Frequently Asked Questions

AKS FAQ's

Almost all our domestic orders have free shipping. The one exception is oversize items. Oversize orders ship free after $150. Oversize orders totaling less than $150 have graduated shipping cost. Free shipping applies to all 50 states.

Fast Shipping:

Most orders are shipped in one day. We did not change carriers or shipping methods so most orders are still delivered in 2-4 days.

Live Inventory:

The website has live inventory. This means everything you see is available to ship immediately. You cannot order out of stock items. Your order will not be shipped short of the materials you ordered. If there is an inventory error, you will be contacted before your order is shipped.

Steel Certifications:

Certification reports or “certs” are available for almost every piece of blade steel. The cert is identified by a three letter code that is written on the billet. Enter the code into the AKS website to see the chemical composition of the steel. There are more than 450 certs on the website and we continually add more.

Flat Ground Steel:

All particle metallurgy (PM) alloys at AKS are flat ground. We also flat grind some pieces of cast alloys. The advantage of buying flat ground is you do not pay for the steel that is ground off or the HIP can on Bohler Uddeholm alloys. You receive steel that is flat, parallel, precise and ready to be used. The flat grinding is done on a Blanchard grinder which can be identified by circular grind marks. Our tolerances for flat grinding are +-.001” across 12”. Do not be mislead by other descriptions. Some companies try to re-define lower tolerances as flat grinding.

G10 Colors & Sizes:

AKS currently has more than 350 G10 color/thickness variations. All our G10 is made in USA. We are seeing more poor quality offshore G10 available for sale. Beware of poor quality offshore G10.

General