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I'm with Ed on the Bright Knight steel sounding like it was plated especially since you could see the grind lines and it was still shiny. I've been to many a chrome plating shop and they polish the parts before plating, but don't if you tell them it doesn't matter. Could be silver plated or nickel plated or tin plated as well if you say it didn't quite look like chrome Dave. There are different ways to plate something too. They can copper plate and then chrome plate if the metal has other elements in it like nickel or even chromium containing stainless knife steels won't chrome plate without the copper plate first. They can also put a heavy coat of chrome onto a knife to hide those scratches, but it would be costly to do that and would crack if bent. I don't know if stainless would nickel plate, but a layer of copper would fix that too. Tin plating would be very bright too and would not look like chrome, nickel is not as bright, but would look closer to chrome. Silver plate would be brightest of all. It also wouldn't be hard to build your own plating tank either. Sounds like Ed said a gimmick.
A lot of sword makers use 1055, 1060 or 5160 as well as 1070. You see tomahawks made from 4140 as well with only 0.40% carbon in it. It tops out at I believe RC57-56 on hardness and tempers to 52. 4140 gets a little harder than 1045 does because of the chrome-moly in it. They are made for throwing and hardness isn't a big issue unless you want to chop wood too.
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