Any ideas on how to prepare rusty, scaled spring steel from the junk heap?

W

watakipoma

Joined
Feb 5, 2003
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Being the cheapskate I am, I have acquired many pounds of truck leaf springs from the local automotive shop for free. For the most part the springs are covered with a fine coat of rust.

I am planning to forge cut and forge blanks out of the huge 4' length but I was wondering if there was any quick and dirty (and cheap) way to prep the steel before forging?

My current idea is to forge cut or hack out what I need, wire brush it then forge it.

Thanks for your input!

Joe
 
Just remove the scale after forging, and the rust will go away too (if there is any left).
 
I hate to admit it but I found fust on my anvil face. A little forging and it went away!
Lynn
 
Just forge away..
Now if they have deep pits you can still forge away only make them frontier style and leave the pits on the blade with a half grind,after you quench and heat treat (leaving the oil on) you will get the coolest look for the rustic blade finish..;) ;) :D
Bruce
 
I have made a cutting sadle for my anvil. That is a heavy slab of steel sits on top with some sides welded on to hold it in place.

get the steel hot and use a coldchisel to cut your 4 in wide to size on top of the sadle. It will save the face of your anvil from cuts.

Some of the heavey truck spring would be turned into a saddle easy.
Heat it and hit flat, if curved. Don't quench it and make it brittle.

If you wanted to cut the spring just go through the annealing process and you can hack or band saw it, even chain drill it to profile.

I saw a neat tip here the other day for removing fire scale soak the billet in vinigar overnight.

Good luck
Stay happy
 
An even faster way to remove forging scale is to boil the blade in vinegar. It really eats that scale off fast! It'll be an hour instead of overnight. Of course, changing my annealing medium helped a great deal to reduce the crud left on the blade after annealing. I had been using hardwood ashes for a few years and it did a good job for annealing. But when I changed to perlite I quit getting that thin coating of melted ash on the blades and now just a quick rubdown with my dull hot filing file takes the worst of the scale off and it's ready for grinding in the shop.

About half the blades I forge up are forged from leaf springs. I never give any thought at all to the rust. It just goes away as the surface of the steel oxydizes. A few trips through the flat dies on my treadle hammer and the pitting goes away too. Of course, my anvil face is pitted everywhere but the 'sweet spot', so as long as I'm careful to do my finishing heats on the sweet spot the pitting is very minor on the finished blade. I quit trying to forge all the way down to the edge when I realized that the heat treating would decarb the edge anyway. So now I grind off all the pitting just prior to heat treating and that way can get the edge just the way I want it for heat treating. But that's just me.
 
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