the best steel for a newbie

strahd71

strahd71

Joined
Jan 26, 2006
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784
what is your opinion as to what the best steel is for a newbie to work with. what is the most forgiving? what is the easiest to heat treat? what forges and grinds well? and what is the most cost effective steel that matches up well with the above questions.

getting close to trying to get this going but there are so many choices and so few dollars, and so little knowledge!

jake
 
Simpler is easier for forging, heat treating and machining, so go for a basic carbon steel. The 10xx steels would work great, but other steels like 5160 are good too. O1 is said to be forgiving but you would want to soak that at temp to get best results.
 
keith,

they say 1095 is tricky to HT. are the other 10xx's easier or about the same?
 
1080/1084 is the way to go. 1095 has two things working against it, the higher carbon content and lower maganese. Some other 10xx steels have the lower Mn, but if you stick with 1084, 1080, 1070 and 1065 you should be in the deeper hardening (read easier to HT) range.
 
Where would be a good vendor to procure 1080, as i have been unable to find it locally and tricky online, however, I might be lookig over the obvious, I live in south eastern Virginia.
 
1084-it's the perfect starter steel.

You can buy it here in the for sale forum, at least I think Aldo Bruno still has some..

K&G also still sells it.
 
Last edited:
Steve Hayden said:
1084-it's the perfect starter steel.

You can buy it here in the for sale forum, at least I think Aldo Bruno still has some..

K&G also still sells it.
Click to expand...

Last I knew Aldo did not deal with stock removal thicknesses. Kelly Cupples is great to deal with.
 
Do not be thrown off by the term "starter steel/simple steels", learning to get the most out of simple steel will serve you well later on as a smith when you want to learn to make and heat treat damascus.
 
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