Can someone please tell me what this steel I was given was used for.  I got 25 10' pieces of pipe, that looks like 3/8' iron pipe with steel cable inside.

The steel cable inside of the 10 footers is just about 1/2" from the ends. It doesn't budge. I suspect it is some sort of steel cable about 1/2" in diameter, and a steel casing was swagged around it, but I would like to know what it was used for. The guy I got them from says he found them in an old commercial construction company building he now owns, and is remodeling.

See pics attached. Also, can I forge into something useful. I got the idea that maybe I could forge the cable into the pipe for a nice piece of steel.

I can't see a thing, but a guess is steel to reinforce concrete. 

Can you see the steel inside the pipe?

For concrete you would use re-bar and not something smooth like this pipe, you would think.

have seen similar but a bit larger, used for cutting in a foundry

AFAIK feed lots of oxygen in one end and cut the other end with an OA torch, it burns the steel inside

Some concrete slabs also uses tension cables to strengthen them.  

would help if you focus on the cable rather than the tool holding it

I'm focused on the cable in the pipes but how did it get in them. Could this be forged into something useful?

Modern post tensioning cables are contained in a plastic liner which also contains a lubricant but I wonder if those are part of an old post tension system before plastic liners were used.

I suspect BGD is correct, cables are laid in wet concrete casting and then tensioned usially via a mechanical/hydraulic "puller". The sheathing is a spacer between multiple pours or secions. When the concrete has cured the cable ends are cut off. Leaving the cast concrete "pre=stressed". The cable in the offcuts, now no longer under tension relax back to near their original length or there abouts and expanding to fill the sheath.

Looks like that it is those offcuts you have to me, so be carefull there may be a galvanised coating on the wires!

Thank you all for the input. Now I understand. Since these ends I got are all the same, it is possible that these where the ends of the cables that were cut off after the

concrete pour. It makes sense.

 

They are burning bars, used to cut heavy and tangled pieces of metal. It is steel rods placed inside an oxygen cleaned pipe to provide a fuel source for the oxygen. There should be a crimp about 10'' from one end to hold the rods inside.

No crimp on either end of the 11' pipes. I have been using them for outdoor plant and tree fabrication. They make good hangers for tools when welded to angle iron to attach to a wall. The cables in the pipe are  galvanized.  I weld to the outside of the iron pipe on projects I make outside.

 

With the galvanized coated cables, they would not make a good burning bar.

Thanks anyway.

Steve meant focus the CAMERA on the cable not the tool. 

You can search public records and find out what the company who abandoned the things did and maybe find an old employee to ask. 

That was my best guess. 

Frosty The Lucky.

oh, geeze ... thanks for that post Frosty .......I been tryin' ta figure out what Zen thingie steve meant.  None have worked so far ......

 

1 hour ago, rthibeau said:

oh, geeze ... thanks for that post Frosty .......I been tryin' ta figure out what Zen thingie steve meant.  None have worked so far ......

 

If you're trying to figure Zen thingies out you're doing it wrong! Heck I don't even try to figure any of you guys out, I just wing it with Steve and smile. What he meant in that post was obvious, it was too bleary for me to see, I was thinking the same thing.

Oh CRAP I was thinking THE SAME THING as Steve! 

Frosty The Lucky.

now youse done it  Frosty !!!

I recommended "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" to my apprentice and now he goes around praising my "grandmotherly kindness" towards him...

I can't find a reference right off but there were "jail" bars in the bad old days which had cable centers.  The cable center makes it much harder for your standard bolt cutter to make it through.  Most bolt cutter blades don't actually fully meet so the pinched cable would still remain in place, even if the tube holding them had snapped by the force of the bolt cutters.  Supposed to be really snaggy on a saw also to slow cutting down...but that seems like more of a marketing point than truth in practice.

No, I am not saying that's what these bars are--just giving another example of a product with a cable down the center of a tube.

This is getting way off topic

That's normal.......