Crucible Steel is up for auction in September !
A sad story but this company has been very good to the knife business with very fine blade steels like CPM154, CPM3V, S30V.
The generally poor economy especially the auto industry is the prime cause.Carpenter Steel is interested in some of the assets.Makers are now looking for substitute steels .

Crap ... these are/were good folks who made good materials!

I am just now reading this and as a machinist and tool maker I am almost heartbroken. I have used hundreds of pounds of high speed steel blanks as has just about every other machinist in the US. Rex 95 was the most popular grade. I also used lots of S7, 4140, 4340, and 4350. I hope whoever purchases them will be able to continue to manufacture as high a quality steels as we have been able to purchase.
Guess that box of blanks I have just went through the roof$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Andy

Without going into all the details (which I mostly don't have anyway) the main part of the firm was purchased by a small newly formed corp. for $8 million and Crucible is supposed to be making their steel(s) again in the first part of Nov. The union members took a pay cut of about $2/hour and less incentives, etc to help make the deal happen. Apparently the Empire State Dev (which I suppose, without doing any research, is some kind of NY state economic aid program) is fronting the $8 million with a 3 yr repayment schedule. I hope they can make it work.

As of January , www.nsm-ny.com will be selling CPM steels.They've had a long term association with Crucible .They are primarily a processing mill ,rolling and cutting to customer specs.They will be processing CPM to knife sizes !
Crucible's Syracuse operation is back in operation !

Thank you Gato and Mete!

For the information and putting my mind at ease. It would be a great travesty if Crucible went under totally as well as a historical loss.
I started collecting different grades of high speed steel blanks and have at least 6 grades made by Crucible. Some like Rex aaa are just a step up from keystock. Others like Rex 95 and Rex 55 are top of the line high speed steel tool blanks that I have used to make all kinds of shapes of single point tools. Probably wouldn't hurt to stockpile a few boxes of the best blanks I can get in all common sizes.

Andy