August 11, 20187 yr So i found theses the other day and was hoping to hear ideas about what they are made of and also what good uses they have(other that the use they were made for lol)
August 11, 20187 yr Those are invisible unobtanium highway warning signs. Good score, you can make things you don't want your folks to know you have! We might have suggestions if you included the pictures. Hmmmm? Frosty The Lucky.
August 11, 20187 yr Back to front: A hammer. Some mystery steel bar. A big wrench. A power take-off shaft. On the left: Some kind of ring fixture (possibly wrought iron). An old file. There are several threads about identifying mystery steels and their uses. Check them out.
August 11, 20187 yr The file is the only high carbon steel there suitable for blades. The PTO is probably a medium carbon steel and would probably make throwing hawks. The chain links look to me to be real wrought iron, most likely low carbon. The wrench should be medium carbon steel if it was commercial and scrap pile steel if it's home/shop made. Testing using the spark test, (described here or most welding books show it), and the forge/quench/break test will tell you more. Frankly I might try to forge 2 interlocking hearts of the wrought iron and etch them as a 50 wedding anniversary gift, A bit tricky to forge them as they are; but not that bad if you have the experience forging real wrought iron.
August 11, 20187 yr Author Well I was wondering is the long bar a leaf spring or no? And also what about the bar that the chain link is attached to I was thinking it may be a wedge but idk
August 11, 20187 yr The bar with the green paint is potentially some decent medium carbon steel. Looks to me like some metal pieces I’ve forged that we’re from farming equipment. Some has spark tested the same as known 1045 while other pieces have spark tested better than mild steel but not 1045 and was somewhat hardenable. Great for punches.
August 11, 20187 yr Wedges were generally mild when high C steel cost a lot more! Check it! (Lots of stuff got mixed up during the great Depression when country folks would use whatever they could find to keep their farm equipment going. I remember one time there were two braces I salvaged from a piece of ag equipment: one was very mild and the other around 1084---doing the same job on the same piece of equipment!
August 11, 20187 yr Author 2 hours ago, Ranchmanben said: The bar with the green paint is potentially some decent medium carbon steel. Looks to me like some metal pieces I’ve forged that we’re from farming equipment. hmm ok so not a leaf spring? Hmm
August 11, 20187 yr 7 hours ago, Dillion Brian Grant said: wondering is the long bar a leaf spring Nope, looks like a medium steel draw bar to me.
August 12, 20187 yr Author Ok neat now I guess the simplest thing to do is gonna be spart test and heat treat accordingly?
August 12, 20187 yr Definitely not a leaf spring but great metal for tools. Probably not enough carbon for a knife though, if that’s what you’re into. Don’t take this as gospel but a lot of that medium carbon steel used for farm implements is 1045ish steel and is some of the easiest and most forgiving to heat treat. Quench in water and draw color to suit.
August 12, 20187 yr Looks like part of a draw bar assembly to me. Give it a spark test and see. The PTO shaft should be a nice tough medium carbon and be good for hammers, bottom tools and such. The wedge and rig looks to maybe wrought from here. The wrench has enough cool factor to keep as is for the wall till you need a piece of steel that size. Frosty The Lucky.
August 12, 20187 yr Author But why wpuld somebody make a wedge from wrought iron it wouldnt hold up wpuld it ?
August 12, 20187 yr I think that wrench it cool too. I hang that on the wall. If anything, maybe forge a bottle opener on the end so there’s a reason to take it down for people to use.
August 12, 20187 yr Back in the hay day of wrought iron, steel could cost more than 6 times as much as wrought iron and so was used much less---why you would have axes made from wrought iron with steel inserted for the cutting edge. Yes wrought iron would be softer and mushroom more---one reason gluts were used more for splitting than they are today. You started the split with the WI wedge and then inserted gluts to finish it off. Price makes a huge difference in use. Titanium would make a much superior car body---light, strong, no rusting! How many Ti bodied cars have you seen? Shoot have you seen a stainless bodied car? (I have, both live and in "Back to the Future"---the Delorean)
August 12, 20187 yr Author True that makes sense I hadnt thought about how much price difference there would be I knew it wpuld probably be large tho, now what is a glut?
August 12, 20187 yr A glut is a wooden wedge used to force apart a split started with an axe or a metal wedge. The simplest ones were simply pieces of wood cut to shape. Slightly fancier ones had an iron ring around the struck end to keep them from splitting. Eric Sloane’s A Museum of Early American Tools is a good resource for this kind of thing.
August 12, 20187 yr Author Ok thats really cool also I was wondering if the pto shaft would be good for making hardie tools and was wondering if I needed to heat treat it or no?
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