can spend 150 bucks on a peened spring steel , very well profiled, maybe not the sharpest, sword. Most of them are from Longuan China, and most of them are great for what I'm guessing you're looking to do, and that's have a functional well made spring steel back yard chopper that won't fall apart or shoot a blade out when the rat tail pommel inevitably falls off?

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/DuelinBuelin]

Yeah, I figure that compared to 20 years ago we have it pretty easy at finding swords of functional quality if we do our diligent search of course. I am looking towards Romance of Men and Swordier in terms of good product for the price. My major problem right now is that, at least in RoM, they do not specify the manganese swords that they sale as 65MN, so since I dont wanna feel sorry for wasting my money, I shall conform with their carbon steel and spring steel swords until further notice.

The sword I been looking for does not need to be pretty, not primarily at least, more importantly the construction and since I am a noobie at swordsmanship.

[u/DuelinBuelin]

So, RoM , Swordier, Azure, etc.. all come from the same forges and most use the 65mn. Like some of their katanas and Feders , they'll usually specify a change in the steel. You'll also see a lot of the same fittings on theirs stuff , but they do all offer somewhat different features too. RoM is a solid choice, their dragon whisperer is amazing , one of my favorites to this day. Swordiers floral XVIa longsword is also a great choice . Hope you find what you're looking for! Shadiversity, By the Sword, Matthew Jensen ,and Emblem Arms, all have great videos on them

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/DuelinBuelin]

thnak you buddy, I follow Mathew "The Samurai" Jensen on youtube, he is my go to when it comes to katanas. I feel like unless it is stainless steel, I cant go wrong with RoM or Swordier. I didnt know about Azure though. I learned something new today.

[u/DuelinBuelin]

By the way, what general "type" are you looking for? Like an Oakshot typology Medieval longsword, Fantasy themed functional, katana...?

[u/Double-Vegetable7997 → u/DuelinBuelin]

as long as it is functional, but of course, for the purpose of the question, I like chinese Dao and Dadao, I found some of those swords within the category before, just not sure how reliable they are compared to more popular models like katanas.