R.C.Reichert

i think your looking at this from the wrong angle, the way the world is atm with being enviromentaly green i would hipe it up that its recycled. some people would love it that "no mining amd smelting has been done to get the steel this time around". as long as you do testing on the blade to make sure its not faulty in any way. i must admit i dont care what a blade is made of as long as its strong, holds a good edge, holds up and works for what its intended for and of course looks good

just my thoughts on it
Ben

Don't feel bad about selling knives made from the time tested specialty alloy RTS steel( rusty old truck springs) Countless knives have been made and sold of this time honored material. If the steel were no good it wouldn't have held that old truck up for all those years! Watch for cracks by the way. Any alloy of spring steel from 1060- 8260 will make an excellent knife. The alloy isn't so important as getting the heat treat right, so experiment on a sample piece of the spring first.- Wierdest spring I have run across was old blister steel, it was an old buggy spring.

If you have not misled anyone and have done good work why should you be troubled?

Of course I call my smithy "Recycled Ranch" so right upfront folks know I use a lot of recycled material

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....

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?

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.