Buggy/wagon/carriage axle. What type of steel are they?

[Hayden H]

What are buggy axles? I bought 4 of them for $10.00 today. Buying them was cheaper than buying barstock so I figured for $2.50 each I had nothing to lose. One old timer told me that they are some sort of low carbon steel. Was he right?

[Larry H]

yes

[joshua.M]

how old??? could be wrought iron

[Timothy Miller]

I have run into wrought iron buggy axles low carbon and hardenable steel. You will have to try it out to be sure.

[Marksnagel]

A friend of mine is giving me several 2 inch sq buggy axles and leaf springs. They were in the concrete foundation of an old barn he was tearing down last week. The barn was from @ 1930 and the steel was put in as re-bar would have been. They will have some age on them as they were scrap when they went into the foundation. I haven't looked at them yet but look forward to checking them out.

[Randy]

The buggy axles I've had were all a higher carbon steel as the axle had to withstand the rubbing of the wheel hub. Spark test it to see if you have carbon or not. I've had some that the center square section was wrought, no carbon, and the axle spendles were high carbon. I've used a lot of axle spendles for anvil tools, hardies, bicks, etc., and they hardened well and have lasted many years. Plus the big collar makes a great stop in the hardie hole.

[JamesG]

I bought some off a friend and I tested mine and they have high carbon, and when etch has a nice pattern in the steel.

[s meyer]

Not shure on the axles but the buggy springs I have are shear steal and make nice knives. they give a great pattern when etched.

[Hayden H]

I figured 3 of them are high carbon and 1 may be wrought from the way its pitted. I'm looking into making a nice set of punches out of the spindles and a little upsetting of the square stock to make a hardy tool, and possibly a square drift

[ThomasPowers]

The correct answer is *yes*. You can find them in a wide rage of materials depending on age, location, original maker, etc and so on.

As was traditional *test* your material and if it turns out to be shear steel *cherish* it!

[Hayden H]

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean shear steel?

[s meyer]

shear steal is a old way of making high carbon steal whear wrought iron bars are sorounded with charcoal and then heated at a welding heat for a period of time. The carbon in the charcoal transfurs into the iron by way of carbon migration creating blister steal. Whitch is steal with carbon blisters all over it . The blister steal dosn't have the corbon mixed verry well so the blister steal is then sheared into strips and re stacked and forge welded to mix the corbon and create steal that has a more even corbon content called shear steal.
If you etch a peace of old corbon steal and it has a layered efect it is probably shear steal. At least this is my understanding of what shear steal is . Somone can corect me if I am not giving a acurate description.

[ThomasPowers]

Pretty much on; though the blisters are not "carbon blisters". For an in depth go over see "Steelmaking Before Bessemer: vol I Blister Steel" or "Cementation of Iron and Steel" for exhaustive details on what's going on...

Anyway it's a traditional blacksmithing material that is just not made anymore save by individuals on a very small scale. For stuffy reproduction purists it's the way to "get it done *right*" Most folks will not pay that cost but the bragging rights can be useful.

[Thom Noblitt y Gonzalez]

Ok so my undersanding of these poests is that shear steel would be simmiler to a layered billet, like you would have when starting a patern welded peice. Just that it all started out as mild steel, then was made into blister steel, then split and restacked. Is this correct?

Also can a peice of blister steel that went to far, became similer to cast iron, be used in this wy to maybe give it some ductility, as a welding heat migrates some of the excess carbon to leave the area?

A third question, which era of "stuffy reproduction purists" are we talking about, mountain men, civil war, revolutionary war, midevil, etc...?

[ThomasPowers]

Third question: Yes, though blister steel in it's 18th and 19th century forms were not much used in medieval times...processing of higher carbon blooms was known as was case hardening. (earliest written documentation of case hardening I have found is Theophilus, 1120 CE.)

Second Question: yes you can go to far and get cast iron, (30 hours at temp did it for a piece I was experimenting with using powdered charcoal in a sealed pipe tucked along the inside of my propane forge with the hours at temp chalked on the body of the forge.) However you have great difficulty welding cast iron as it's molten at the temp you would normally weld at---there are some ways to get around this but historically under carburized material seems to have been more prevalent than over as the fuel costs were massive and so going too long was an expensive proposition compared to cutting it a bit short! So you could "baby" a piece over carburized and decarb it with the attendant scale losses---look at how some wootz pucks are worked to provide a lower carbon "case" to allow working of the High C interior. *BUT* way too much work/fuel compared to just getting a better made chunk.

First: Not usually "split" but just cut and stacked---like you do to process iron from a bloom to a muck bar to a merchant bar to singly refined wrought iron, USW. However a lot of wrought iron wasn't so neatly processed as you welded up scrap into usable pieces and so the "pattern" is a lot more chaotic. The etched blade from 1600 in Manfred Sachse's "Damascus Steel" shows this non-intentional patterning.

[Chris Pook]

I have a few hardy tools I made from old wagon axles. Higher carbon steel and have been holding up to years of abuse.