On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:25:51 GMT, "Darrell Feltmate"
wrote:

I'm in the better safe than sorrycamp here. I like steel that has a
provenance that is reasonable for tool making. While I have done some
smithing, I find that most of us are going to make a tool with a bit of
grinding, drilling, tapping and maybe some gluing of inserts. Once in while
silver soldering of components is a big help.

Agreed- even with the forge, I still do more grinding than anything.
But it does make a lot of sense to have a smithing setup to do things
you can't do any other way, and it makes heat treating a lot easier.

There is a lot of good material available cheap:
HSS tool bits from various suppliers
drill rod from lots of suppliers
masonry nails for small tools
chisels from the dollar store or discount house (these are almost always
good high carbon steel)
cast off shaper blades

If you find a local machine or fabrication shop, and can explain why
you want it, there is also a lot of old HSS tooling to be had for the
asking. With some careful grinding, it makes excellent cutting tools.
The big thing is explaining what you're doing- nobody will give you
metal without that, as they'll assume that you just want to take it to
the salvage yard.

So the thought of scrounging for metal for 4 hours to save 5 bucks is not my
idea of fun. It may be yours and if so, go for it. Frankly I am amazed at
the number of folks who seem to have piles of old shocks and leaf springs
lying around :-) I have enough trouble explaining the piles of wood to my
wife. :-)

Agreed, to an extent- but sometimes scrounging is just a matter of
asking the right person. There's a fella at work who just asked me
last night if I would be willing to trade him a new hunting knife for
all the leaf springs I can handle, and a few sets of antlers. That
sounded good enough to me, but before I could even say that, he went
on to volunteer to grind all the springs smooth so that I could see if
they were cracked. Even better.

The thing to keep in mind is that some guys actually do scrapping as a
hobby, and they not only make some decent money at it, but have all
the material in the world to offer in trade for whatever it is you're
able to make from a portion of it. If you can find one of those guys,
the four hours you might have spent to save five bucks might become
two or three hours pursuing your hobby now and then for a lifetime's
supply of material.