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I Forge Iron

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  1. This is all good news ... glad to hear 5160 is forgiving, and I have just the place to ask for fryer oil...a local watering hole whose manager is a lovely young lady I've been wanting to talk to... Thank you all, again.
  2. Thank you, fellas. I don't know why I didn't think to check the sticky pinned threads.
  3. Sorry if this has been talked to death, but I did a search but didn't find a lot. I'm getting ready to try to make a timber-framing 1-1/2" chisel from (I believe) 5160 from an old school bus leaf spring. My online searches lead me to believe oil is the best quenchant for this steel. I see "Parks 50 oil" recommended here, and here I see "Parks AAA, Mcmaster 11-second, Houghton G" recommended. Short of using free drain oil, I would like to buy something economical for my purposes. And since I have close to 100# of this leaf-spring material, I would like to find an oil that works well and stick with it. What oils are you folks using for quenching? And can anyone recommend a particular type (and source) of oil for quenching this 5160? Related question: Assuming that I am forging in say 50°-70°F ambient air, would ambient-temperature quenching oil be OK, or should I heat it up before quenching? Lastly, can anyone recommend any books or websites that might have this info, so I don't have to pester you folks for it? I know experience is the best teacher and I don't want to analyze this to death, but also don't want to get discouraged by failures early-on that make me quit trying... Thanks for any help. Jeff
  4. This is great advice, everyone, thank you all very much. I didn't even know what questions to ask, apparently, but you guys answered several I didn't even know to ask! I really appreciate your help, and will let you folks know how I make out. Best regards to all, and thanks again, Jeff
  5. I know this is an old thread but ... I have some old leaf springs from a school bus, and I want to make a heavy "timber framing" chisel 1-1/2" wide ... assuming that my springs are 5160, would this steel be good for making a timber framing wood chisel? To dig a little deeper...would 5160 be appropriate for: - the body of the chisel? - the cutting edge of the chisel? Or would I be better off using a mild(er) steel for the body and possibly a different steel (say 1095) for the cutting edge? (I'm thinking I would like to use fairly vanilla steels for this since I am such a novice.) (Also, if it matters, I may try to get a machinist friend to make the "socket" portion of the chisel on his lathe, and then I will likely TIG weld that to the chisel body before forging, since I don't have any mandrels or swage blocks/dies for making the tapered socket, and since I'm far better at tigging than at blacksmithing...) Thank you for any advice. (By the way, for anyone interested, I found a very informative blacksmith on Youtube who goes by the username "Black Bear Forge" ... I don't know whether he is a member here, but I've learned a lot from his videos.)
  6. That's what I always did too. Seemed to work well. Got the probe and now I'm trying to find the outhouse on this old 1892 farmhouse. Found some "soft spots" and dug down to about 18" but didn't find much...I guess it's gonna take a bit of poking around and dry holes! Thanks again for everyone's help and suggestions.
  7. Thanks, Frosty. I like that idea. I'm almost thinking it might be interesting to somehow combine a cheap Chinese "stethoscope" with the probe, so that the tip of the probe would effectively be an extension of your eardrum. (Might have to stuff some cotton in your ears to deaden it though LOL!) FWIW, I decided to follow your advice and just buy one of these probes already hardened and tempered. After doing a fair amount of Internet research, I've concluded that the spring tempering, combined with the small diameter and fairly long length (48") are fairly important.
  8. Thank you guys. Yeah, I kind of thought the steel would be delivered normalized/annealed but was hoping it might still be stiffer/springier.. The 5160 looks real interesting...97ksi yield strength and apparently good fatigue life, I gotta go poking around to find some of that maybe. I was hoping someone might point me toward an alloy steel so thank you Frosty. Will report back and surely pester you folks more. Thanks again. Jeff
  9. Thanks for all the replies and advice, fellas. I suspect that you summed it up spot-on, Frosty, when you said, "You'll spend many times as much putting something together to heat treat something like that than buying a commercial one." I have to admit that I've done this kind of thing too many times to count: I have welding/cutting/woodworking equipment and just enough blacksmithing knowledge to be dangerous, and I'll say, "Gee, I can make the same thing for half the price" ... and then I jack around buying the material and attempting it myself, only to end up buying the finished item in the end, at a net loss compared to if I had just bought the stupid thing in the first place and not wasted time and money trying to DIY. I'd bet that the guy who makes and sells these things invested in the equipment to harden/temper them properly, and is recovering his expense by selling them. It's kind of like building a jig to make a one-off of something...most of your money and time is spent building the jig, so you might as well pay the guy who built the jig and made enough "rejects" to perfect the final product. A couple of last questions before I get out of your hair: - I found a place where I can buy a 36" x .277" piece of 1095 for about $35 delivered. Do you guys think that this would be more stiff/durable in its "as-delivered" condition (in other words, without quenching/tempering) than for example a piece of A36 MS (or whatever steel drill rod is made of) for this purpose ? - Could I get away with simply quenching 1095 in water after heating it to critical/non-magnetic and then using it as a "privy probe" ... or would it be likely to be TOO hard/brittle, and possibly break, if I quenched it but did not temper it? - If 1095 would not be appropriate for a "quenching but not tempering" treatment, is there some other steel, maybe an oil-quenched or air-quenched steel, that I could get away with quenching but not tempering for this purpose? (The reason I ask is, I think I could manage a decent heat-soak and quench, but don't know how I could temper a 36" piece...) Thank you all very much for your advice. I really appreciate it. And sorry for the long post and for posting the commercial links contrary to the TOS. Jeff
  10. Thanks, TheJeff. I actually thought about just getting a piece of 3/8" rebar, grinding it smooth and using that. But a lot of folks seem to say that a spring steel probe is the way to go. The say it transmits sound/feel better, and I guess there's less danger of it bending/fatiguing. Here's where I was considering buying one: Commercial link removed. And here's a review of the probes above, where they go into the supposed benefits of spring steel: Commercial link removed.... Search for oldwestbottles.com
  11. Hey, all, I want to get into antique bottle hunting by finding and digging old privy outhouses, and one of the tools used to locate them is a "T" shaped probe made of spring steel that you poke down into the ground and listen/feel for glass and different soil consistency. You can find them for sale online but a 3-footer will run close to $70 with shipping, so I was considering attempting to make one myself out of some 1095 rod. It looks like one popular one is about .270" diameter. My questions revolve around how to temper such a piece about .272" diameter x 36" long to "spring" hardness. I guess to harden 1095 steel, you would heat it to critical/non-magnetic and then quench in water. I think I could pull off the heating and quenching in my coal forge...but... How would you folks go about tempering this hardened piece to "spring" hardness? Could I get away with quenching it very briefly (maybe in a piece of aluminum roof gutter so that I could quench the whole piece simultaneously) and then pull the whole piece out before it had fully cooled, and go by tempering color? Or will such a task really be too tricky/difficult for an amateur? Thanks in advance for any advice. C
  12. Thanks again, Biggundoctor. I'll post back up when I know more.
  13. Thank you for the replies, fellas. I'll try heating and quenching to see what I get. If it's "1075 Cr1" as mentioned in the link above, would that be useable for a plane iron? It's a little thick for a scraper...
  14. Hello, all, I did a search and didn't find my answer. I'm always scrounging for steel for my welding/blacksmithing/woodworking projects, and in a pile of refuse from (apparently) a barn that burned down, I found a carbide-tipped 10" circular saw blade. The plate of the blade was warped from the heat, so I'm assuming that any heat treating that the plate had is no longer there – but the carbide teeth were all still on the blade, so apparently it didn't get hot enough to melt the bronze used to attach the teeth – so I'm assuming it didn't get hot enough to ruin the steel. I'm considering using the steel plate to make a scraper for woodworking and/or possibly a plane iron blade – if the steel would be suitable for this, and if I can successfully reharden and temper the steel. (For a cabinet scraper, generally, you file a 45° bevel on the edge, then hone it on 1500 grit until you get a burr, then roll over the burr with a HSS burnisher, and this creates the "hook" that does the cutting when scraping. For a plane iron, typically you might grind it on waterstones up to 4000 grit on a 30° or 35° bevel.) For whatever it's worth, a Google search turned up this page: http://www.harrissawing.com/circular-saw-manufacturing-process/ Which said that (at least for their own blades): "For tungsten carbide tipped saws a high chrome, high carbon steel is used (1075 Cr1). " Anyway, does anyone have any idea what type of steel I might have, and/or how I might quench and temper it for my purposes? Thanks in advance for any help.
  15. Thanks for the replies, guys. Steve, sorry for the terrible terminology. I guess I should have said "temper" rather than retemper, but since the spring was (I assume) quenched and tempered once already, I was calling it a "retemper" but I guess since by then I would have quenched it again (re-quenched?), it would be a "temper" – not a "retemper." Again, my apologies. JNewman, thanks, air hardening is probably the best bet. Thanks for the tips. Biggundoctor, I didn't know about that spring temper wire. Unfortunately, no good suppliers around here, and shipping from online (if I could even find what I want online, and I can't) would be prohibitively expensive. Frosty, thanks. Hadn't thought of the valve spring. I'll look around in my junk pile. FWIW, it's not an issue of "pulling the rope all the way out to the stop" – the issue is, it's a Stihl 660 with a 7hp motor, and sometimes it pops and wants to rip your hand off...which I guess is why Stihl makes "Elastostart" handles that absorb some of that shock...but I'd rather make something than buy it... Thanks again.
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