More Mystery Metal

peter nap

peter nap

Joined
Nov 27, 1999
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A friend of mine died a few years ago, He was a gunsmith, a really good one who made a lot of custom carry revolvers. Anyway, his widow let me take a lot of his tools and stock. (for a price).

One of the things I got was a box of steel. It had about 25 machined bars 8 inches X 1/2 X 3/4. I left it out in a storage building until today and decided I would forge some. I spark tested and it looked like a sparkler. It forged well. I normalized ...then I heat treated it.

I brought it up to critical and quenched in Vegatable oil. I file tested it and it was soft. Never mind what I said but I went through the whole process again and got it a little hotter....still soft

OK I said, Water quench. I poured some pickling salt in a bucket and put in some dish liquid. Added Hot water and quenched....Still soft, maybe a little harder but soft.

Now this stufff had rusted, not badly but it sure isn't stainless. I put it in the etch vat to see what it would do and it didn't turn grey right away...

Ideas?
 
Peter,
my next test would be to beat out a corner to form a rod about 3/16 x 3/16 by 3 inches (do not normalize)
heat 2 inches or so to just under welding heat.
hold it there for a minit. and quench in cold water.

(It's a gorrila test)

most high carbon should be stressed, warped, bad grain , fractured, and hard.

If it's still soft, and undistorted?
I don't know:confused:
 
Thanks Eric. I'll give a try. Really POing me because I forged a knife already. This is worse than breaking one in the quench.
 
There is the real possiblility that it may just be mild steel such as A-36 that wont harden.
 
Well...It looks like my find of steel is a dud. I superheated it and quenched in cold water and couldn't even break the damn thing. I don't understand though, I spark tested it again and I get 5160 sparks complete with the little burst at the end of their flight!

Makes me mad, I decided to forge it after the little discussion on forgers Vs grinders and it turned out darn well. Then I built a ceramic knife and the blade snapped as I was cinching up the rivits. I knew I should of mowed the grass!:( :o :mad:
 
sound to me like one of those medium carbon aloys that handle stress. perfect for gunsmiths

try a cryo cycle and see what happens

you can always try to rescue it by forgeing a piece of Bruce's domascus to the edge.
 
Should all else fail, you could do something really crazy with it and keep it as a "Display Only" model. For instance, I forged a copper knife once. Won't work well as a knife but it sure looks pretty on my bookshelf.
 
Sounds like it might be pretty good as part of a damascus mix. Mix it up 1 bar of this tough, low carbon steel and 2 bars of some good high carbon steel and you would probably end up with a nice and tough blade. Throw in a bar of L6 and you would get a little more contrast due to the nickel content.
 
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