On Sun, 9 Nov 2014 09:47:38 -0800 (PST), Sandarpan Mukherjee
wrote:

As mentioned in the subject, I'm looking for steel suitable to be used to make an Olympic barbell, 2.2m long and 28mm in diameter. I'm torn between chrome-moly steel and spring steel. Again I'm not a metallurgist and know very little about these things. The bar will be at least 190000 psi tensile strength with 170000 psi yield strength. I'm also looking for decent machining characteristics so that I can put a knurl on it and cut grooves to attach sleeves.

Here are some steels I've thought about

SAE 4340 (Heat treated to the required Tensile strength)
SAE 4140
EN 47??

Thanks

Those are extraordinarily high strength requirements. No steel
hardened to those levels will be easy to machine; probably
near-impossible to knurl.

You can machine it in a normalized or annealed state, and then have it
heat-treated. But are you sure you need that level of strength? What
kind of load will be put on it to require that much strength?

--
Ed Huntress