Need a harder spine

[Bo T]

While I am logged on Stacy, I found lots of W1 drill rod but not much on 1095 rod. I didn't look for W5 and I'll go back try that. Any suggestions on finding small steel with that magic 1-2% carbon? I did find 1095 rod but I would need to order 3 tons (and I think it might have been metric tons)

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

W1 should work fine . Check the carbon content to be sure, as there is a lot of variation.

You might look for piano wire. 4 gauge is .200", 2 gauge is 1/4".

1/4" 1095 flat stock can be sliced down into narrower strips, or you could have a water jet guy slice up a plate for you.

Or....you can get some 2" round W2 and hand forge it into 1/4" square stock

 

[Rick Marchand]

Yes, it was plain old HF 1/4" square. I water quenched it from what I would guess was 1500F. Mild steel will get hard enough to snap like glass with a water quench. I drew it back to what was probably low to mid Rc50's. If left full hard, they broke too easily.

Are you sure it wasn't 1/4" keystock? Perhaps that particular batch was closer to 1045? I am terribly confused. I did quite a bit of experimentation on several sources of mild steel and couldn't even get the famed "superquench" recipe to work. If you started with a mix of ferrite and pearlite, I believe that only the pearlite has the potential to transform to martensite and anything under 1040 would be next to impossible. This is a reach but could you have maybe lucked out and case hardened? Mild steel snapping like glass would convince me to some degree...

I call CHALLENGE!

Rick