Lots of people seem to have a fairly large supply of the stuff. While I know it seems to be frowned upon as an unreliable source, it is an extremely cheap (read: usually free) source for practice and can be added for interesting designs. So, in the latter part of my 11-8am shift, I got thinking to myself "Myself, you should see what other people have used rebar for in various projects". Here's one that I did over christmas break to get the ball rolling.
A couple of candle-holders

I recently seriously decimated my stash making J stakes for my neighbor to hold the base of his chainlink fence down to keep his dog in---a win/win use IMHO.

I did take the scraps and make some floor snakes from them: taper the tail downl flatten a head and punch eyes/nose. twist the body to get better patterning from the rebar stripes and then curve in a series of S curves.

I do my curves by opening up the postvise a ways and then sticking the head in a bit and putting a piece of pipe on the tail and bending down. then flip it over advance it till the bend now indexes on the post vise jaw and bend the next curve; repeat. Note: I do this hot.

The other thing I do from re-bar is I use it to reinforce concrete pours...

Had to weld a piece of high-carbon steel in for the cutting edge.


one_rod.

Now you are getting me tempted to do a couple of 20' lengths as a snakes for my next pad: have them curve from side to side and orient them 90 deg and they sould do a good job---might convince the concrete folk I was a bit odd...I'll tell them it's to scare off the rattlers!

I'll tell them it's to scare off the rattlers!

Thomas, you could leave the heads projecting above the concrete and tell them it's to scare off the people. :)

Don't know wether your rebar is same spec as ours over here in Britain, but we use it to make round punches, slot punches and such, usually work quite well, especially using the larger diameter rebar and forging down the smaller required tool section

I did a google search on the specifications of rebar a while back and posted the results in one of the knife threads here about Railroad Spike Knives comparing the carbon content of the grades of rebar to rr spikes. There are 3 grades of rebar as I remember ranging from approximately mild steel to a bit over 30 points of carbon or somwhere in that neighborhood. I have 2 hot chisels that I made out of rebar about 7 years ago and they are still working good. Rebar is much maligned but I venture that it is much due to hear say rather than people's actual experience with it. People say that it is made from a hodge podge of steels and it is, but the carbon content etc must fall within a specific range for the application. Remember that rebar is designed to be used in critical applications where peoples lives literally depend on it so there must be strict quality controls on its production.

Nice tapers on those candle holders. I hope i can make the same that smooth someday...

I got re-bar for free. Found it abandoned in a field along with some swell strap iron. A bit bent and rusty, but I don't care. There is plenty of it.

My forge is all set to fire up for the first time. Soon as I have the time to do so and the first thing I plan to do is make some tools to tend the fire out of re-bar. I have to make tongs too. In fact there is lots I have to make, like hot chisels and punches and such. I think that re-bar will come in real handy. I got some 1/2" and some 7/8" re-bar. I already cut it in to lengths about 3 foot long to make them easier to handle and help take out the squiggle they were bent in to.

Thanks to this forum for it's generous members and the Blue Prints, I feel I am up to the task again. This will be the first time I'm going to forge in 25 years.

I will post pix when I make something. I can hardly wait to bend iron again!

Christopher

The cheap easily found rebar tends to be the worst---if you can find rebar from a mission critical application: skyscraper, bridge, highway, etc it will be much higher grade. I like to find the 80 year old square rebar---some of it is great and some of it is redshort to a fault.

Snakes, Hmm I could have the heads project as boot scrapers near the door...