what kind of steel?

M

McAlpin Blades

Joined
Mar 15, 2001
Messages
82
I asked this question about 8 mos ago so if anyone recognizes it from me I appologize. I forgot what I was told then. I am making my first knife out of a lawnmower blade, a small tactical cord wrapped tanto. I have profiled it and normalized it twice tonight and finally heated to critical and left in my forge with burner off to anneal it overnight. Does anyone have an approximate idea what kind of steel this might be. It is 3/16" thick and fairly long so I am pretty sure it came off of a riding mower. What brand I am unsure. Any ideas will help. Thanks. Cory
 
Cory, take a piece of your left over stock,normalize then aneal.bring up steel to non magenetic,then quench,test with file to check hardness,then break and check grain structure,it should have a fine grain structure,if it does it should make a good blade, using unknown steel always envolved some expermentation..
 
Lawn mower blades are made from a variety of steels, some make pretty good blades some aren't worth a s###. I fooled with some last year, a lawn mower repair shop gave me a whole bunch for just hauling them off. I've herd 1084 and lower, but I know I worked a couple up into blades but they wouldn't harden.That was enough, I would recommend you stay with steel that you know,so you know what your dealing with, you can test each blade by heating to critical and quenching, and if it hardens, try it.But there is to much time spent in forging and profiling a blade to find out its no good when you heat treat.I guess they make for good practice, but your better off to practice and experiment with good steel so you'll know its you that made the mistake and not the steel if something go wrong. 5160 and 1095 isn't that expensive but will make a great blade if you treat it correctly.
If it were me, I'd heat to critical and quench in heated oil (125deg.) and hope that it hardens, if that doesn't do it you might try heating your oil to 150, if it doesn't harden in oil try brine(water salted enough to float an egg) if that doesn't do it, scrap pile here it comes.

Good luck
Bill
 
Well too late, I already got my blade ready for heat treating before I read these posts. I guess we will find out. I believe I was told on the other forum last spring that they were good knife steels but I wanted new reassurance as i have alot of blades also and figured I might as well use them. Cory
 
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