steel grades

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willy m

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Nov 27, 2007
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i read in a book somewhere that listed the grades for the different types of steel used in cars and all i can remember from it was leaf springs are around 1075. i cant find the book again and i was hoping someone might know a web sight that had the same kind of info.....willy
 
I aouldn't say for sure but I think it varies from maker to maker and year to year. I do know that 5160 is often called OCS or old chevy springs:p
 
You can consider all car manufacturers make their springs from 5160 just the same way you can consider that all women had size 36C bras. A lot do, but many don't.
Stacy
 
You can always just make a knife from the steel, treat it as if it were 5160 or another oil quenching steel, put an edge on it and do some testing to see how it cuts and holds up. I made a couple of those myself. They were leaf springs that I just picked up at an auto wrecker. Not sure what exact steel it was, but they made pretty good knives.
 
Other than springs you will now find many steels even in just the frame ! They're metallurgists dreams . Boron steel, TRIP steel, duplex steel and others !! It's become much less possible to guess what cars are made of !!
 
willy m said:
i read in a book somewhere that listed the grades for the different types of steel used in cars and all i can remember from it was leaf springs are around 1075. i cant find the book again and i was hoping someone might know a web sight that had the same kind of info.....willy
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The reverse reading of those kinds charts is one of the most common mistakes made among knifemakers, and it has been perpetuated in our craft until it has lead to a large amount of misinformation and other mistakes. For the most part when you see a chart listing a steel and the items made from them, it is an indicator of the uses that the properties that alloying has would work well for. So one can say that alloying for high speed steels give properties that are useful in drills, mills and other cutters, but one cannot say that drills, mills or any other item must be made from the alloy listed, to do so would be to read the chart back wards and makes false assumptions. A manufacturer can make a item from any steel they care to use and the only thing governing this is what the market will bear. The bottom line is cost and it will be the cheapest to use that is still acceptable enough for sales of the item to continue. Thus not all springs are 5160, not all saw blades are L6, not all files are W2 or 1095, not all bearings are 52100, or even high carbon anywhere but on the skin for that matter, any chart leading one to believe otherwise is to be taken with a large grain of salt.
 
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