Hardening Mild Steel

[ThomasPowers]

And my stock two answers: you should be able to get car leaf or coil springs for free---unless you actually live somewhere where there are no cars and so have a cheap piece of decent knife steel to ruin!

If you learn on low carbon steel your habits will be set for low carbon steel. if you want to be a knifemaker best to get your habits set for high carbon steel and then have problems working mild steel...takes an act of will for me to work wrought iron at a yellow heat as my habits are screaming that I'm burning the steel!

I have just been given some re-bar from a major power plant construction site that I want to check out vs the WKW rebar I've scrounged and don't use for anything but snakes and stakes.

[petersenj20]

I live in an area that everyone seems to think used items need to bring new prices. But honestly I haven't really looked for any free or inexpensive leaf spring. The leaf wouldn't have done me any good for this project because I'm not forging, just grinding. I needed 4 inch wide and don't know if I could find any that big.

And I have no illusions of being a knifemaker. Just trying to make a few neat things.

[RegionalChaos]

Log truck or semi truck or large flat bed trailers etc, have leaf spring that is 4 inches wide or more. Can be an inch thick or more too. A friend of mine made a few pieces for a fellow who worked at a log truck repair shop (i think) and he gave him a few HUGE sets of leaf spring. Most of it will probably end up as dies or other tools. I've had OK luck getting coil spring cheap off of craigslist.

[ThomasPowers]

Leaf spring would be a bear to make a machete from strictly stock removal. Much better would be some of the giant bandsaw blade used for sawing tree's at a saw mill, about the right thickness to start and good steel to boot. I sometimes see pieces a couple of feet long and 9" or so wide for sale at hammer-ins.

[Barran]

For a start, hello to all! RegionalChaos, sounds to me like you carbonized the mild-steel. I'm presuming that you burnt the end in a coal forge and not a gas forge, remember that coal is a form of carbon and it can migrate to the steel / iron. If you divide your pile of burning coal in to three horizontal levels, the bottom layer ( closest to the air grate ) is the Oxidizing Area. the middle is Neutral and the top layer is the Carbonizing Area! It would take a while to carbonize the bar all the way through but you could quite have easely have hardened the outside enough to notice it on the bandsaw. Note that modern case hardening powders have replaced this very old form of carbonizing steel/iron!!