or pump rod to the guys who work in the oil fields i have acess to bunches of this stuff anyone know anything on it it's carbon content or what kinda metal is it ?? thanks was wondering if it was just good for fire pokers or could i use it as a knife blade

Do a search of the archives on this site, there is a whole list of various manufacturers of Sucker Rod and the composition of each

ok but **** i wouldnt know who made it its all rusty and pitted
the piece i was using took forever long to heat and man it was tough

Edited April 12, 200917 yr by steve sells
foul language

maybe it is low carbon, i think that stuff works a higher temp than med or high carbon steel. also your forge may have been too cool.

Living in southern louisiana there is a lot of sucker rod floating around. The only thing I know for sure is that you can not know for sure what it is.

Treat it like junk steel and don't invest a lot of time and effort in making something that needs high performance. Above all don't make a tools out of it that, if it fails, could hurt someone.

Try the spark tests and the various forging, hardening, and tempering tests on that our teachers recommend.

Edited April 15, 200917 yr by Charlotte
spelling

ok thanks all i'll just be making fire pokers out of it

usually 4140, makes good tools

The carbon content varies depending on use, deep wells take stronger rod, shallow (older) ones can use weaker rod. Rod for sour gas (H2S) wells is a different alloy that those for sweet wells.

So if your local field is pretty much the same the rod may be pretty much the same; but if you start talking about someplace else; well you may be giving bad advice.

Why not ask a local producer what they use in their wells? Shoot they may even hook you up with their scrap pile and then you would have stuff you have a decent chance to know what it is, (not 100% it is still scrap...).

New guy; you work low carbon steels at higher temps because you can not because they require it---they don't burn or cottage cheese on you! They are softer at any forging temp than a high carbon steel at the same temp (that's not falling apart on you.)

Thanks Thomas I didn't know that

thomasPowers: yes your right i got it backwards. stangcrazy85 sorry for the bad advice. spark testing may not work depending on the grinder you use and also the light in which you grind. sorry again.

thomasPowers: yes your right i got it backwards. stangcrazy85 sorry for the bad advice. spark testing may not work depending on the grinder you use and also the light in which you grind. sorry again.

I have a several scraps of known steel laying around to compare to.

ok ok well at least i am getting some good feedback on this one thanks fellers for the help i'll eventualy get some pics up here for yall

charlotte your right you need to get control testing etc. also stangcrazy the spark test must be done in the same light conditions (preferably dim lighting) and with the same grider at the same speed. just for the sake of perfection :)

anyone wanna die? ol rods/casing out of a h2s well will kill ya,,, is up to you but.....be warey "rotten egg" is not good= less than .001 in a 8 hr. period but when ua heats it turns to sulfer dixoide= deadly please don mess w/ rods-casin that came from a sour well!.sorry jimmy

Jimmy i only got hydrogen and slufur and how lethal it is. what are you trying to say/ask? it seems that your advice could be useful but it is hard to understand.

I think he is saying that the black crud you find on sour wells, gas or oil, releases Hydrogen sulfide when it is hot.

Yes Not a smart idea to mess with sour gas material because the clean up is more trouble than the goods are worth.

Actually there are several componds that form on those well componets that are disgusting, posionours, and contaminate your shop and your work.

Better left alone like stuff with hot dip galvanize on it. More trouble than just a little bit.

all this over fire pokers huh well at least you are looking out for me

here in southeast kansas i have run across high carbon rods, medium carbon rods and even some very old wrought iron rods ( wood grain appearance and structure and all )

ken leedy

I would suggest you visit BP 0020 and do a bit of reading on spark testing. It is not as easy as most of us would believe.

BP0002 Junk Yard and Rail Road Steels

anyone wanna die? ol rods/casing out of a h2s well will kill ya,,, is up to you but.....be warey "rotten egg" is not good= less than .001 in a 8 hr. period but when ua heats it turns to sulfer dixoide= deadly please don mess w/ rods-casin that came from a sour well!.sorry jimmy

new guy Jimmy i only got hydrogen and slufur and how lethal it is. what are you trying to say/ask? it seems that your advice could be useful but it is hard to understand.

What Jimmy is trying to say is one of the secrets of oil well firefighting. It's common to light a sour gas blowout on fire to burn the H2S to SO2, but that does not reduce the toxicity. SO2 is actually more toxic than H2S, but the thermal plume from the fire carries high where it gets diluted and is harmless on return to earth. (The universal solution to pollution -- DILUTION) If you are working outside, I doubt that fumes from heating sour gas steel would be a problem, but in a closed shop it might be. Additionally, H2S has the characteristic "rotton egg smell", SO2 does not. H2S is detectable by smell at .03 parts per million, a safe level, but at 300ppm it paralyzes the olfactory nerve and you con no longer smell it. At 500 or so ppm (.05%), it can be quickly fatal. That said, high carbon steels do not do well in an H2S environment, so rods from a sour gas well would be low to medium carbon. If in doubt, use a weed burner to burn the gunk off outdoors on a windy day.


http://www.wccoff.org/hydrogen%20sulfide%20gas%20fact%20sheet.pdf

Edited May 18, 200917 yr by Jack Evers
add link

Very Accurate information Jack thanks. The main point here is that sour well iron is a lot more trouble than it is worth. One of the major problems is that the various sulfides will contaminate your shop and your steel as you work with it.

Avoidable problems true but agin more trouble than the material is worth. These days steel is cheap but forge time seems to get scare.

Free isn't always cheap. If you haul home something that can make you sick or kill you the price of free was WAY too high.
Finnr

To answer your original question it is about 4140 or slightly better. Yes it can contain nasty crap, but I have welded lots of old well casing and forged sucker rods before also. For forging I pick the ones that are better looking and not pitted. I have made so hard that none of my drill bits would touch it. Just my 2 cents worth.

Aren't most sulfides water soluble? Just seems that most of the sucker rod I've seen has been laying around in a pile out in the weather for some time before it was acquired by a smith and most of the nasty sulfides were probably gone? I've used a bit of it and never noticed anything but rust on it. Mark Aspery uses it all the time for the tooling in his classes (which is where I've gotten most of mine). I know there are a number of different alloys, but I recall seeing a chart that cross referenced the numbers on the female end of the rod to the alloy somewhere. Thought it was here. Anyway, the stuff I've used will make a serviceable tool, is easy and forgiving to forge, and easy to heat treat using a water quench / triple temper process also developed by Mark. It is a little tougher under the hammer than mild, so I'm not sure I'd make a lot of pokers or decorative stuff out of it unless I was broke or couldn't find cheap scrap mild though.