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Harold & Susan Vordos
 
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Default "homemade" tool steel


"Ted Edwards" wrote in message
...
George Watson wrote:

I have notice when buying tool steel the smaller the quanity you buy the
more expensive it gets


I make a lot of tools from old car/truck springs both leaf and coil.
Easy to anneal, machine, grind, forge, harden and temper.

Ted

Great idea, but far from modern high quality tool steel. The tool steels of
today are not necessarily just carbon steel and don't necessarily rely on
the carbon cycle for hardness. There are tool steels that have no iron in
their makeup.

Precipitation hardening steels are a good example of steels that don't
exclusively rely on carbon for hardness. Are you familiar with Vasco-Max?
Vasco-Max 350 is capable of tensile strength of 350,000 PSI. Try getting
that out of carbon steel.

I agree with Ed, trying to duplicate super alloy tool steels of today in
order to save a few bucks is insanity. Doing it for fun, on the other
hand, would be an interesting experience, one that would give the
experimenter tremendous respect for those that are making fine quality tool
steels with reliable characteristics using modern technology and
sophisticated equipment. Some things are best left to those with
knowledge and proper tooling, particularly for analysis in process to
control the end result.

That's my take on it, anyway.

Harold