"Pay it forward" is always a good mantra.  Always comes full circle somehow.  Amazing how that works.

Hit some random garage sales this morning after work - it was 102F  by 9:30am, so some were dealing to get stuff sold. Found a 2.5# cross peen hammer for $1. That was the only smithing item, the rest of the items were for flipping , and I was killing it price wise today.

Cooking items included a 1955 Culinary Institute of America compendium of small cookbooks - free. I collect cookbooks, and have no idea how many I have now. I like the old ones for the illustrations, and the newer ones are very specific in that they are on one cuisine, or one ingredient. The oldest one I have was printed in 1901.

Pacifico beer bar mirror for $1, a partial case of 3' T8 fluorescent bulbs, for $5,  a pair of wooden -and hooked pulleys with Anvil logos on them for $3, and a box full of Las Vegas casino ashtrays and other glassware for $5. Many of the casinos on the ashtrays are gone now. Plus some other items.

My friends are always amazed at the deals I find-- Gerber model 6 for $4, new Leatherman Wave for $5, 1950's Hamilton Beach Jade green 3 head milkshake machine for $100, etc.. . Back home in Fairfield CA my friend and I would hit the sales every weekend. We knew what neighborhoods were best, and had a lot of fun. One day in July we hit 95 sales, and that was not all of them. That was the day I got the excellent condition $30 New Haven 20ga at 1pm...  Here, the Las Vegas metro area it is so big that I just go explore new neighborhoods after work, and stop at sales I randomly run across. I have met some interesting people, and found some great buys. Even in my little valley I have done the same.

Smithing stuff is fairly thin here but I have bought some anvils, gas forge, and a post vise off of the local internet pages. 

I guess this could be smithing related, beeswax. We use large slabs at work and when they wear down or get broken into small bits they toss the remainder. I have been collecting the bits when I see them in the trash, and have a nice pile starting. I need to see who I need to talk to as there is a full case that appears to have been dropped and the slabs are shattered. Probably a good 50# there. I missed out on a 30# or so fiber drum of pelletized beeswax at Jelly Belly that got tossed, and I don't want to miss out on this batch.

 

Picked these up awhile back. The bare one didn’t follow me home. It is 30ish lbs of 4140 I got online for $1 a lb. The other was found in the metal bin up in park city recycle center. It is 20ish lbs. probably make some good stump/stake anvils?

Coming home with today. A friend works for maintenance on one of the ski resorts and gets all kinds of hardware. This is one the cable bracket thingys. Not sure what it could be used for but it’s pretty cool 

Nice example of form follows function.

6 of these also followed me home from the metal recycle dumpster up in park city. Free!

NICE!!!

CLAMPS! Ooooh good score!

Frosty The Lucky.

Another woodworkers clamp of sorts.

out of the metal recycle bin. Free!

Brother-in lawish brought this home. I know some here appreciate books. The original 1804. The pages are folded back toward the spine. He also scored a few other old ones. This stood out.

 

 

 

Nice.  Even though it is only 50 years old instead of 215 I suspect that it has some value since it is obviously a high quality edition.

I have always like Blake but he can be kind of strange and macabre.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Well, I got the stand for my "new to me" blacksmith vise.  It's 1 1/4" taller than I need...........how kewel is that?  Also found a really heavy spring with a cross-section of 7/8" that ought to provide a lot of hammer time for practicing all sorts of stuff.   And a 1 1/4" bolt I'm hoping will make a hammer head.  All from AL Recycling in South Oklahoma City.

 

Chris and I hit the same place, I was a few hours ahead of him (got in and out while it was cloudy and a little cooler. When the sun popped out, I was out of there). Found pretty much what I needed and then some, brought home 320 lb of stuff even after passing up several things I really wanted to grab.

The haul:  About 28' of 1" machined shafting that I think might be 4140 (has a machined-in key way), a 6x8 3/8" wall I-beam for a post vise mount, a couple of broken 1-1/2" truck axle sections (future hammers or punches?), an 11x20x1" section of bolt-on bulldozer or road grader blade that might end up being the base for the post vise, some large angle, several feet of 1" mild steel round, and a 5' piece of welded iron fencing made with 1/2" solid square stock. Didn't see much round stock in the smaller sizes, mostly 1" and up. Saw some BIG coil springs, but forging stock that size is a bit above my pay grade right now. Not sure I could even straighten a piece of it out, lol. So I'm still looking for smaller coil and leaf stock. Nice find, Chris, that's the size I was looking for!!   Here's the coils I saw instead:

 

 

Having a little shopper's regret, might go back and grab one of those big coils tomorrow... after all, I do have a cutting torch!

They cut nicely with a cutting disc on a right-angle grinder, Picker.

True, but I personally dislike using angle grinders, a torch is a lot faster and quieter. I probably developed my dislike of them after years of grinding out my crappy looking stick welds before I finally bought a MIG unit. Sold my Lincoln AC-DC 225 a couple of weeks after that without a second thought. Of course, some might say I traded ugly deep beads for pretty shallow beads.

Forge a long hot chisel then heat the bottom side of a coil section laying horizontal and cut it threading the chisel from the top side.

Me I didn't get much ; only picked up 145 pounds of scrap metal: 5" mill ball, intermediate size bearing race, CO2 cylinder for dishing form and bell, 4 farrier's rasps and some random files, old cold chisel (100+ years and probably from the mines I'd guess), some 1.25" hex stock, and about 100 pounds of wrenches and sockets including a half dozen assorted adjustable wrenches: Quality ranging from Thorson, craftsman to taiwan, india and china.  Guess I have no excuse not to make one of those interchangeable socket bending forms now...(I love it when a big place has a clean out day!)  All for 20 cents a pound.

Now what I didn't bring home:

Forge bodies

Note the RR rail cattle guard thrown out above the tanks.

Improvised anvils: chunk of 4" thick steel

:

RR Rail in a more easily dealt with size:

On ‎8‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 3:30 PM, picker77 said:

The haul:  About 28' of 1" machined shafting that I think might be 4140 (has a machined-in key way)

Ok, because I rescued so much of this stuff yesterday (hoping it was a smart thing to do at 35¢ a pound!), this morning I made an attempt at identifying the steel in this shafting. Now I need some experienced opinions: I cut a 3" or so piece off one end of one of the three 10' or so pieces with a handheld band saw that has a new Starrett blade (the shafting appears to cut quite a bit harder/slower than plain old 1" mild steel rounds, so I presume (a) it's tool steel of some kind, and (b) it's currently annealed. A good shop file grabs it about like mild steel.

I then cut three 1/4" slices from the 3" piece, notched each of them for identification, heated them to non-magnetic, and quenched them three different ways:  #1 slice was quenched in canola oil, resulting in about RC50-55, if my guess using one of those 6-file RC hardness Identification sets is anywhere near the mark. A new shop file will grab it with some pressure, but without much pressure will skate on it. The #2 slice was heated and then plunged into water, and it hardened like crazy, will skate both shop and test files like glass. I can hardly make a mark on it with anything. I'm guessing at least RC 62 or 63..??.  The #3 slice was heated and left to cool in ambient shop air, which resulting in zero hardening, I can't tell the difference in it from annealed state using files.

Figuring I had made the water hardened slice extremely brittle, I clamped both #1 and #2 slices (one at a time) halfway into a big bench vise, covered them with a shop towel, and went to town on them with a big flat nose punch and a medium sized hammer. I totally expected the #2 water-hardened slice to break, shatter, split, or something. NADA. I couldn't seem to do anything to either slice, and in fact I finally quit for fear of busting a cast iron jaw on my bench vise.

Since it hardened fairly well in oil, I think it must be too high in carbon to be 1018, so maybe it's 1045?. But if so, I don't understand why it hardened so much in water, yet still remained tough enough to withstand serious sideways punishment without cracking or breaking. Could it be W1, O1, 4140, or some other type of tool steel?  It's important to me because I have so much of it, and I want to use it for things that make sense. Photo attached.

 

On 8/7/2019 at 8:43 PM, George N. M. said:

I have always like Blake but he can be kind of strange and macabre.

Yeah, it was a macabre time, plague and all.

1 hour ago, picker77 said:

so maybe it's 1045?

1/4" thick at that small a diameter isn't going to break easily even at full hardness. But an untempered water quench on 4140 will make a file skate and 4140 is a popular shaft steel because it's REALLY tough stuff and doesn't work harden easily. 

Regardless, that's just a guess. For a typical blacksmith evaluation, what it is isn't as important as what it's good for. 

1 hour ago, picker77 said:

so maybe it's 1045?

Frosty The Lucky.

Hardening temp is usually  non magnetic plus about 100 F higher so hard to say what you ended up with

Nonmagnetic is about 1420F. Table salt, on the other hand, melts at 1475F, so if it melts on your workpiece, then at very least the surface has reached 1475F. Latticino recently taught me this trick, and it's come in quite handy.

That's a good bit of knowledge.  Thanks.

Another scrap of know how to pull out when needed. Thanx Latticino, JHCC. Not something I would have thought of on my own. 

Pnut

Amen, I'll file that salt tidbit away in the very useful pile.

Thanks, Frosty. 1/4" is pretty thick, but from all the dire heat treating warnings I've read from Lo, the many steel experts around (not on IFI, I might add), I was afraid over-hardened steel might explode like a china cup if struck, dropped, or looked at sideways, and I smacked this stuff pretty hard. But no matter what it is, I'm thinking it might make some really excellent hardy tools if tempered down to something reasonable so I don't ruin a hammer face on it. No idea how hard it would be to move around on an anvil when heated, though. My ignorance of working mild steel is only exceeded by my ignorance of working with tool steel. Of course, there's one way to find out! They say ignorance is bliss. No wonder I smile a lot.

I suppose I was secretly hoping it was either 4140 or 1045, either of which ought to be good for hot & cold cut tools, punches, etc..