Trailer house steel

[Davishomesteadandforge]

Hey I have a ton of scrap from a trailer home frame. I figured it'd be crappy hotdog steel bit it seems to have a pretty good carbon content. Any ideas what sort of steel it may be? It definitely sparks well and it's not galvanised. 

[Charles R. Stevens]

Your guess is as good as mine, heat a epic and quench it and see have hard it gets. There is information in the knife section on testing mystery steel.

[Davishomesteadandforge]

I tried making a hot cut hardee tool and it got hard enough to skate a file so I'm guessing I got lucky with the bit I was working or it's atleast 1095. If I get a chance I'll try another one soon.

Thanks for the heads up I'll check it out

[Daswulf]

If it Is like rebar and hotdog metal the one piece you tried might have been hardenable while other sections might not. 

You may need to just test and or gamble with each piece. If it is consistent through many pieces or lengths you may be good. 

[bluesman7]

It is probably high strength low alloy structural steel. 

[Steve Sells]

i would bet it is NOT 1095

[Will W.]

I agree with Steve. Seems unlikely they would use such a high carbon steel in a trailer frame. They usually build trailers to minimum specs with cost and turnaround being #1 priority (in their minds.)

Anyway, the mystery steel game is afoot. Same rules apply that always apply. If you got a piece to harden up pretty well then you have at least decent steel to work with. 

Edited April 28, 2018 by Will W.
Typo

[ThomasPowers]

People often confuse high carbon as being "better" steel---however it all depends on what you are trying to do with it!  As higher carbon content is generally correlated with increased brittleness it tends NOT to be used in structural items where fracture can lead to fatalities. Medium carbon steel may be used and can be hardened in test with a severe enough quench.  When you spark tested it---did it spark the same as a file?  Test both one after the other to compare!

 

[SmoothBore]

23 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

People often confuse high carbon as being "better" steel---however it all depends on what you are trying to do with it! 

 

DO with it ! ?

The ONLY thing you can ever DO with a chunk of scrap iron, ... is make a big ole honkin'  BLADE !

That nobody will actually use, ... for anything ... ever.

 

 

.