RailRoad Spikes

[anvil]

I just use coal.

And, lol, when you finish 50, you Will know a great way to do them efficiently!

One more tip to add. I use drill rod for this because it has a hole thru it.

Take a piece of stock with a bigger hole down the middle larger than your mandrel. After rolling around your mandrel take this tool and tap your wraps tight. And if needed, make sure all wraps are the same diameter, none bulging out. If the wraps are snug against each other, and no bulging sides, when you pull them apart, all wraps will be equal. 

[Frazer]

Ha, seriously. When he said 50 I told him I can do it, but it will take time. They don't take very long to do individually, but to do that many I'll be at it for a week or two. I only get about 5 hours of forge time a day. I'll be sure to share a few pictures and the method I end up going with. First I have to get the spikes from him. He wants me to use those ones specifically since they came from behind his business.

He says that line is from the mid to late 1800's.. I wonder if any of them will be WI.... if so, those ones might get put aside and switched out for some of the ones I have laying around . For two reasons. One, I have only ever worked with WI once before, an old horseshoe I took from my childhood home when my mom sold it (it came with the house),  and it was a really fun material. Two, I imagine the more modern spikes will be much tougher than WI, especially in a thinner cross sections like a corkscrew.

[Frosty]

Yeah, roaming the tailgating area at Quad State is something I've been looking forward to for a long LONG time but I already have more stuff than I can use. Maybe if I see a nice Soderfors for really reasonable I might be tempted but I'll probably ship it to a friend here rather than worry Deb with a couple hundred lb. piece of hardened steel in the RV basement. I'd be much more likely to pick up something made by an online acquaintance for a keepsake. 

Commemorative T shirts and caps of course, can't have to many.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Probably have a better chance at seeing a Unicorn.

14 minutes ago, Frosty said:

I see a nice Soderfors for really reasonable

 

[ThomasPowers]

Frazer; I'd tell him it was double the price to make them from real wrought iron spikes due to the extra hassle of working them.

[Frazer]

Irondragon, I got my Soderfors at what I would consider a reasonable price! So they do exist. 

TP, that's not a bad idea either. Maybe he'll bite. I may be getting a little ahead of my skis though since I haven't picked up the spikes yet. All I know is that most of them don't have markings on the heads and they were pulled off an old line. Which really isn't all that much. I'm just thinking it's a possibility.

[George N. M.]

Frazer,

The wrought iron RR spikes that I have seen have been smaller than the modern spikes.  By the time railroads were using heavier steel rails and needed larger spikes Bessemer process steel had become available for both rails and spikes.  IIRC. rails were one of the first large scale uses of Bessemer steel in the 2d half of the 19th century.  Very old rails would be a good source of wrought iron but most of the surviving WI rails probably went into scrap drives during WW2 as did many anvils, tongs, and old fire arms.

BTW, most modern rail is marked on the web (the thin part between the base and top) with the manufacturer's name and date of manufacture.  I have seen rails still in use on sidings dating back to 1910.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."   

[Frazer]

George, thank you that was actually very helpful information. I picked up the spikes today and I found 7 of them that were indeed wrought iron. They were smaller as you said and also the shape and style of the transition between the head and the shank was erratic with the angle of that transition all over the place. Very different from most of the "modern" spikes I have come across. Probably because they mere made and/or finished by hand. They were pretty easy to spot.

What I found interesting is that about half of them that were made in the same style were actually steel. A very malleable and easy to forge steel, even compared to the the mild (A36) I usually work with. Probably very very low carbon. So I'm guessing they were both made around the same time period. Some right before steel was readily available and some after. All mixed in with some more of the modern styles I'm used to seeing.