High carbon steel (AISI 1065) and stainless steel (AISI 304) are high strength materials that are mostly used as wear resistance materials because of there high hardness and toughness. These two materials are widely used for applications in which high strength, hardness and wear resistance are required, these requirement are fund in cutting tools, springs and surgical instruments. Nevertheless, the presence of notch in these materials do affect their service life. This paper reports on the characteristics of notched high carbon steel and stainless steel materials investigated under tensile, torsion and impact loads. The behaviour of the materials were examined under different notch parameters of angle 30°, 45° and 60° and notch base radius of 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm. The tensile, torsion and impact test samples were prepared according to ASTM E8M, ASTM F383-15 and ASTM E23-16b  respectively. Examination on the tensile and torsion tests were carried out on Testometric Universal Testing Machine (TUTM), while Avery-Denison Izod impact testing machine was used for impact test. The results obtained for the two materials showed that there is increase in absorption energy and resistance to twisting failure as notch tip radius and notch angle increase.