AR 500 Tomahawk

rustyrazor

rustyrazor

Joined
Oct 13, 2011
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anyone ever used AR 500 armour plate steel as a Tomahawk? i have had a pretty good look at this stuff and am pretty interested in it. it may not be the best edge holder, but it should take a severe beating.. thoughts?
 
I just did a little internet research.
Looks like it ought to work as a 'hawk steel. Is it cheap compared to appropriate well-known cutting tool alternatives like 5160, 52100, and the medium-high carbon steels (1045-1084)?

Typically tool steels are shipped annealed in the soft state. I bet the AR500 is shipped hard. It's very difficult to shape hardened steel, so you'd probably want to anneal and then re-heat-treat it. Sounds like a lot of work. But if you've got scrap for free it might be another story. Of course with AR500 you'd have serious internet cool-factor, but I doubt it would out-perform other appropriate steels.

ETA:
http://www.engineersedge.com/hardness_conversion.htm

Looks like the AR500 stuff is in the 500 Brinell range, which translates to the low 50's on the Rockwell-C scale, which is usually used for cutting tools. That range can be appropriate for axes and hawks, tho often people prefer things a few points harder. I didn't discover the maximum hardness for AR500, tho, just the standard hardness for it's usual uses. However given the low carbon content and modest amounts of other alloying elements, I suspect AR500 would make a better hammer than 'hawk. But I'm not a metallurgist...
 
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Guild tools knives made a batch out of AR400 before:
IMG_20120618_192038.jpg
 
the pink samsung is the real hero of this picture ;) ...thanks guys. yeah, i do have access to a bit of scrap, so i am going to try it out and see what happens. i know it takes a severe beating, so it gets points on that alone. I'll tell you how it turns out.
 
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