Hi Everyone!

I came across a great find for free. Shipyard I was at was doing some spring cleaning - and was throwing out to scrap all the pictured bearing races and rollers. I haven't done any testing on the metal yet to confirm that it's 52100 steel, but I'm sure some is. It's all bearings from marine reduction gears. My initial plan was to use some of the small rollers to make some knife blades, and maybe make a hammer from a big conical roller as a keepsake, but I couldn't pass up the larger races and have a clean conscience lol. Note the soda can for sizing. Has anyone ever tried using similar metal for projects? I'd enjoy any comments or input.

Large races may be case hardened 9620 IIRC   Patrick, You lurking?  (He used to be a metallurgist for a bearing company...)

Some manufactures note which alloys they use on their websites. I recently looked up a bearing at work and it called it out as 52100. 

If you have some complete ones like the upper taper bearing, you could use them as bases for rotating sculptures. 

Make some small hammers from the bigger rollers. 

As to larger bearings being case hardened-----define "large". I know they make bearings up to 72" and they rebuild those. 

 

 

Please keep the wording exact:  Larger bearing *races*; If Patrick doesn't weigh in here I'll ask him at Quad-State.

Cool, I keep hearing that larger races are case hardened, but no one ever states how big they start doing that. 

Should be in the archives here somewhere.

Wild guess dept; IMHO some bearing races are sintered steel.

Nice haul! I always like to have some bearing stock around - so can totally feel your joy.

One technical thing though: these are pretty tough to forge. A 2" dia roller falls in the "can't move with handhammer" category. Try to get a striker or use a power hammer. Weld it onto a rod (preheating and postweld normalizing is important) to manage it easier.

I don't know how much experience you have with 52100, sorry if I state the obvious. It's almost sure that those are made of that material. If you got an angle grinder try to hit the stock with a cutting disk. When you touch the stock with the disk you'll see about 10-15" long bushy sparks bursting into star like shapes at the end of their way.. This basicly means you've got high carbon steel but in this case it's something like 52100 - you cannot know because it's scrap steel. If so you can forge it into something but be aware of the temperature: no high carbon steel likes to get too hot. Stay in the orange, and stop forging under bright red. Heat treat it if you need it to be hard - my way is to let it be softer as overharden it. - 52100 types spit shrapnels very likely, not a funny alloy that way. I don't know for sure but it seems like it air hardens a bit - if you make a struck tool it's safer to anneal it and only after that harden and temper the business end. 

And about the bearing steels: I've found Ovako's brochure on their steels. Ovako is European, they supply steel IIRC for SKF.

Steels for Bearings from Ovako.pdf

 

Good luck with those! Happy hammering!

Gergely

Great info Gergely!

Thank you! I've never seen that pdf - it has good info! 

I played around with a few small rollers - and you aren't kidding - that steel is very hard!

I have a hydraulic press half built - those races and the large conical bearings are on the back burner until I have it finished up and working.

I'm really glad I was able to get the steel for free - it will just have to wait until I am geared up to properly deal with the bigger pieces. After reading up on larger bearing races and seeing there is a good chance it's spring steel - my daydream for it this week is to make a one piece tomahawk out of one of the thinner races..... time will tell.

Glad to help!  And yeah, free steel is the best (although not always the cheapest  )

G

PS: Learn the spark testing - it's not that difficult to tell the difference between spring steel (C: ~ 0,5 %-0,6 %) and 52100 types (C: 1 %). A 5" angle grinder is one of the most useful powertools in the shop - and it's not expensive.

About forging bearings, especially bearing balls. What do you use for tongs till you get them forged into a bar or other more easily held shape?

Frosty The Lucky.

Tongs - repurposed end cutters

I'm glad I got on here today, I just started playing with some roller bearings today. This stuff is tuff. I forged one to a bar and quenched in water just to get an idea of what it'll do, and the thing skates a file but won't break when I wack it with a 4lb. I'm pretty interested in how a blade will turn out. Frosty I just welded a rod to the end of mine. I still have a lot of work to do on tongs. 

Maybe it's safer leave that piece unused for real tooling applications now. Oil quench is safer and it needs tempering back to blue if it's a tool (struck end needs annealing), stray or purple if it's a blade.

Bests:

Gergely