Scrap steel identification

[Xavier F-C]

Recently, I picked up two similar blade-like objects at different locations, along the road:

I spark tested these and one looks like a simple high carbon steel and the other looks like an alloy because the spark shower was much shorter and less bright.

What was the scrap original purpose?

Thanks in advance for satisfying my curiosity.

[JHCC]

Might be broken blades off of one of those  big mowers they use to keep the roadsides neat. 

[Xavier F-C]

That seems to be a good guess to me.
I tried to find some pictures but I did not find any. Maybe they are rare things. 

[Frosty]

Yeah, I'd guess they're broken "Brush Hog" blades. Typically a high impact resistant medium carbon steel in the 45-50 pts C general range. Some are Chrome molly of the 4140 breed even 5160 or there about. While spring steel sounded like a good idea they tended to work harden and break a little too soon. 

You haven't lived till you've had a brush hog break a blade at high RPM. shake you like 007's martini.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

I think I've read that some manufacturers use a proprietary high-boron alloy that makes forging and heat treatment very difficult. Don't quote me on that, though.

1 minute ago, Frosty said:

shake you like 007's martini.

It's a stirring experience!

[ThomasPowers]

Many have moved that way, (to a boron alloy not suitable for bladesmithing). It's a good example of why expecting items made by a bunch of different manufacturers for decades to all be the same alloy is rather futile...

[Frosty]

1 minute ago, JHCC said:

I think I've read that some manufacturers use a proprietary high-boron alloy that makes forging and heat treatment very difficult. Don't quote me on that, though.

It's a stirring experience!

There are a lot of different alloys depending on manufacturer and date. I haven't messed with a brush hog since before '97 and I retired. 

No,  SHAKEN not stirred. As in slamming your head on the side window of a 988 loader, shake.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

(Hmmm   should be able to work in a "James Grond, hammer of the underworld" reference...)

[Frosty]

Moore likely the whole world groans at that one Thomas.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Hey my first degree was geology/geophysics---when the world groans we listen!  I still remember one of my Father's Tom Swifties: "I'm drinking the last of this weak lukewarm tea Tom said endsippidly"

[Frosty]

While interested I have little formal schooling but you'd have to be brain dead if the local orogeny zones didn't make you quiver. 

When I got put into a typing class to make credits in jr. high I started writing parodies of Tom Swift books as typing exercises. Dad had all of them I think, it was about as close to Sci Fi as he ever got. I liked them for the word play, the stories were intended for pre-teens I think, very simplistic plots. 

EE Doc Smith was a bare step above Tom Swift but the Sky Lark series was entertaining, the only character I trusted to be reasonably logical and predictable was Duquense. 

Ah, '30s - '50s sci fi "romances."

Frosty The Lucky.