DIYbanter - making your own tools

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making your own tools

Car leaf springs are high carbon steel as well as coil springs.

making your own tools

I think you will find that the leaf and coil springs these days are
something like 5160, which is a lot fancier than a simple high carbon
steel. It is a 0.60% Carbon steel with about 1% Manganese and about 1 %
Chromium steel.
You would want to oil qunech, not water quench when hardening.
Still a good choice for many cutting tools. If you find really old
car springs (30's or 40's and older) thay may be plain carbon steel).
I have been told that GM has used 5160 pretty much exclusively for many
many years.
--------------------------------------------------

wrote:

Car leaf springs are high carbon steel as well as coil springs.

making your own tools

NoOne N Particular wrote:

Or rebar??

Unknown random steel - useless for toolmaking, as it's far too variable.
Car springs either are, or might as well be, 5160. If you heat treat a
car spring as if it's 5160, the odds are excellent that things will
work.

Rebar will meet its tensile strength test, and you know nothing else
about it. You know a tiny bit more about rebar that's rated as weldable,
but still not much.

wrote:

What about brake drums and rotors?

Usually cast - useless for cutters. Large ones make a nice base for a
grinder.

If you go to one of the machine tool suppliers (MSC, McMaster-Carr,
etc.), you can find extremely nice stuff as drill rod (round) and tool
steel flats (rectangular), in your choice of various formulations (W1
and O1 being typically the most useful for home-shop processing). In the
smaller sizes the prices are quite reasonable, considering that it's
supplied at a known size, as a known alloy, in a known condition.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by

making your own tools

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.

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

remember we mostly do this for fun. A good gouge will last most of us for
years. Say for argument's sake I get 5 years out of a roughing gouge. That
will be between 12 and 15 dollars a year. Sounds fine. On the other hand I
would use my home made Oland tools over a bowl gouge any day. (and do). 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. :-)

--
God bless and safe turning
Darrell Feltmate
Truro, NS Canada
http://aroundthewoods.com
http://roundopinions.blogspot.com
"Ecnerwal" wrote in message
...
NoOne N Particular wrote:

Or rebar??

Unknown random steel - useless for toolmaking, as it's far too variable.
Car springs either are, or might as well be, 5160. If you heat treat a
car spring as if it's 5160, the odds are excellent that things will
work.

Rebar will meet its tensile strength test, and you know nothing else
about it. You know a tiny bit more about rebar that's rated as weldable,
but still not much.

wrote:

What about brake drums and rotors?

Usually cast - useless for cutters. Large ones make a nice base for a
grinder.

If you go to one of the machine tool suppliers (MSC, McMaster-Carr,
etc.), you can find extremely nice stuff as drill rod (round) and tool
steel flats (rectangular), in your choice of various formulations (W1
and O1 being typically the most useful for home-shop processing). In the
smaller sizes the prices are quite reasonable, considering that it's
supplied at a known size, as a known alloy, in a known condition.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by

making your own tools

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:21:50 -0800, NoOne N Particular
wrote:

wrote:
Car leaf springs are high carbon steel as well as coil springs.

Or rebar??

As far as I've ever heard, rebar is random metal- you might get
something good, or it might be useless.

Worth a shot, if you've got plenty of time and don't mind taking a
little risk. Same story with railroad spikes.

Though in reality, if you can find a local supplier that carries it,
new high-carbon steel is not very expensive. I think I paid $.60 a
pound the last time I got it, and it's a lot easier to just use new
metal that is about the right size than it is to entirely reshape
scrounged stuff.

making your own tools

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:43:15 GMT, Ecnerwal
wrote:

NoOne N Particular wrote:

Or rebar??

Unknown random steel - useless for toolmaking, as it's far too variable.
Car springs either are, or might as well be, 5160. If you heat treat a
car spring as if it's 5160, the odds are excellent that things will
work.

Rebar will meet its tensile strength test, and you know nothing else
about it. You know a tiny bit more about rebar that's rated as weldable,
but still not much.

wrote:

What about brake drums and rotors?

Usually cast - useless for cutters. Large ones make a nice base for a
grinder.

Also useful for firepots on homemade coal forges, from what I gather.

If you go to one of the machine tool suppliers (MSC, McMaster-Carr,
etc.), you can find extremely nice stuff as drill rod (round) and tool
steel flats (rectangular), in your choice of various formulations (W1
and O1 being typically the most useful for home-shop processing). In the
smaller sizes the prices are quite reasonable, considering that it's
supplied at a known size, as a known alloy, in a known condition.

making your own tools

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.

making your own tools

"Prometheus" wrote in message
...
(snip)
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.

Can't argue with that. Oneof these days I have to get to the box of scraper
blades and stuff a buddy gave me. Great tool material. 1/4" and 3/8" thick
HSS. Should make some great scraper blades. Cost? A cup of coffee, a coupel
of ornaments and some great conversation. I win.
--
God bless and safe turning
Darrell Feltmate
Truro, NS Canada
http://aroundthewoods.com
http://roundopinions.blogspot.com
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. :-)