48 holes? I regularly get about 500 holes drilling as-forged 1045, 3/8" hole through 3/8 before I need to touch up the bit. Running 250 RPM with good pressure and coolant in a drill press.

Yea but 1045 has a known chemistry it is machinable in a normalized state. Also a lot of people don't have a drill press that will go 250 rpm with coolant. I have forged tons of "mild steel" doing ornamental work over the years. a lot of it will be to hard too drill or cut if water quenched. I can recall 2 or 3 times where I have had mild steel air harden. Is it possible I was sent some other alloy perhaps and did not know it. When I was in school I used to work at a structural steel shop we used to run into hard spots in the beams all the time. The annular cutters would just not cut the steel. You would have to push down as hard as you could on the spider handle to get it to cut sometimes we would have to cut it out with a O/A torch. It was very frustrating to deal with.

Yeah, but this 1045 is "as-forged" not normalized and the stuff he had he tried to anneal. If your drill press won't go down to 250, it's not much use in a blacksmith shop. The "with coolant" is just me with a squirt bottle in my hand. Still think it's a drilling problem not a steel problem. For every time I've seen it be a material problem I can cite a hundred where it was a speed/feed/drill problem. In fact I've seen more times where they had the drill going backward than I've seen the material was too hard.

Yeah, but this 1045 is "as-forged" not normalized and the stuff he had he tried to anneal. If your drill press won't go down to 250, it's not much use in a blacksmith shop. The "with coolant" is just me with a squirt bottle in my hand. Still think it's a drilling problem not a steel problem. For every time I've seen it be a material problem I can cite a hundred where it was a speed/feed/drill problem. In fact I've seen more times where they had the drill going backward than I've seen the material was too hard.

I'm sorry as forged is different from normalized. I guess most of the time I am doing so little work on the last heat just straightening or planishing out a small lump that its just about the same as normalizing. I sort of came to see the two different processes as the same thing even though they are not. Your right also 99 times out of 100 its the drill not the steel but I have had "mild steel" get hard after it was forged and laid to rest on the floor to cool off. There is a thread about this on the NOMA list service that backs me up. You can drill a 5/8" at 450 rpm with oil and sharp bit, that is the lowest speed on a lot of drill presses these days that many can afford. I made due with one for years until I found a better machine.

I recently drilled some 1/2" holes in 1/2" steel with a hand powered cole drill and a bit so dull that I thought I was drifting them!
The drill cost me $10 at the fleamarket as I recall. More than one way to skin the slow speed drilling rabbit!

Yeah, but this 1045 is "as-forged" not normalized and the stuff he had he tried to anneal. If your drill press won't go down to 250, it's not much use in a blacksmith shop. The "with coolant" is just me with a squirt bottle in my hand. Still think it's a drilling problem not a steel problem. For every time I've seen it be a material problem I can cite a hundred where it was a speed/feed/drill problem. In fact I've seen more times where they had the drill going backward than I've seen the material was too hard.

Will my drill press is one I got at a Lowes, Home Depot or somewhere like that and just big enough to do most wood and metal jobs I do. I'll see if I can drop it's speed to get as close to 250 as possable and see how it works for future use. As for the problem I started with the all six are finished and hanging proudly 24 feet above the stage floor of our little theater with new black curtains and old cob webs on the surrounding fixtures. As my little off the cuff design of hanging brackets worked real well and doing a great at the job they were designed for.
billp