people think that stuff like wrought iron or cast iron are like, relatively pure iron, and steel is made by carefully adding in stuff
but both of those actually have way more carbon content than even carbon steel
getting pure iron is actually really hard, almost all iron stuff has a significant and uncontrolled amount of carbon in it
carbon steel has a very low and controlled carbon content
-F
oh stainless also contains nickel
-F
@Felthry
Nickel is added into a lot of steel smelts to increase the strength of it.
I hate it, but that's because my job is to turn, drill, and bore into different kinds of steel, and the more nickel in the alloy, the worse time I'm going to have!