Nitro V is a newer steel and is made by the New Jersey Steel Baron company. According to their website, “The Baron’s Nitro-V is NJSB’s latest effort to provide premium cutlery grade steels and materials in an ever-expanding, evolving craft that is custom tailored to our customers’ wants and needs.” The onus on New Jersey Steel Baron is that these new steels need to address the shortcomings of the steels they intend to replace. So how does a company do this? The answer, in this case, is to take an already existing great steel and improve on it. Nitro V is actually AEB-L at heart. NJSB added Nitrogen and Vanadium to improve edge performance, and to achieve high hardness and extreme corrosion resistance. It has been said on more than one occasion that Nitro V could very well be used in diving knives, rather than the standard 420c or titanium, because of this ability to resist staining and corrosion. Nitro V is a martensitic stainless steel with a chromium-based composition.
