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Rebar for forging


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Lenaghan reminded me of something that I have been meaning to ask with his rebar tongs.

Rather than hijack his thread.
How good is rebar for forging? I don't have much steel lying around - yet. But I do have a lot of rebar.

And on a related subject, where do most of you weekend smiths get your steel?

Bill

Edited by Cross Pein
I don't spell well.
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Rebar is good for many general needs. Tongs, hooks, tent stakes, practice knives, etc. From what I've heard they are just a mixture of many scrap metals thrown together. They aren't much good for real knives, punches, chisels, etc. They will work in a pinch, I think, for quick one off projects. Just work it while really hot. I've had it crack when worked too cool. Great for practice!

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In answer to your question about materials aquisition, go to any of your weld fab/machine shops and ask if you can go through the drop or scrap pile. Most will be happy to let you. One piece of advice, go after hours so you don't disrupt production.
Tell them what your up to and what your looking for and they may just say take it! I like to give trinkets I make as thank you's to the nicer shops...

If you have lots in your area, hit them all and then frequent the nicer ones.
This ahs worked nicely for me...

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Don't give up on the first shop you try, also look for heavy equipment operations, that fix their own stuff, I got a great bunch of stuff for free. I went to one place and they wanted $1 a pound for scrap, I put about five things on the scale and it was 20 pounds. I looked at what I got and thought " I could buy this stuff new for this price (almost)" so I said no thanks. They get about $5 a hundred pounds at the junk yard, so keep that in mind. kevin

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Every couple months the "Rebar" question comes up and ass blacksmiths we have a resposibility to pass on factual information not just repeat whatever we hear at the hammer in. If one were to search the archives here on IFI you would find an excellent essay on the subject by Thomas Powers. Yes rebar is usually made from scrap steel it foolish to think that steel used in concrete reinforcement for construction would only have to meet a strength requirement with no control on the composition. All one has to do is a simple google search to find information or Rebar. This link will take you to a typical mill test report of a production run of rebar. http://www.crsi.org/pdf/mill_test.pdf

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This is a description of the ASTM A615 specification that is listed on the Spec that Woody posted. While the mill test report has a chemistry for the heat, notice that a chemistry is NOT specified in the specification; the strength level IS specified. I can report the chemistry of a garbage can lid but that does not imply that it was made to any particular chemistry specification, only that the chemistry of the heat used to make the garbage can lid has the chemistry reported. The spec references the AISI and SAE specifications for ALLOY steel bars but note that they must meet the "other" requirements of the ASTM spec, which is the STRENGTH requirments. The material in the MTR posted appears to conform to the Grade 75. Also, note that the sulfur reported on the MTR is .067!!!! Modern steel making can easily achieve .003% so this heat can be expected to be full of inclusions, ie, dirty.


ASTM A615/A615M-08b
Standard Specification for Deformed and Plain Carbon-Steel Bars for Concrete Reinforcement

1.1 This specification covers deformed and plain carbon-steel bars for concrete reinforcement in cut lengths and coils. Steel bars containing alloy additions, such as with the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Society of Automotive Engineers series of alloy steels, are permitted if the resulting product meets all the other requirements of this specification. The standard sizes and dimensions of deformed bars and their number designations are given in Table 1. The text of this specification references notes and footnotes which provide explanatory material. These notes and footnotes (excluding those in tables) shall not be considered as requirements of the specification.

1.2 Bars are of three minimum yield strength levels: namely, 40 000 [280 MPa], 60 000 [420 MPa], and 75 000 psi [520 MPa], designated as Grade 40 [280], Grade 60 [420], and Grade 75 [520], respectively.

1.3 Plain bars, in sizes up to and including 2

Edited by Quenchcrack
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I have had some luck with using Rebar for tool making. I would recommend testing heat treat procedures on some sample pieces, and don't expect the results to hold for different batches or different sources.
A real “Junk-Yard” steel, but not necessarily “Junk”
IMO

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2 weekends ago I had a student making rebar stakes from random pieces I have scrounged. Most of them worked very well; but one of then cracked vertically several times---using a propane forge so pretty much the same temp, using the same equipment and the same person smithing. This was one of the ones in the middle of the run too.

You can tell me again and again how the stuff is spec'd but in my experience there has been wide variation in content---which is why I don't use much rebar and never for anything I'd worry about load bearing.

As to where I get my steel: I used to buy it at a local lumber yard---they had sq stock in addition to rebar; then I found that the local Windmill construction and repair place sold steel on the side at about 1/3 to 1/2 cheaper than the lumber yard. They buy it for their use and the more they buy the better the price they get and so they are happy to sell to others by the 20' piece.

When I lived in OH there was a local "ornamental iron" place that had to pay to have their scrap bin hauled. They gave me free run and I took out hundreds of pounds of beautiful *new* stock in lengths that I could use. I always left it neater than when I arrived; wore PPE; always checked in with the office---usually with a trinket for the office staff, never got in the way of their business. Worked out very well indeed!

I had to leave it all behind when I moved 1500 miles and had to pay for the shop move out of my own pocket. Sigh

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to answer your question, i definitely would NOT use rebar because it has a mixture of different metals that have different properties to it. I've been working metals for 35 years since i was 10 years old and i tried working rebar when i was a lot younger and i did not get very good results. The kind of iron you want to use is 1040 iron that you can get from your local steel shop. Keep your iron hot and hammer high.

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I use reo-bar for any odd job that does not need heat treating and for the kids to practice on. As for where to get iron, I have access to the family farms, plenty of stuff there from ploughs (springs and tynes) for high carbon work BUT if I am doing a project that is important or will take a lot of time I always buy specific metal and don't use the "junk" metal.

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It's kind of like the guru of anvilfire.com says. If you are using junkyard steel, you are the metallurgist and so on. I don't remember the exact quote, but that's about what he said. In other words, you have to qualify the rebar. One of the main mistakes I made when I was first starting out (no classes) was to find a full piece of 5/8" rebar in a pile of construction waste. It was very difficult to work on a horizontal railroad track anvil, especially off the edge. The combination of the rebar hardness and the sideways springy behavior of the anvil made me discouraged.

Then, I took a class. It was making tongs. I did not have a punch, the instructor would not let me use his, and he would not let me have any spring steel to make one. Instead, he gave me a piece of cold rolled 1018 and said, "go make your own hand tools." This was an excellent lesson, since it showed how easy it was to forge mild steel, and how poorly it performs as a hot punch.

I went home and bought $50 of hot rolled bar from the local steel supply, flipped a rail horizontal for the anvil, and used the rebar for the punches. Everything kind of fell into place. Pavement breaker bits were even better, and S-7 at $3 per pound on Ebay was even better. But the largest improvement came from qualifying the rebar for what it was supposed to be for, and using what is supposed to be used for the ornamental forging. Swapping the two makes the beginner's life hard. :(

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  • 1 month later...

Here a lot of the tools are made from rebar- pry bars, concrete breaking chisels etc. It seems to work well and I have used if for a lot of jobs but you have to test each piece individually. Sometimes the texture is useful- where you are making something with a non slip surface- the holder on the pig roaster, the basket for holding my fireside logs etc. I also find it a very easy material to weld- most of the time but then you come across a rogue length that just won't weld.

For a hobby smith like me it is fine but if I had to make a living I would buy new stock of known chemistry. The time wasted in "trying out" each piece would be far more expensive that the cost of the stock.

BTW rebar is great for reinforcing concrete. Several times I have used concrete as a weighted base for big projects. When I do these I usually get as much rebar in the concrete as I can as it makes it much heavier. Those bases are also the braveyard for projects that failed and that I want to hide.

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My rules of thumb for using "found" rebar: If it is under 1/2 inch pass it by. If it doesn't come from a bigtime site,( major building, government project, bridge, etc) pass it by.
If you can not find a specification rolled into the bar pass it by.
Each piece needs to be tested for forging, forge welding, hardening tempering. If you don't like the way it works, scrap it immediately.

Don't assume because one piece is good the other piece from the same location will be.

Don't use it for anything that requires extensive forging.

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I picked up some rebar for the best possible price. Unfortunately it is short pieces and has been in the ground. This particular stuff takes quite a high heat before it submits to my hammer and is pretty ratty where it's been in the ground. I wouldn't try to make something pretty out of it.

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if you go to a steel yard and buy in anything aproach quanity you can get a lot of metal for 2-300 bucks ... as a hobbyiest that could last you a year or better ... buy a few different sizes round and square and some flat bar stock .. much easyier and more consistent i use mostly hot rolled but cold rolled works fine also... rebar i just dont use ... never liket the bumps and the few times i forged it was not happy with it.. it also varys quite a bit ... if you figure the time working with a unknown piece that might not work ... why bother ... i would not sell or give away something made from it cause you dont know what it was going to do(as far as tools ) and as a decorative piece I personally think it kinda looks tacky... says "ime too cheap to buy good metal so here ya go" but thats just my take on it ...i put it in the same catagory as arc welded together "western or cowboy "art ... for sources of scrap check out fab shops especially ones that make large quanity of product sometimes theyre rems are just what ya need ! good luck!

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I have used re bar for ornamental work, The texture and price were right, had high working temp, and would snap on a quench line. But not a bad material, not perfect, but not bad.

Remember don't bring golf clubs to a base ball game.

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Thomas, You illustrate the problem exactly. Chemistry typically varies wildly from source to source. The .067 sulfur suggests to me that this was a heat that did not get properly de-sulfurized and would not meet any other spec so it became re-bar.


I hve taken re-bar that broke ...the end grain looked all grainey I put it in the fire and forged a point , the texture changed it didn't look gariney when I broke it . from above does some of this stuff just need working
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  • 2 years later...

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