I have been on a hiatus from the shop for months now. More than I care to count to be honest. I’m getting stable again and have started scrounging for some materials and stumbled across a couple interesting pieces. I know if I had my forge or at least my grinder running I could narrow this down a little and probably wouldn’t have to bother you fine folks with such a silly question. Attached I show two pictures of one piece that shows and interesting feature on what looks like a broken end. I’m thinking it’s cast iron but would like someone else to tell me to throw them back instead of doing it without me getting prior consultation. 

Welcome back. Good to see you again.

Can we get a picture of the side of this mystery object? 

Sure thing, John. It’s round all but this one side.

Looks kind of like the sprue left over from thermite welding two sections of railroad track together. 

Here’s the other one. John you’re probably right as I was told it was railroad related scrap. 

Yep. I picked up one of those myself once. Can’t remember what I did with it; it’s probably lurking in the bottom of a scrap bin somewhere.

Well I might play with it but I might not. Thank you for your expertise John 

More experience than expertise, but I won’t quibble. 

Good to see you posting again Michael. How you doing?

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty, I’m doing well. Lots of new things going on in my life and busy like I haven’t been in years but things are going really well. Thanks for asking. 

Glad to see you are doing well and back to posting too. You have been missed here, keep at it. Be interesting to see if that piece can be forged into something and at what heat.

When the time comes and I get my forge set up again I’ll definitely see what happens with it and I’ll post about my experience with it. 

On 10/26/2018 at 6:40 PM, Michael Cochran said:

 

Michael,

I have a piece that looks exactly like yours that I got in a milk crate full of railroad related metals.

I took a grinder to it and found it to be crumbly and falls apart easily.

Like a bar of slag.

Regards,

Dave

 

Thank you, Dave, I’ll keep that in mind. 

++ with it being a sprue; especially with the large coarse grain.