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Hammer eye drift steel


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I've done some looking and found several suggested steel types but haven't decided on what to use. It's goin to have to be a special order no matter what the steel I pick but I'm able to get some W1 for a good price and wondered if that would work well. I've seen it mentioned here that someone would be comfortable using 1045 but I was under the impression it would need a tougher alloy.

If it makes any difference I plan to use the drift more for top tools than heavier hammers.

Can someone please help me before I get the wrong steel and waste a bunch of time.

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I would say go with something like s-7 or h13 , something tough, made for hot work, after all it will be seeing a lot of heat, my eye drifts are not but if I was buying stock for them which I soon will hopefully it will be one of them probably h13. No fun to work by hand but will be worth the effort.

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Yes, you can use S7 or H13. They are Air Hardening Steel. If you don't Heat Treat them correctly, you have pieces = wasted time and effort.

Make your Punches and Drifts out of Truck Sway Bars. No Heat Treating required. Use them and use them. 1045 is good, as well as Car/Truck Axles.

K.I.S.S.  just my $0.02.

Neil

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Thanks for the replies, I wasn't quite sure that W1 is not the best choice. This weekend I'll swing by a local scrap yard that has accumulated several old vehicles and see what I can get for a reasonable price. So keep an eye for easily accessible sway bars, axles, and while I'm at it torsion bars. Can leaf springs be safely removed in the scrap yard? If so I might need to get some while I'm there. Not being a mechanic I'll have to do some looking to see how to go about pulling materials lol.

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9 minutes ago, Michael Cochran said:

Thanks for the replies, I wasn't quite sure that W1 is not the best choice. This weekend I'll swing by a local scrap yard that has accumulated several old vehicles and see what I can get for a reasonable price. So keep an eye for easily accessible sway bars, axles, and while I'm at it torsion bars. Can leaf springs be safely removed in the scrap yard? If so I might need to get some while I'm there. Not being a mechanic I'll have to do some looking to see how to go about pulling materials lol.

Leaves can be carefully removed using the oxy acetylene ratchet pretty easily. 

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Check with auto body shops, and shops that do lifts on trucks.  The leaf springs are not bad to remove, they just drop down. The front coil springs are the fun ones to remove.... 24" stuffed in 12" of space. They can hurt you if done wrong. 

Rental yards will yield used up jackhammer bits, and masonry drills. 

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Thanks for the help guys.

biggun, I have yet to find a spring shop. I might not be lookin hard enough but I am lookin. I do know of a couple tool rental places and I have yet to talk to them (I fight a social disorder when I go to meet new people).

Thomas, the yard mention isn't a parts type yard. It is a scrap metal yard that buys the occasional vehicle. I asked the guy before about buyin stuff for tooling and such and he gave a funny look but said he'd sell whatever I needed. 

Nick and jimmy, let me borrow your wrench so I can see if it's worth the money to buy one. :) 

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I'll have to get some h13 one day for now I'll just be using a piece of coil spring for the few tools I need to do. I'll have to do some diggin st the scrap yard this weekend and hopefully I'll be able to get somethin good for a reasonable price.

I am still lookin for spring shops, I haven't found one yet so I guess Im gonna have to flag down one of the rednecks around here that has a 20" lift on their ford ranger to find out where to go.

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I made it to the scrap yard but I didn't manage any big steel from the scrap yard but I did get a few 3/8 x 12" socket extensions and a small bag of 1/4" x 4" extensions as we'll. I did happen to find 4 scraper blades at the back edge of my lawyers property while collecting scrap. I'm thinking I'll weld a couple lengths of scraper together to get the mass I need, it should be plenty strong enough to last a while.

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Most car axles are 1" and make good steel for these drifts. Like the front wheel drive cars. Sometimes I won't find them at my scrap yard and then on the next trip there's a dozen so just keep looking. I wouldn't spend the effort forging a drift unless it was on a known steel . Axles.etc. There is a lot of hammer work in a drift if working by hand. Remember let the heat do most of the work . I tried mild steel when I first started smithing and it tends to get froze and deformed in the hammer eye.

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  • 2 weeks later...
33 minutes ago, gimpy said:

For a newly looking for appropriate scrap to work with/on, this is a great topic.

Hello again! :) When you're picking up a new craft you'll learn a lot faster if you only learn one thing at a time. My reply in your intro in the "Hammer mod" thread pretty well covers my hammer weight and hammer control advice. You'll have plenty to do learning hammer control and the basic blacksmith processes. Believe it or not there is a lot to teach your muscles learning to make a uniform taper or point, nails are terrific learning projects.

Learning to identify evaluate and use found steel is a whole different set of skills. It's one thing to "know" certain found steels are good for making certain tools, axles as in this set of examples and heck my turning hammer in the "Hammer mod" thread. Axle steel is terrific for many things. However unless you buy it new there inherent problems. Serously do you KNOW why it was in the scrap bin? Can you identify micro fractures in it's structure that tend to show up as failures in YOUR work at the worst possible time? Same goes for spring stock, leaf or coil are both excellent for tools, forget blades at this point in your growing addiction. (blacksmithing is addictive, VERY addictive. ;)) Rebar is another attractive font of found steel. Rebar can be a real PITA though for us experienced galloots. It's made to a performance spec, eg. it must have X minimum tensile strength and maybe a minimum x deflection and rebound strength. That's it, all end of spec list. If it exceeds these strengths nobody cares. This means it's made with scrap in a pretty casual manner so you tend to find a wide variance in properties sometimes inch to inch. No fooling one section may act just like mild steel but 6" down the bar be high carbon steel because that's where the pieces of old drill bits or jack hammer bits happened to fall in the melt.

No joke we talk about rebar a lot.

How about those old lifters the guys at the garage gave you? Know what happens when you stick a sodium filled lifter in a forge?!!! :o They're good steel to be sure but if you don't know how to heat them they do bad, VERY B-A-D things like explode or shoot super heated hyperGOLIC Sodium metal around the shop! Either of these are catastrophic resulting the Doc maybe digging shrapnel out of your hide. OR having sodium metal burn it's way through where ever it touches you. The stuff is like phosphorus but sodium burns on contact with water. It's hypergolic on contact with water. It's VERY dangerous stuff.

Anyway, using found steel is a HUGE part of being a blacksmith, we all do it, it's a BIG part of the fun. However it's a number of skills sets all it's own and learning a craft two things at a time is soooooo much harder than learning one thing at a time. That's why I highly recommend beginners BUY either 3/8" sq.or 1/2" rd. hot rolled mild steel. 3/8" sq. and 1/2" rd. both are close enough to the same weight per linear inch as makes no difference.

I prefer to use and start guys out with 3/8" sq. but buy what's available. And here's a tip for the steel yard. DO NOT ask the people at the counter about cutting stock to haul, they HAVE to charge you by the cut. Ask the guys in the yard, they'll just toss it on the chop saw, cut it for you and not charge you anything. They'll probably ask anyway. Say thanks but don't make a big deal out of it and don't get carried away say cut 20 or more things. They're almost all good guys unless they're having a bad day and you'll be amazed what a smile and simple thank you will do for their mood and YOUR return receptions. B)

I think I've run on long enough, I'm a wordy guy you know.

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 1 year later...

And sodium valves were historically in race car engines, production sports car engines, and airplane engines, and.....who knows what else. Just like scrapers going to cut up a magnesium transmission housing with a torch, thinking that it is aluminum like the last 999 were, assumptions can make your day way too interesting.

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