"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
t...
"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.

Sorta missed the point there, didn't you Ted? How does that relate to
someone making their own steel?

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.

Yeah, including starting with scrap stainless if I remember correctly.
Hardly the same thing as using a coil spring from a '51 Buick.

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?

The "so what" is a point of information for your benefit. If you feel
you'll never have need for such information, which you openly admit to not
knowing, ("I'm not familiar with the steel you mention"), kindly discard
it.

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?

Again, how does that relate to making one's own tool 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.

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?

Would you present the same argument if you had a prolonged run and your
creation from a Chev spring didn't hold up to the task, much the same way a
HSS drill might not hold up the way a cobalt drill would in hardened steel?
I gather your suggestion would be to continue to re-invent the wheel until
you got through the job. That might work in your home shop, but industry
would be DOA if it assumed the same posture. That was the point of my
mention of the idea of making tool steel not a good one, and also why other
materials were mentioned. There are materials out there that have been
created to address particular problems that we face in manufacturing, be it
at home of in industry. Seems to me it's not such a great idea to try to
compete with metallurgists with unlimited equipment and knowledge in an
attempt to save a few bucks on material that is readily available. On
the other hand, if this gent was stranded on an island with Gilligan,
perhaps it might be a great idea.

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.

Learn what? That they failed miserably? The first problem with his
inquiry was the concept of melting in a crucible, as if one could achieve
the necessary temperatures required to melt steel in a home type crucible
furnace. Possible, but certainly not done in industry, and for many good
reasons. The person inquiring could buy one hell of a lot of tool steel
for the cost of a furnace capable of melting the sophisticated materials
without altering their physical properties. There's more to making exotic
alloys than just melting them and pouring then out in a muffin tin. Lots
more. I offer vacuum melting as an example.


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.

Thanks, Ed. I rest my case. Melting these metals is not for the feint of
heart, nor is it well suited for home application aside from
experimentation. Even if one were successful in making the material, how
would one go about the rolling processes necessary to convert their billet
to something useful? Again, some things are better left to those with
proper tooling and knowledge.

You want to learn something about melting and pouring metals? Try
aluminum, and copper based alloys. They will occupy you full time for a long
time if you would like to become proficient. When you master that, perhaps
you could then tackle cast iron, which require higher temperatures, but
still a few hundred degrees lower than melting steel.

Harold