I need steel tubing to build a tubular chassis.

The problem is, I'm not sure what kind of metal my supplier is
selling.

they sell G.I. or galvanized iron which is what i'm interested in
getting......
problem is, I'm not sure if it's steel or iron.

of course I so prefer steel.

how do i know if it's steel or iron?

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:28:01 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

I need steel tubing to build a tubular chassis.

The problem is, I'm not sure what kind of metal my supplier is
selling.

they sell G.I. or galvanized iron which is what i'm interested in
getting......
problem is, I'm not sure if it's steel or iron.

of course I so prefer steel.

how do i know if it's steel or iron?

iron is a rare beast these days only sold in the blacksmith trade.

it'll be mild steel for sure.

Stealth Pilot.

If this chassis is going on the road, maybe you want to look farther
than that supplier (4130?). Also, if you are going to weld it
together, you want to consider the possibilities of killing yourself
from the zinc fumes. By the time you weld it up anyway, you will have
either had to grind away the zinc before welding or it will vaporize
away anyway from the heat and so EVERY joint will be inprotected from
the elements anyway.
If the supplier doesn't know what kind of metal it is, maybe that's
not a good source.
At the very least, get a sample of the material and see how it drills
and welds. As "galvanized iron", it may not have been made for a
stressful use such as your chassis, so they might have used some pretty
poor steel to make it.
Here's how to find out something about it:
Make a fresh cut in the end of a sample that you can put into a vise.
Make another sample the same size.
Remove the zinc from one of the samples.
Plug the other end tightly with a wad of paper or a shop rag.
Then heat the zinc-removed end up to a high red heat (almost orange in a
dim shop).
IMMEDIATELY plunge the heated end into a pail of COLD water and swish it
around vigorously until it is cold. ****The reason for plugging the
"other" end of the tube is so that steam doesn't come flying out at you
when you plunge the other end into the cold water, so don't skip that
step!!!!! And don't stand right in back of the tube anyway and you
plunge it, just in case!
Now put the unheated tube in a vise and do some filing on its freshly
cut end. The idea is to note how much difficulty it takes to get the
file to cut.
Then try the same test with the other piece of tubing, the one you
just "quenched". If it requires more filing effort to get the file to
cut, then you have steel. If it's exactly the same amount of effort,
then you have EXTREMELY low carbon material, or "iron" for all practical
purposes.

Why this works:
What you have done is to attempt to Harden the sample you heated and
quenched in the water. If that sample had no carbon content, then it
would not have hardened at all and so there'd be no difference between
the two samples.
Your material is probably a low carbon steel, in the 0.15 to 0.3%
carbon range, generally held to be non-hardenable for industrial
applications, but that doesn't mean it won't harden at all. So, if
there's any significant amount of carbon in it, it will harden up some
by the method described above. That will make it harder to file than
the unheated or quenched sample.

"Iron", as another poster said, is pretty hard to make these days, since
a lot of what we use is made from recycled automobiles.
Very low carbon steels (Iron plus 0.08% Carbon, called "1008") are
used quite frequently in industries where a lot of stretching ("deep
drawing" for example) will be applied. For almost all practical
purposes, this material could be called "Iron". Us blacksmiths like it
for doing higly detailed forming, chisel and filing work because it
doesn't crack or split or require annealing very often.

See http://www.spaco.org/chest.htm for an example of such work if
you are interested.

I think "galvanized iron" is just an old term still applied to stuff
like what you see at your supplier, just as people talk about "wrought
iron railings" when they are mostly made from A36, the low carbon
(0.15-0.29% carbon) steel you'd usually get if you just walked into a
steel yard and asked for a "piece of steel".

Pete Stanaitis
-----------------------

wrote:

I need steel tubing to build a tubular chassis.

The problem is, I'm not sure what kind of metal my supplier is
selling.

they sell G.I. or galvanized iron which is what i'm interested in
getting......
problem is, I'm not sure if it's steel or iron.

of course I so prefer steel.

how do i know if it's steel or iron?

Galvanized pipe is made from steel of unknown parentage. But presume it
is real junk. These days, the 'iron' part of it refers to the sizes base
on the old pipe system where it is the ID that is important. The only
real specs it needs to meet is to be round and hold 300 PSI. The
galvanized coating on it needs to be cleaned off to avoid getting the
zinc into the weld and into your lungs. This is NOT the sort of thing
you want to use for any kind of mobile chassis.

The tubing you want comes in 3 general classifications:
-cold or hot rolled welded tube. Typically around 1008 to 1018 mild
steel, available in many wall thicknesses, outside diameter in
reasonable fractions of an inch ie 1-1/8" or 1-1/2" Yield strengths vary
but 50,000 psi is a reasonable number to start with.

-DOM (Drawn Over Mandrel)steel tubing is the same basic tube as above
except that it has been drawn over a mandrel to make it more uniform and
work harden it. Typically made from 1018 or 1026 steel. The work
hardening moves the yield up to perhaps 80kpsi

-4130 alloy (and some similar grades) This can be either welded or
seamless, runs around 90Kpsi yield if it is annealed, can be pushed to
over 200kpsi with heat treating.

Prices on the last 2 will be enough to take your breath away. But for
that price you will get uniform product, known specs, and mill
certification sheets to prove it.

I couldn't tell you which one you need to use without a lot more detail.
If this is for any kind of sanctioned racing, the tech inspectors will
have a lot to say about what you use. For our rules, we have to use 1026
DOM in certain specified diameters and wall thicknesses, with a mill
cert sheet handy to show the inspector. Then they use an ultrasonic
thickness gage to prove we are not lying.


wrote:
I need steel tubing to build a tubular chassis.

The problem is, I'm not sure what kind of metal my supplier is
selling.

they sell G.I. or galvanized iron which is what i'm interested in
getting......
problem is, I'm not sure if it's steel or iron.

of course I so prefer steel.

how do i know if it's steel or iron?