pattern welded jailhouse shiv

[George N. M.]

This may be one of the more unique scrap metal stories in awhile.

In 1921 Morgan County, Colorado built a new jail with cells manufactured by the Pauly Jail Cell Company. The bars of the cells were advertised as being “tool proof” and proof against files and hacksaws. The 1” diameter bars were made of what seems to be low-medium carbon steel but forged into the bars were 9 about 3/16” high carbon, hard rods (see picture below).

Fast forward to 2004. The old jail was replaced by a new facility in the early '80s and was being used for storage and office space. It was decided to remodel it to provide offices for the County Commissioners. Each Commissioner's office would be two old cells. (No jokes about putting politicians behind bars.) It was a very cool adaptive use which preserved the charactr of a historic building but made it usable to a modern use. The bars to be removed had to be cut with either abrasive wheels or a plasma lance.

I was Morgan County Attorney at the time and closely involved with the project. When I found out about the unique nature of the bars I salvaged several short pieces and one 8' piece. I thought that they were a sort of pattern welded steel and that I might be able to do something interesting with them.

I have, as a proof of concept, recently made the knife pictured below. I knew I couldn't just forge out the bars because the high carbon rods would just be buried in the middle of the blade. So, I split the bar on alternate sides every few inches about 80% of the way through and opened up the cuts into sort of repeating W shape to expose both types of steel. I forged that out into a billet and then into a small blade. Because the majority of the material was low carbon steel I heated and quenched it in super quench and did not do any tempering. We will see how well the edge holds up. It seems fairly hard. I etched it for 20 minutes in hardware store muriatic acid (HCl).

This is sort of a 10 layer pattern welded steel, 9 high carbon rods plus the lower carbon steel body.

The next time I do something with this material I will try some twisting and possibly forge welding 2 or more billets together to get a more interesting pattern.

I have no idea how the original bars were manufactured with high carbon rods within a larger bar of lower carbon steel.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

 

 

jail_bar_photo_1.odt jail_bar_knife_photo_2.odt Jail_bar_knife_photo_3.odt

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I don't know what happened but I can't open the attachments.

[Frosty]

My comp won't open .odt format files. I wanted a look, I'm bummed. 

I'm thinking it'd be pretty straight forward to feed the HC rounds into the bar as it was being rolled to final diameter. If you visualize the yellow hot steel bar being fed from roller die  to roller die and at one gap between dies, nine rollers feed HOT HC steel rods from equal points around the main bar. The next steps through the rolls reducing the diameter should weld the file proofers in nicely. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Steve Sells]

you may wish to reload in a standard format like JPG or GIF not everyone has open office

[George N. M.]

OK, I'll try.  I took the original photo files which were too large and reduced them onto a Open Office file and then attached them.  I'll try to figure out how to reduce them in a format that IFI will accept.  I have in the past directly from my photo file but it seems that was then and this is now.

[pnut]

I had a friend who was a welder that worked for a company in Cincinnati that fabricated components for pre fabbed modular jail cells. He told me about jacketed bars I don't think they're the same as the bars  mentioned above but I can't see the picture. They're designed so if you get through the jacket the inner bar will roll instead of letting the tool get a bite besides being hard. 

Pnut

 

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

Lots of ingenious ways to make such things and to try to circumvent such things.

When they tore down the old Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus OH, originally built in the 1820's IIRC; they sold off the old wrought iron cell doors for lots of money.  I did manage to buy several tons of the old water tower, 1929, for scrap rate. It looks to be Byers bidirectional rolled plate wrought iron---breaks are "platey" rather than greenstick.

[George N. M.]

OK, here are the pics resized down.  I consulted with my IT Department (my wife, Madelynn) and I think I have the process down.  We will just see what size is best for IFI to accept.

Sorry for the confusion.

G.

OK, here is the right side.  You can see the pattern is interrupted because this is the bottom of the V cut I made in the bar to expose the high carbon rods.  The next time I try this I will put some twists in and possibly weld several billets together.  This was just a proof of concept.

 

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand.

[pnut]

On 6/10/2020 at 10:48 AM, ThomasPowers said:

When they tore down the old Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus OH, originally built in the 1820's IIRC; they sold off the old wrought iron cell doors for lots of money.

I know the place. I had some family members tell me horror stories from OSP. I think they still do tours at the old Ohio Reformatory. There's lots of correctional institutions around Columbus. Some are pretty old and still being used. Old prisons are creepy places. 

Pnut

[ThomasPowers]

The old "Dracula's Castle" Reformatory in Mansfield?  I once did a forging demo at an event on it's grounds.  Last I heard they were still doing tours.  Filming the Shawshank Redemption helped it a lot. Spooky++

[JHCC]

They do a HUGE haunted house around Halloween (at least, when they're not closed because of a pandemic). They also hosted a tattoo expo a year or two ago, which I thought was rather cool.