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I Forge Iron

R.C.Reichert

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  • Posts

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Red Deer, Alberta
  • Interests
    Making knives, forging and learning about ancient ways and techniques. I am a history buff and like making historical pieces from pre-1800's.
  1. Sounds good! Thanks for sharing your opinion. :D
  2. That's very helpful! Thank you! I tried asking around at a couple auto wrecker shops here yesterday to see if they had any old stuff from like the 50's - 60's, but they only keep stuff from no older than 10 yrs. But if the alloy is not so important like you said, maybe I can still use the springs from more modern vehicles from like the 90's or later. Because they are not so old, maybe they'd be less prone to having cracks...that could be a good thing. Thanks again.
  3. Sounds good to me. Thank you for the help! And thanks to everyone else who posted.
  4. This is troubling me though... Should I feel bad for wanting to sell knives made of spring steel, even after I explicitly tell people that the blades are made from recycled material? A lot of great masters have made great knives from all manner of junkyard steels...Wayne Goddard being one of them....and those knives probably would sell for a small fortune these days....
  5. Thanks for the reply. Anyways, what I was intending for the leaf springs was to make some user-grade small machete/large camp knives (nothing fancy) that I could sell inexpensively and save my "known" steel for my higher quality hunters and skinners. Of course I would be honest about it and clearly state to the customer that the blade was made from recycled spring steel. There are a lot of people out there I'm sure who would like a nice useable carbon steel knife, but cannot afford to pay $200 or more for a top quality piece. I would like to be able to appeal to as many customers as I can. I think also that banging away at some spring steel would be good practice for my forging techniques...plus I kinda like being traditional. Does this sound like a fair idea?
  6. There are a couple auto wreckers in town that have loads of spring steel lying around, but they have random piles of the stuff and only god knows what leaf spring came from what car or truck. How would I go about having it tested and where could I get it done? Is there a way I can test it myself? Say if worse came to worse and I ended up unknowingly forging a piece of 4140 or 1050 or some other steel that was not 5160, would it be so bad? I've heard that even 4140 will make a decent knife. Is there any specific steel that may have been used in leaf springs that would for sure not make a good blade? If it looks like a knife...cuts like a knife....holds an edge well....and is tough as nails....does it really matter what steel it is specifically? If I test it thorougly and it performs the way I want it, should I just call it good? I know this isn't the proper way to go about things and I should just stick with the "known" steel, but sometimes it seems like such a waste having all that good steel lying around and doing nothing with it. I like the idea of recycling and I make blades that would be called "primitive" anyways. I know even Wayne Goddard forged a blade he thought was 5160 and it turned out actually being something else....it still made a good blade though. Actually, he even gave a list of all the different possible steels used in leaf springs in his book The Wonder of Knifemaking.
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