MattBower

This could also be entitled, "why you shouldn't believe steel charts and rumors, even from seemingly reliable sources." I'm friendly with a guy who works in the lab at a steel mill in Ohio. He told me months ago that he'd be happy to run some samples of unknown steels for me. Last week I finally got around to sending him pieces of some mystery steels that I'd been wondering about for a while. Of course the nature of junkyard steel being what it is, you cannot validly generalize from any of these results. But I think some of you may find them interesting nonetheless. (I'm not posting all the results because some of them -- like some mystery bar stock that I bought at a bladesmith's estate auction -- are completely useless to anyone but me. [Turns out it's O1, like I suspected.]) Rail anchor ("clip") from a CSX rail bed___C: 0.51 | Mn: 0.80 | P: 0.01 | S: 0.03 | Si: 0.18 | Cu: 0.24 | Cr: 0.07 | Mo: 0.02 | Ni: 0.07 | Sn: 0.010 | V: 0.002 | Cb/Nb: 0.015 Bed frame angle iron*_________________C: 0.53 | Mn: 0.83 | P: 0.02 | S: 0.02 | Si: 0.19 | Cu: 0.01 | Cr: 0.02 | Mo: 0.005 | Ni: 0.01 | Sn: 0.006 | V: 0.002 | Cb/NB: 0.002 Demolition hammer bit **______________C: 0.42 | Mn: 0.70 | P: 0.005 | S: 0.02 | Si: 0.2 | Cu: 0.02 | Cr: 0.02 | Mo: 0.005 | Ni: 0.02 | Sn: 0.004 | V: 0.0 | Cb/NB: 0.002 Tire iron***_________________________C: 0.70 | Mn: 0.75 | P:0.01 | S: 0.01 | Si: 0.23 | Cu: 0.01 | Cr: 0.01 | Mo: 0.002 | Ni: 0.0 | Sn: 0.0 | V: 0.001 | Cb/Nb: 0.0 I can't tell you what machines he used for these analyses, though I'll ask. At the moment I can only tell you that he used two separate machines, that the results were consistent between the two, and that the results for the O1 bar stock were just about exactly what they should have been (within 0.02). That makes me suspect the rest are probably pretty accurate, too. *After annealing overnight in a charcoal fire. **I got these from a guy who sells and repairs demolition hammers (among other things). He claimed that the manfacturer's rep for the bits told him they were S5. (Since he gave them to me for the cost of postage, he had no real incentive to lie about that.) And that corresponds perfectly with the info you'll see on some of the scrap steel charts that float around. Well, guess what: this particular bit is nowhere close to S5! It's plain old 1040! This just reinforces my point about not putting much stock in those charts, or even in word of mouth from people who seem like they might know. ***He's not very confident of the tire iron results because the sample was smaller than it should have been.

This is slightly tangential, but definitely in the spirit of the original question: aside from roses what sorts of forged items make suitable bribes/peace offerings for the Chief Financial Officer? (Forget kitchen knives. In my case SWMBO is extremely friendly with the freezer and microwave and insists on using awful, cheap, badly serrated stainless cutlery when she absolutely must cut something -- real blades scare her.) I'm badly in need of ideas.

It depends partly on the sort of work you're doing. I've been told that the old advice to put the anvil at knuckle height was developed for smiths who were using strikers and a lot of tooling (which effectively adds to the height of the anvil by raising the level of the surface being struck). I like to make blades, which involves a lot of work on fairly thin stock along the edge of the anvil. If the anvil is at knuckle height I find myself stooping during that sort of work. That gets old fast. I prefer a face that's about 2" above the height of my knuckles.

Yep. A rail anvil mounted the usual way is springy and inefficient. (It'll work, yes, but it's not ideal.) Mounting it on end makes it a whole different ballgame.

No, you only think you know those things. Those are incredibly broad, radically oversimplified statements, and very likely wrong in a great many cases. The precise steels used for particular applications can vary tremendously by individual manufacturer, the intended use of the part (not all bearings are rated for the same load, speed, environment, etc., just for example), and even by what happens to be cheap at the time of a particular production run. Unless you get the particular steel analyzed or are able to get detailed information from the actual manufacturer, normally the best you can hope for with these sorts of generalizations is to get somewhere in the approximate neighborhood of the truth, with bunches of caveats. Junkyard steel demands testing and experimentation. That said, Steve's right that there are lots of charts available with a simple Google search. (Try Googling "junkyard steel chart" without quotes.) Take them all with several tablespoons of salt.

I'm so envious of you folks who have the ability to wander scrap yards at will. I haven't yet been able to find a scrap yard around here that'll let me past the front office. And even then they're not much interested in selling to me. (Around here they don't even call themselves scrap yards. They're recyclers.) They only seem to want to buy scrap in bulk and sell it to the Chinese (or to some company that sells it to the Chinese) in bulk -- period. Cindy, here's a search that I run pretty regularly. By looking at the URLs you can get a good idea of where most of the results are without clicking on every individual link -- at least if you're reasonably familiar with U.S. geography site:craigslist.org anvil -case -drum -micrometer -crate -cases -guitar -speaker - Google Search Some of the links will turn out to be expired, but many won't.

I use crushed glass as a cover flux to keep the zinc from burning off so much. It reduces the problem Thomas identified and helps prevent metal fume fever, too. The molten glass will be thick and viscous, and you'll need to skim it off before the pour. What are you using as a furnace? I find it more difficult to melt in an open, solid fuel forge than in an enclosed melting furnace. Cartridge cases have high surface area relative to mass. In other words they're very thin. That means they'll be prone to oxidizing more than melting, so you can lose a lot of brass as dross. The best approach to this problem that I know of is to start with some larger chunks of brass in the crucible. When those liquefy you can add your cases, and the pool of already molten brass will help protect the cases from oxidation. You can buy commercial clay-graphite crucibles relatively inexpensively. For brass I'd recommend that you do so.

O1 needs a bit of a soak to get everything in solution. If you don't have a HT oven or salt setup you might get better results with a nearly eutectoid steel like 1075/1080/1084. The simple 10xx steels tend to be pretty inexpensive.

Wow. Someone got their money's worth out of that anvil. Congrats on your new Hay-Budden. I'm jealous!

No, that won't accomplish anything.

Burying steel in hot charcoal and leaving it overnight would anneal it if it were medium or high carbon, but it's not going to carburize it -- certainly not to a degree that makes it suitable for making a knife. You'll save yourself a lot of time in the long run if you do a little research before you dive into this stuff.

Here's a very useful discussion of carburizing that's going on at one of my other daily-read forums right now. Blister/shear steel They're talking about wrought iron, but it'll work on mild steel. I've only tried it once, using charcoal with sodium carbonate as my carburizing agent and an old cast-iron Dutch oven as my crucible. I cooked it for maybe 12 hours at somewhere around 1600 F (guessing from color) in a large wood fire. (Think burning a half-dozen or so dead trees.) It definitely made a difference in the steel, but I wouldn't have expected too much from it, performance-wise.

OK. Good luck with that.

Looks like good work, DC. I wish I had the equipment to fabricate a burner that nice! What kind of ceramic wool are you using? It's not as white as the stuff I'm used to.

Yes, if it's a really decent file. Nicholson and Simonds both have excellent reputations. With some of the cheaper stuff I've read that it can be hit-or-miss. (OTOH my first blade was made from an Indian file I bought at Harbor Freight, and it got absolutely screamin' hard in the quench. So not all the cheap stuff is total junk.) Grind off the teeth before you start forging, or anneal the file and then file off the teeth. If you just forge them flat you're likely to create cold shuts that won't do anything good as far as your blade's strength.

Thanks for the offer. I'd like to do that sometime, although BGOP is quite a bit more convenient for me. (I'm starting a class at BGOP next week, actually; once a week for about eight weeks.)

Peyton, you guys are about two hours south-southwest of me. Glad to have discovered you. One of these years I might have to come down and take a class. :)

Hey Hillbilly, are those vizslas in your avatar? If you're askeered of zinc fumes, you can strip off the zinc by soaking in an acid. Muriatic would be fast (careful about the evolved hydrogen), or you could use something weak like vinegar if you don't mind waiting. Zinc and cadmium aren't even on the same planet, toxicity-wise. I wouldn't mess with cadmium at all. (I have a little cadmium containing silver solder, and frankly I'm very reluctant to use it even outdoors.) But I doubt you'll find cadmium on your trampoline springs. It's used in electroplating (I'm not sure to what extent), but to my knowledge galvanized steel is generally hot-dipped, not electroplated.

Looks like top rear is the tracking wheel. You're right that it doesn't look like it has much (any?) crown. Nor do the rest.

So you're saying that no matter what you do to the tracking adjustment knob, it won't make the belt track straight?

I've never actually asked, but I've always thought that people tend to use bigger pipe with blown burners because it reduces back pressure. Many blowers (especially common squirrel cage blowers) don't handle back pressure so well, and the ones that do tend to be more expensive. Probably the reason you don't see a lot of specific plans for these burners is that they're usually so simple. Look at one and you pretty much know how to build it.

My mistake then, sorry. Looked like a typo. That's very interesting about the phosphate binders. About a year ago I was looking into the possibility of some kind of phosphate binder to make insulating blocks of vermiculite or the like, but I never came across that tidbit. Thanks.

I'd put it with several more like it, plus a bunch of other stuff, and make a power hammer out of it. :p

A couple of hatchets/camp axes?

Frosty, I think you meant high alumina refractories. Phosphates are often used as binders in refractories, but it's the alumina that makes them flux resistant.