railroad rail steel

go ahead, rail stuff, not bad!
and it is unrust somehow!
try it and tell us what is it profermed!
 
i just bandsawed off a slice and it cuts great with no problems going through the work hardened top. i also spark tested it and looks good, not quite as sparky as 1095 but more then 5160. right now i am surface grinding a thin slice so i can heat treat it and see what we get for hardness as well as if a clay line will take.
 
Man I hope this works. My dad only has 2 feet of it, but I mean, it shouldn't be TOO hard to find some of them around at low cost (if I do the work of digging them up even).

Keep us updated!
 
there is places that you can buy track and there scrap 33 foot long track is 300 bucks a ton :eek:. there is a place here that sells rail road track andi will call them and see what there prices are.
 
You're wasting your time if you're looking for something to clay harden... just like Bill said, the manganese will kill you on that.

I saw Rob's blade as well, and thought he was pulling my leg for quite awhile. VERY cool stuff. :thumbup:
 
NickWheeler said:
You're wasting your time if you're looking for something to clay harden... just like Bill said, the manganese will kill you on that.

I saw Rob's blade as well, and thought he was pulling my leg for quite awhile. VERY cool stuff. :thumbup:
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No not looking, i have some of dons W2 for that :D. just thought i would throw some clay on one part of the cross section and see what happens. i sliced off a complete cross section and its about 1/8" it looks very cool, almost alike a sword handle :rolleyes::rolleyes: maybe if it was thicker it could be carved into one. any way there is lots of surface area on this steel so i thought i would just clay one little part and see what happens. I'm not expecting much jut why not you know.
 
well i heat treated it. i put it in the oven at 1500 deg and let it come up to temp. then quenched in a bucket of water with just a little salt like a 1/8 cup, not much. the whole slice is .110 thick so its very thin for a water quench but i did not have any fast oil. so i quenched it and i did not get a ping. took it out and looked at it and there was some warping but not real bad. i bet a thicker knife blade would be ok. any way i put it back on the surface grinder and cleaned up one side then tested it. well it is hard, very hard. i took a test off the corner about 3/8th" in from the sides and when i applied the force of the tester the corner broke off. so i moved to the middle and found 65rc and so i continued testing all over and the whole thing was around 64.5-65 hrc that's nice and hard. the grain, even though you can tell much by eye looks very even and gray, cant see any crystals at all. so now maybe i will forge out a blade and test it out. but its looking good so far.
 
As the proud owner of about 30' of rail I follow this with interest. Everyone wondered why I bothered to load up 2 heavy piece of rail to haul from Washington state to the middle of Montana. I kinda wondered myself, but I could not walk away from good steel. Everything is in Montana now, I have the last bits of household stuff in my Foerd Escape and will be driving over Sunday to make the move official and start sorting out the huge mess and making my shop functional again.
 
Jarod, thanks for posting so much information about your steps during this. Because you say it cuts easily on the bandsaw, I will have to try to cut my dad's two footer in half, and then I'll finally have an anvil (To use while shaping the other railroad track maybe?)

And by the way, when you make a knife from it, lets start seeing some PICTURES! :D
 
JT thats real interesting 64 to 65 RC I wonder if that could be reduced to around 60 with a 1 hour cook at 500 deg I have access to alot of rail in small pieces.
 
I think tempering at 500 would be to much. i would say around 400 to 450 would put you at around 60hrc.
 
JT what do you think a guy would get if he added some L6 or 15n20 to it . I got some saw blades big ones like 40 inch circular my brother in law is trying to get me some 80 inch lol serious
 
Mike secondary main line would cut with a band saw maybee but 130 or 136 chrome rail is hard crap we only cut it at work with an abrasion saw it does drill but the bits only do about 10 holes and they are toast.
 
hellgap said:
JT what do you think a guy would get if he added some L6 or 15n20 to it . I got some saw blades big ones like 40 inch circular my brother in law is trying to get me some 80 inch lol serious
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To be honest, the saw blades could be anything. i would say you have a better chance that thy are 15n20 then L6. but there is a chance thy are not even 15n20 and could be like 1075 or even some other chromimum steel. but if you have a bunch i would have it tested just so you know. if its 15n20 i would say it could work good with RR steel but thats assuming that the RR steel is 1080-1085. but if you have a bunch of that as well you should test it. if you dont have it tested for you then i would say just do a bunch of trial and error trials with it. I will be forging out some knives from my stock this weekend for destructive tresting.
 
JT,

Are you still thinking of having your RR rail tested? I'd like to see what the chemistry is, if you do.

Mike
 
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