Alloy Steel vs Carbon Steel – What`s the Difference?

There are approximately 36 million different kinds of steel.

You can probably imagine where I pulled that number from.

At first glance, all the different kinds of metals can seem pretty overwhelming.

So what`s the difference between carbon steel and alloy steel?

Carbon steel is iron with carbon added, whereas alloy steel also includes other elements to modify the properties of the metal.

That`s not to say that carbon steel is pure carbon and iron. Everything will have impurities. But these extra elements don`t make up a major part of the ingredient list. At least, they aren`t present enough to really change the carbon steel much.