? Steel+Flint=Fire

M

mtnsct

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Jul 31, 2006
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Low alloy high carbon steels have been used for quite a few years to make fire by striking with a flint. My question is what is the upper limit of alloy content in steels that still allow one to easily derive a spark by striking the spine of a finished blade with a rock?

Is O1 about it? I've tried with A2 and what little sparks there are is nothing to write home about.

Also, what alloying agents interfere with creating the spark? Chromium...?

What say you oh knowledgable ones?

Rod G.
 
I think the function is hardness rather than precise alloy content. I've made wheels for wheellock pistols and frizzens out of case hardened 4130, simple-hardened 5160, 10XX steels of various grades, etc.
My experience has been that as long as it's hard it will spark even though the action of flint on frizzen (sparking by shaving at the steel) is quite different from a serrated wheel on iron pyrite (which generates spark from the pyrite rather than shaving material from the hardened wheel. This is why you NEVER use flint in a wheellock). Still, if it's hard, it should spark.

Some people get discouraged when trying this because they end up with a little decarb on the surface after HT that is soft and doesn't spark, but just below is the hard material. Some folks simply miss an effective HT procedure required by some of the richer alloys altogether and don't get things sufficiently hard for making sparks. One of the things they do with flintlock kits is use richer alloys that might be strong and tough, and have you case harden it yourself.
 
JC, Thanks for the response.

Aren't those steels you mentioned considered low alloy steels? 5160 is getting closer to O1 though, right?
 
I wouldn't consider chrome molly (4130) a low-alloy steel. (I mentioned the others for purposes of contrast).

4130 doesn't get very hard by itself (not hard enough to do sparks with flint all that well, anyway--I think it's max is in the 40s or so).

But if you case harden it you can get a surface that's hard enough to be a good frizzen. This tells me the presence of chromium, for example, in the chemistry isn't particularly detrimental as long as the surface is hard enough.
 
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