spring steel question

[rhrocker]

Ok, so if you take a spring, say .5 in diameter, 2.5" wide and 7" long, heat and uncoil it, does it lose it's "spring" or bending toughness until it's rehardened and redrawn? Or is it still a spring but straightened?
I've done this uncoiling for cutting into 4" lengths for tooling, but am curious about the spring thing. I'm thinking that what applies to a knife (and this is most likely 5160) would apply to a spring.

 

[Don Hanson III]

Robert, It would need to be heat treated to become a spring again. But it would still be tougher and some what springer than an annealed piece of 5160.

 

[rhrocker]

Don, that's exactly what I was thinking would happen, but was just courious. Wonder how it would react to a 90 degree bend test (as is uncoiled, not treated), probably not good. This was an old spring off of one of my Little Giants BTW. I always replace them when I get another power hammer, and have some spares. This one was fairly bad though. I need a new spring for my 250, you have one laying around Don? It's about $400+ from LG. Someone once said there was another source for LG springs, but I forgot where. Thanks Don!!

 

[J.Marsillo]

I might be able to scrounge something from the quarry i'm in now. how big is the spring? there are some monster spings laying around the crusher we took apart.

 

[Don Hanson III]

No 250 parts around here Robert. I put a new spring in my 100 when I rebuilt it and it broke after three or four years of use, so I put the old one back in and it's been fine for the last four years, ya never know about these springs.

 

[rhrocker]

Ok, thanks Don. Thank you also Joe, I think I'll go with a factory specified spring made especially for this hammer, I do appreciate the offer though! You have a fortune in forge/hammer tools laying around sounds like. I'd love to have one of those "monster" springs. Wonder if they'd be difficult to package and ship? How big are you talking Joe?

 

[J.Marsillo]

sorry so late...the springs are from a seperator they are roughly the same size as a heavy car coil except the stock is like 1"or 1 1/2". My garage is going to fill up quick working in this place.