Railroad Track?

[P. McKinley]

I have a piece of old (50-60 yrs) railroad track that was made in the now defunct Sydney Steel Works plant here on Cape Breton. I'm attending my first hammer-in next weekend and I was thinking of taking this piece with me.

Can this be forge welded to a piece of tool steel, as in san mai, to make a knife blade? What type of tool steel?

 

[12345678910]

Rail track is already good knife steel 1070- 1080 ish
( meets federal specifications for rail track- sources of these documents available on line somewhere)

Yes it could be forge welded to make a San Mai layere billet


I would guess you want something with contrast.

416 stainless would be shiny
Wrought iron would be grey and patterny

 

[CliveJericho]

hey, another blue nose!

where's this hammer-in? I haven't really heard of any in this province before.

 

[P. McKinley]

Hi Clive,

The hammer-in is the first put on by the new Cape Breton Blacksmith Assoc. on Nov 6-7 at John McDonald's Forge out in back of Baddeck.

Come on over and join us. I'm told there'll be a bunch of folks there and it should be fun.

Here's the web site:
http://www.cbblacksmiths.com/

 

[tattooedfreak]

Does anyone know of any that are going to be a little closer? I would like to go to one but 5 hours is a little far for me.

 

[Virgilio]

this your typical rail steel.

the steel on the left is what we call "main line" steel , it is about 6 3/4 inches high. obviously made for mainline traffic.

the steel on the right is what we call "siding" steel, it is about 4 1/4 inches high.

Railroad steel is made of C-.6, Sil- .15, Mag-.82. (there are some other smaller properties not worth mentioning)

there are other steels used on railroads. but this is typical. and probably covers 98% of what is available. you can get mainline rail steel at any large junk yard/steel re-manufacturing yard .



virgilio palmer

I also for got to mention, that it is a water quenching steel, but if you are afraid of water you can quench in oil.

vp