"Ted Edwards" wrote in message
...
Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:

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.

So? If I can pick up an old spring (which, incidently, is not just a
simple carbon steel) and make a usefull and serviceable tool from it,
why should I care whether it's a "modern high quality tool steel" by
somebody elses criteria? It all depends on the application.

The steel in car springs is pretty damned good steel, Ted. That IS modern
high-quality steel. There's no way you could come within a country mile of
that quality by cooking up something in a crucible out of scrap, which was
the idea being suggested.



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.

OK. But so what? See above. I'm not familiar with the steel you
mention but do you know what the max tensile of the steel used in
car/truck springs is? Does it matter for many applications e.g. making
a counter bore to refurbish a brass valve seat?

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.

I'm with you there on both counts but I have made a number of tools from
much lesser steels all of which have done their jobs. Why should I care
if some exotic steel could have been run at five times the speed?

Once again, the point was that tool steel is expensive to buy in small
quantities. Tool steel is pretty exotic stuff; even the simple W-series
steels require good metallurgical control to make.

You seem to be making the point that you don't need tool steel to make good
tools. That's certainly true. But the poster was asking about tool steel. If
you just want steel to make tools, then the first question is, what kind of
tools?


Some things are best left to those with
knowledge and proper tooling,

Or those who wish to learn.

There's a lot to that. However, making tool steel in a crucible at home is
something like building your own refrigeration plant from scratch, without
knowing anything about how it works. g It can be done and you can learn it
but learning to make real tool steel, even crappy tool steel, is nothing
like puttering around.

--
Ed Huntress
(remove "3" from email address for email reply)