Hi, I'm totally green...

Is it possible to use rebar for knife and sword making? I was looking at some videos on youtube, and one guy appeared to be using 15 or 20 M rebar...or perhaps he had just welded a piece onto some other stock so that he could use it for a handle...

Otherwise, what are some good sources of blank steel, and what is the best type to use for knife and sword making? Thanks.

I Like Rebar ,but It's Just Fer Look'n At Not Fer Usi'n!
Practice With It Cause It Has Enough Carbon In It To Crack Or Shatter When U Do It Wrong.
As Far As Junk Yard Steel ,i'd Use Leaf Spring Or Coil Spring!

so you're saying rebar works but only for looks?

okay...shouldn't be too hard to get some spring steel or coils...

i guess the first step is to make a forge, and then an anvil comes next, eh?

Yes ,and Tell Us Your Location,cause A Blacksmith May Live Down The Road From You.

Some use rebar to weld to the billet for forge welding operations but not for actual knives. Rebar is used by some for decorative purpose only such as fence pickets or the such. I used to make spear points for my son when he was small but that's all.

The problem with rebar is you dont know what it is made of... theyre are lots of manafacturers and types and some of it was scrap melted and used... so for knives and swords if you want sumthing usable get something where you know what steel it is so you can harden and temper it.. its real frustrateing to spend a bunch of time on a knife or especially on a sword only to have it break or bend easily ... It can ruin your day...

thanks for all the advice.

I live in Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island...

I guess i'll leave the rebar for someone else...maybe they can reinforce some concrete with it!

I think you should do as I did. Get the anvil first.

Christopher

Re-bar: This really is the bottom of the barrel for a sword. Re-bar can have a LOT of impurities and when you get the sword all forged out and you start to polish it, you can find long stringers in the steel that will ruin the finish. You can certainly use it for working your way up the experience curve but don't expect much from it. As for melting scrap, well, most of the steel rolled for automotive, appliance, and API pipe is made from melted scrap. Absolutely nothing wrong with melted scrap, guys. Steelmaking technology can literally make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Edited May 26, 200818 yr by Quenchcrack
typo

i'm down with recycling...when i make bows, i sometimes take old hardwoods out of renos and use that...

i see why i should get the anvil first...or i'll be roasting up some iron and tempted to beat it out on ... well, any thing...


thanks for the advice guys

There are good grades of re-bar, stuff used in Bridges, Nuclear Reactor Containment Vessels, etc. It's not what you generally can find/scrounge as it's much more expensive and they have to keep track of it from manufacture to use to make sure any "copycat" stuff doesn't find it's way into such structures.

Car coil or leaf spings *may* be 5160 a tough alloy that is hardenable by blacksmith methods.

As to a forge: a hole in the ground with some charcoal in it and a way to blow air into the bottom of it is a forge. Now that you have a Forge you can work on an anvil. *DON'T get a cast iron ASO, think outside of the london pattern---for example Marco/Krieger Armory - Rapiers and Accessories

And yes I am the Thomas mentioned.

that's cool, i can think outside the box...hey, thomas, get me one of those forklift tines, wi'ya?

oh, and btw...in bridges, we often use fiberglass rebar, in case any water ever penetrates through the inevitable cracks in the concrete.

but i hear you : it's a mixed baG, and you never know what you're gonna get...

I have the mate to that tine sitting on my garden walk right now---when you going to drive down this way?

I pulled it out of the woods on the side of a bluff face by myself and cut the 1.5"? round bar and cage it was mounted on with a hack saw. You ought to be able to find your own easier! Any logging? Shipping? Other place that use large forklifts and have to retire tines when they get overworked?

i'm thinking you might be a bit far away...don't know exactly where NM is,,,but i'm in BC...i think maybe there's a footlong chunk of train track around here somewhere...

New Mexico is the US State between Texas and Arizona with our southern border being Mexico---I checked your location before making the suggestion---I sweated blood getting that tine out and then had to pay to ship it when I moved from Ohio to here!

One of the last things I did before moving away was to share with my fellow smithing friends the locations of my *secret* scrounging areas. They knew about my open ones already...

Rebar=Junk is wrong. Grade 60 rebar which can be found at block and concrete suppliers has more tensile (sp?) strength than 5160. It is the Lowes type places that sell the really cheap stuff usually. So not all rebar is junk.

sorry. but rebar is rebar and needs to be buried in concrete to be hiden. is good fot non-stress pieces but get good carbon steel for blades i like 1080 but anything bout 60 pts, will work,reguards jimmy seale

rebar is included in concrete for the express purpose of HANDLING TENSION LOADS...As i said above, I'm a carpenter by trade, and I have, well, too much! experience with rebar...only, not as a basis for forging blades.

Concrete has incredible compressive strength, about equal to steel (though of course both materials have variables). What concrete lacks is tensile strength. Therefore, we place rebar in beams and such so that the steel can lend its tensile strength to the compressive strength of the concrete. In fact, most of the rebar is place near the BOTTOM of beams and girders, as this is where its tensile strength ismost useful.

So to say that rebar lacks tensile strength is a mistake...but other than its use in construction, i don't know what it's good for.

The tensile strength of a material is not the most useful thing to go by for determining whether it will be good sword/blade making material. Tensile strength is a measurement of the force required to pull/tear something apart. This is good to know for structural applications, but swords are different. It is not surprising that rebar would have greater tensile strength than that of a high carbon steel because rebar is a "softer" material; therefore it will deform more under high stress before reaching the critical point of failure. A higher carbon steel is "harder" that is, it has a more rigid crystalline structure and therefore rather than deform under stress, it retains its rigidity and will fracture before large deformation occurs. With a sword/blade, you want a steel that has a rigid crystalline structure that resists deformation. In a high carbon steel, carbon molecules will fill in the open spaces in the lattice structure when the steel is austentized, then are trapped in the quench as the lattice contracts again while it cools. The quench contracts the lattice so quickly that the carbon can not migrate back out and remains in the lattice, creating a dense, rigid structure that is very hard and resistive to deformation, thus "hardening" the blade. The more carbon, the more spaces it can fill and the more rigid the lattice will be come. This is what you want in a blade, something that will not deform. Deformation will prevent any kind of edge retention, not to mention the blade will bend, etc. However, that being said, you don't want a steel that is too hard, otherwise when stress is applied, the high rigidity of the steel will not allow for any stress distribution and will fracture. Hence why you temper a blade, heating it slightly to allow some of the trapped carbon to migrate back out and reduce the rigidity of the lattice. The result is a hard, yet flexible blade, which holds an edge and will not bend/deform (unless huge amounts of stress are applied of course).

The majority of rebar (except the high grades) is not held to high tolerances in its manufacture. If you don't know what

 if you have an experimental blade design, you could alway's just use it to get the kinks out

I have a chisel made out of rebar, I've cut cement, wood, cold metal, hot metal, nails, screws, bolts and my finger with it... Never under estimate scrap.

 I know rebar won't hold an edge and all that, but my plan is to make a rapier (mostly for show). BUT if somebody wanted to buy it and use it for say, sword on sword sparring, would the blade snap or bend? It would be blunt so all I need to worry about is structure, and rebar is fairly flexible so i thought there might be a chance. Thoughts?

 

I have moved this post to the proper area,,sword making. Please try and post in an area that fits your question.

I could have also moved this into the safety area as this proposal could lead to bodily injury.

Moderator 51

First post and you want to make a sword out of rebar?  Tell you what.  Do it.  Then report back on the experience.  The people who know will ask you about your experience level.  What sort of experience do you have?  How much forging have you done?  Have you even made a knife yet?  How many years have you been forging steel and what sort of equipment do you have?  The short answer is.  It won't work on any level.  IF you had any experience at all you would have known that already.  Rebar is crap steel.  Study for a few years and you may be able to make a sword that won't snap the first time you hit something.  Learn about heat treating.  Learn about proper steels.  Learn forging technique.  Read the knife making and heat treating sections of this site.

Most certainly not the proper material for a blade. I wouldn't strike anything with a sword made from rebar. Rebar has a purpose.....and it's not blades. Use caution.

I don't consider rebar flexible: at the Spanish Army Museum they had a Toledo Rapier bent into a several pass spiral and embedded in a block of wood because if you took it out it would leap back to being straight.  Try that with rebar and you get a nice spiral that stays there when "released".

 

Selling a blade that may be used for sparring of a known bad material sets you up for liability---if it breaks and a piece kills someone are you willing to give up your house, car, tools and most of your income for the rest of your life---or perhaps even your freedom for a number of years to boot?

 

Generally if you have to ask this sort of question you are still several years away from being able to make a decent sword---if you really work at it!  Sort of a "I want to win formula 1 races---is learning to drive important?" type of question.

 

HOWEVER you won't start any younger; so learn to forge high carbon steels, make a LOT of knives and then make a lot of big knives!  Study steels and blademakers and what was done by people whose lives depended on their blades!

 

Who knows in a decade of so *you* might be answering these sorts of questions *here*!