Just picked up some scrap metal

E

Emphasiski

Joined
Jun 27, 2010
Messages
402
I know there is no way to really tell what grade it is if there are no identifying marks and the supplier doesn't tell you. With that said, I have no way of telling what it is.

One slab is 1/4" thick, just a small layer of rust, no pitting. Is there a safe assumption I could make...maybe treat it like 5160 or 1080 without really hurting it, when tempering?

Same question for 3 plates of 1/8" thick.

It was all only $5, so I wasn't going to pester the guy. I'm still pretty new to all this, I'm almost done with my forge and bevel file jig.
 
The question of unknown steel has been raised many times, there really is no answere. High carbon steel for knife blades is really pretty rare, there is so much steel that is not suitable for knife blades that unless you know of why this steel was produced, it is most likely not 5160 or 1080. The other part of this discussion is how much time do you want to put into your unknow steel? You can buy a good knife steel for less than $3.00 per blade.

The steel you have will probably have the most value as practice in forging,

good luck.
 
what the count said

save the scrap for making fixtures, buy some known steel

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Alright, maybe I'll do that.

I could always use the scrap to help reinforce my jig. Thanks guys.
 
All you can really do is dive in and hope for the best. Just experiment with quenching and heat treating and see what you get. What method were you planning on using to shape your knives?
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
You can't hurt it while tempering.
But you might while hardening.
If it's hardenable!
Does that help?
Click to expand...

Yes, it helps my vocabulary. Thanks.

thompsonblades said:
All you can really do is dive in and hope for the best. Just experiment with quenching and heat treating and see what you get. What method were you planning on using to shape your knives?
Click to expand...

For now I'm only going to be cutting blanks and doing some stock removal, but I'd like to do my own heat treating, annealing, tempering etc. I really want to own the whole process of my knives.

When I can find an anvil (my freaking dad gave a full size anvil, made in the 50's to my brother in-law...GRRRR) and get some experience with forge shaping and pounding out my own steel I'd like to get into damascus and all that fun stuff.
 
if you don't feel like buying known steel, try hacksawing a sliver off, heating past non-magnetic, and quenching. If it gets very hard, you may have something useful and start doing some other tests to dial in hardening. It's no substitute for a chem analysis but if you're just having fun why not?
 
Cant you take it to a scrap metal recycling place and have them shoot it with their laser gun and find out what it is? Buddy of mine used to take scrap metal in all the time for money and he found out he had some interesting metals sometimes when they would do that.
 
Heh, my neighbor gave me a 1/2" hex rod of stainless hoping I would make a knife for him out of it. He then explained that it wasn't good stainless though because it was magnetic. I then had to explain that s30v is magnetic.

Everything I've read and been told on here says that if you don't know what it is, don't waste your time unless you plan on throwing it away after you practice grinding on it.
 
urban said:
Cant you take it to a scrap metal recycling place and have them shoot it with their laser gun and find out what it is? Buddy of mine used to take scrap metal in all the time for money and he found out he had some interesting metals sometimes when they would do that.
Click to expand...

You need to watch that since they are metal sorting analyzers which normally only give the alloying and not carbon content which, unfortunately, is one of the most important bits of information for us knifemakers. I have encountered plenty of steel being sold second hand that was low carbon but had alloying similar to high carbon stuff and was thus mislabeled by guys relying on the portable guns. Spectrometers are calibrated to read a specific range of elements according to the application and carbon is far enough removed from the heavy metals not to be included on many of the simple scrap sorting units. Only labs and mills doing smelting would have need for the larger units capable of both.
 
At work we have a complete spectro lab and a wet chem analysis lab, we also have the Niton (Xray portable analysis gun) in our charge makeup dept. Carbon analysis is done on a specific machine that heats chips up by induction and anaylzes vaporized carbon, Xray and optical emission spectral anaysis do not work well for carbon content

-Page
 
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