I've worked in manufacturing for my whole working life... I've got experience with just about every alloy and synthetic known to man, and I've got loads of experience in heat treatement.
Manufactuers of items such as hand tools saying "Oh, we have special steel, we have special heat treatment, we have special this, we have special that", just SCREAMS marketing BS to me. It might be different, but it sure as hell isn't special.
Heat treatment itself is not a complicated process. There are widely known standards used in industry. Maybe if you told me the same thing 30 years ago before digital process control was available I might have believed that one shop could do "better" heat treatment than another, but those days have come and gone.
As far as alloys, there are no secrets any more for the most part. Modern spectroscopy took care of that for us.
If one of the tool manufacturers was using some special tool steel that another wasn't, they would advertise it, LOUDLY. It would be great for business. Mysteriously saying that they use different steels and finishing without providing ANY specifics is a great way to fool customers into thinking they're getting something special without opening themselves to any liability.
"Different" could mean the same alloy purchased from a different supplier.
Take Kershaw knives for example... they're using a new stainless alloy from sandvik in some of their blades and they make damned sure you know it, on the products and on the packaging.
I would put money down that if you had a spectroscopic analysis done of modern tool steels used in any reputable brand (non-HF india) of tools, the differences would be insignificant.
I've worked in tool & die for over 20 years, of which 5 were in ultra high precision cutting tools for aerospace, military and other projects. Of which we used a wide range of heat treaters and over the years I've found that it is no way as consistent as you imply. First off batch to batch of steel there are differences, since the recipe has a +/- to the quantities of alloys. Certs from the mills are for the most part ran off of a copier, at one company alone we disqualified two mills because our lab analysis proved their steel did not match their certs.
For heat treat we went to great lengths and depending on the type of steel we would use different HT processes. The most consistent I found was salt bath/submerged heat treating and there were only a few left in the country back in 2002.
Digital controls are great, except you could but a digital tach on a lawn mower, but it doesn't mean it will better control it. As to process control of heat treat most production heat treaters can not hold a tight enough cpk, but lets be honest to the application here, hand tools are going to have a range to the specified hardness and the specific regions of the tools that will apply to.
As to blanketly calling it marketing BS, I disagree, I would run die bushings and punches through there centerless grinding, OD grinding, CNC machining and they would look identical but some would be made from S2, S7, M2, M42, CPM10V, CPM15, A2, A10 along with some other more exotics. The only difference in the process besides what we ordered from our vendors was the heat treat and the speeds and feeds to the machining / grinding operations. Plus in a production environment changes like that are not a big issue or problem at all. The biggest challenge was making sure things were properly marked thoughout the process to eliminate mixing or incorrect heat treating.
Additionally there is liability to manufacturing tools that people could/can/do get hurt with, which means even a half *** **** house lawyer knows to send the broken tool to a lab for analysis and this would confirm what was used. There are many labs/companies out there that do forensic work using FEA techniques. Plus for instance if Sandvik thought someone was using their name and not buying their steel it wouldn't be hard to prove it, each batch of steel has it's own signature mix to it plus the company claiming that they used it would have to produce records proving they indeed purchased the quantity of steel.
Of course there are standards to the types of steels and more than once source may produce a given type, but even within that most manufactures keep pretty good records for lot tracability, especially those who sell to the US government. I don't think a supplier wants to sell a tool to the DOD or DOE and have a liability problem. I've worked for companies who supplied the government and can report that they will make you do what you are contractly obligated to provide, even at gun point.
At a few companies I worked at the government supplied the raw materials we used for some of the most demanding applications and they were delivered via armed courrier and returned to them the same way.
TheGrooveking
When did that happen?
Also since you're stating you're a expert in such details. Then, you are aware of the different steps in finishing and processing of steel forgings.