Old road scrapes for blades?

[blgoode]

My grandmother has some old roadscrape blades behind her house. Any good for blades?

 

[mete]

You'd have to try some . It could be various steels if you were lucky maybe S7 ??? I would stay away from things like growsers since they would more likely to be special alloys unsuitable for blades.

 

[blgoode]

Thanks Mete...what are growsers?

 

[Don Hanson III]

I was told they are 1095 but as Mete said you need to try a piece.
Do a spark test and a heat treat on it and see how it acts.

Don Hanson lll

 

[blgoode]

Thanks guys......

 

[mete]

On things like backhoe buckets, the big teeth.They are sometimes cast from hadfield steel which is not suitable for blades.

 

[Will52100]

One knifemaker told me that he sent a piece off for testing and it came back as 1084. Now that doesn't mean they are all 1084, just that the one he had was 1084, and was large enough for testing to be worthwhile.

Likely they have been made from many different steels by many differant manufactures over the years, only way to know is have it tested.