Bearing find

Atlas Knife Company

Atlas Knife Company

Joined
Feb 16, 2010
Messages
3,668
A friend had a couple 6" bearings in his recycle pile. I took them out, removed the bearings and have 4 nice raceways. I'm looking forward to forging them, but none of the forges I have access to can fit a 6" diameter piece of steel. How do you straighten these to fit them in the forge, when they won't fit in the forge to anneal and are too hard to cut?
 
Maybe you can cut one end with an angle grinder, and then use a torch to soften the opposite end and bend it open????
 
Do some testing. These may, or may not be suitable knife steel. I had some large bearing sets and the races were case hardened.
 
Will do. I've always wanted a reason to visit the jewelery shop that has the analyzer gun to determine what metal something is.
 
I always thought it was just the balls that were good. I guess it makes sense that the raceways be good steel too.

Anyone know if there are major alloy differences depending on country of origin? I was picking through the bone yard at work a few years back and there were dozens of industrial Japanese manufacture bearings. Most were around 3-4" but there were plenty of larger ones too. Also had some 5' (roughly) 1.5" pry bars that were bent slightly. If you've ever tried putting a metric s*** ton of pressure on a bent pry bar, you know why they were scrapped!
 
Pry bars, bearings, and other cool looking scarp yard things....all unknown and anybody's guess.

If you had a manufacturer and stock number you could find out what the races and balls were, but if not it is anybody's guess. It could be 52100, or 440C, or low carbon stainless, or something else.
 
Years ago I got some large bearing races from the local Potash Mines. I assumed they were 52100. They were not all the same. They didn't etch the same, they didn't cut the same. I really don't know what they were made of, but learned from that not to assume anything when it comes to as Stay said, "pry bars, bearings, and other cool looking scrap yard things".
I know there has been a lot of discussion about re-cycling different types of metal into knives. But for me, I want to know for sure what I have before I put a lot of work into making a knife out of it. The cost of known knife steel is cheap when you think about the time, abrasive belts, etc. that it will take to make a knife.
 
Oh, I've got 15-20' of 1084, O1, and S35VN among other random types. This is all about forging something that I've always read about. These bearings came out of a very large, old lathe. I simply want to be able to add "I forged a knife from a bearing" to my list.
 
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