52100 Ball bearing balls - coated with anything?

Joss

Joss

Joined
Nov 20, 2001
Messages
7,353
Hi,

Are the 52100 balls you buy new or salvage coated with anything that would be a problem in the forge and / or prevent them from being welded?

Thanks,

JD
 
im just going by the ones that i have gotten in the past ..
but the ones that i got only had a gummy oily stuff on it that was easy gotten rid of, otherwise i didnt seem to have anything other than the steel ..

D.
 
I got some 3 inch ball bearings that were coated with some thick goo. I started cleaning them up on a wire weel. My dog Blue took one sniff and wanted out. I let her out, she immediately barked wanting back in (so I thought)I let her in. She immediately wanted back out and kept barking at me. I figured she was trying to tell me something, so went out with her. Then got choked up, only a small dose was pretty tough. Evidently they had something on them that was hazardous to your health. She picked up on it immediately, I would have got a much heavier dose that could have been fatal had it not been for her. I don't believe it was anything normally used on bearings, probably some unrelated stuff. Since then I clean what I don't know outside.
 
Thanks for sharing. What about the new balls? (You can buy them from MSC Direct) I suppose they're lightly oiled, right?

JD
 
Our new stock comes in 5 1/2 inch round bars. Soon we may have some 15 1/2 inch round bars to work down. This will have been forged down from an ingot. It will provide the opportunity to explore the benefits of forging theory more completely. As it is supplied as stock, it is not oiled.
 
5-1/2" round bar?

So Ed, do you just forge the shape of a hunter the length of the bar and slice it :lol
 
Rex has available a 20 ton Chambersburg hammer, and another about twice as big for the initial forging. I receive the steel in 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 14 inch bars. I then forge it down to about 1 x 2 inch bars about 14 to 18 inches long, on my 150 pound Beaudry. Then from those billets to blades on my 50 pound Little Giants and hand held hammers. All of this forging is done at temperatures not exceeding 1625 f. Yes, it is hard on hammers and hands and wrists and takes time, but this is the only way we have found to develop the grain structure necessary to the high performance blade. No we don't lose any carbon, the blades showing no measurable carbon loss when compared to the initial chemistry of the parent steel. The steel is very expensive to develop, but well worth the time investement. A complete description of the methods will be covered in the next few issues of Blade.
 
Kewl :) I guess I ought to reup my subscription.

I talked to Rex a year or so ago, nice guy. He sent me some info and was very helpful. Which variation of 52100 do you use?
 
Hello
Ed's correct about the small carbon loss. From the orignal 5 1/2 inch round to a final size of 3/8ths inch thick billet, a cleanup of .010-.015 inches removed the decarb layer and got back to the orignal chemistry. Time at temperature and an oxidizing atmosphere are what causes carbon lose. keep your temperatures in the low end of the forging range and run a slighty rich gas mixture and scaling and resulting decarb are greatly reduced.
I'm currently running some tests to see what effect overheating steel has on the grain growth . I feel that this is something that may be of intrest.
Thanks
Rex
 
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