1975 CJ5 Springs...should I ?

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Sep 9, 2001
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wonder what kinda steel they are. anyone have any idea?

just have a couple sets of leaf springs laying around, might as well use em if i can. my dad wants a draw knife, and these look like good stock.

any good you think?
 
I would imagine they would be just fine and are probably 5160 for leaf-springs and 9260 for coil-springs.......

Like ol' Bill Bagwell advertised of his carbon steel blade material, "They have been stress relieved over a million times...." as in one relief for every bump in the road! ;)
 
5160 eh? ok, we'll call it that ;)

so what are the specs for 5160?
how hot to anneal it?
to harden it?

temper it at what temp? how many times?

or point me to a website that can help me out! :)

thanks guys, you are all very helpful...
 
What process will you use to make the drawknife? I am assuming you will be forging, simply because the springs would take hourse of stock removal.

If so, forge to shape, triple normalize (optional triple anneal), grind, normalize, harden/quench, temper around 325 for draw knife and 350 for camp/bowie knife. Final grind, polish, mount, sharpen, etc.

As for temps, normalizing, annealing and hardening can all be done with a magnet. When the steel goes non-magnetic, it has reached critical temp. Some folks normalize at slightly past non-mag, and anneal slightly before. I gave separate tempering temps. because a draw knife can harder than a knife that will see chopping duty. An excellent way to ponder edge hardness was taught to me by my teacher JD Smith--he learned it from Jimmy Fikes--and it goes as follows:

"The primary consideration for a tool is that it hold an edge; the primary consideration for a weapon is that it not break."

Of course, many knives are both tools and weapons, and this is where the true fun and mastery of bladesmithing begin. You need to selectively incorporate different qualities into a single blade to come up with what Ed Caffrey calls "the overall package." The drawknife, however, seems to be pure tool--so a hard keen edge is a good thing.

Hope this helps,

John
 
Ed McAffrey


Here is a link to the tutorials page, look for the one by Ed I think that answers your question.

Course you can look at all the other stuff too.:D :D
 
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