I've tried searching for this, but haven't found it yet. My local scrapyard just got in a bunch of 1045 and 4140 in various sizes. There are several hundred feet of 5/8" round 4140, that I was thinking of using to make some more tongs. Is there any reason that 4140 makes for a bad set of tongs?
 

4140 makes excellent tongs and 5/8" round is a good size. 1045 is darned good tong stock too. They're both springy so you can forge tongs thin and light without sacrificing grip strength. 4140 doesn't work harden like low alloy steels and is very durable.

Either would make good trading stock with the blacksmith community. 

Frosty The Lucky.

8 minutes ago, Frosty said:

4140 makes excellent tongs and 5/8" round is a good size. 1045 is darned good tong stock too. They're both springy so you can forge tongs thin and light without sacrificing grip strength. 4140 doesn't work harden like low alloy steels and is very durable.

Either would make good trading stock with the blacksmith community. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Awesome! Thank you. I'll snatch some up. The smallest diameter of 1045 was 1", so more than I want to draw out.  They had 4140 in 5/8" and 2", and  1045 in 1", 1.25", and 1.5". I picked up some of the 1045 for making some drifts.

There's probably 100-200 ft of each if anyone is near Cincinnati.

1045 makes nice axes and such, especially if you weld in a HC bit. Drawing down from 1" for tongs is a bit much unless you're a teen ager. 

Good score. Must be nice to have access to a scrap yard that'll sell to the public.

Frosty The Lucky.

21 hours ago, Frosty said:

1045 makes nice axes and such, especially if you weld in a HC bit. Drawing down from 1" for tongs is a bit much unless you're a teen ager. 

Good score. Must be nice to have access to a scrap yard that'll sell to the public.

Frosty The Lucky.

Yeah, I don't have the energy for that, as much as I would like to think I do..  Having access to a scrapyard is wonderful. We have several big ones here in town, but most won't sell anything to the general public.