mystery spring steel

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Reactable

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Aug 14, 2017
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found a long piece of thick steel, thinking this was a great steel to use for my folder i chopped it up and started profiling. i regularily use a strong magnet to clean up the mess while grindidng and i noticed it barely stuck to the steel. im confused how this can be stainless when it was so rusty. the sparks are red but i dont know what it has to do with it
 
Last edited:
Tech Support is for website technical questions,
not knife / steel / technique questions. Moving this.
 
Start with a piece of known steel. If you are from the USA you can get blade steel for a very fair price from a number of online suppliers.

As for your mystery metal, it could be anything. What kind of spring was it from? Where did you find it?

Stainless steels used in knife making are all magnetic. If you had a piece of 316 stainless or something similar, it would not be suitable for a blade.

There are stickies at the top of the shoptalk page that may answer alot of your questions.
 
Most stainless steels will rust until they are HTed.

A mystery is an unknown. Get some known steel and make knives of known quality.
 
That gives us lots of room for guessing !
Red sparks ? tungsten tool steels have a noticeable red spark .
partially magnetic ? we can even get 304 stainless to be partially magnetic.
Any info on where it was from or the use ?
 
The truth is I could get red sparks sometimes when I shot at a steel gong with a ball out of my black powder gun.
Frank
 
Spark testing isn't that reliable. I can make 1070 and cast iron produce identical sparks just by varying pressure. I've seen cast iron spark red too
Are you sure this piece is even steel?
 
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