Railroad spikes

Railroad spikes and Railroad spikes

Todd Hughes

>There are different types of Railroad spikes, most that you come across are Mild Steel or even Wrought iron if old. These could not be used as a cutting tool. Now a lesser number of spikes were made out of High Carbon steel,[ been told they were used on curved track sections, don't know ], and in my experance they will be stamped with a HC. These could be used as a cutting tool after shaping and hardening/tempering.

... I would spark test any spike befor going to the trouble to make somthing out of them to see what it was made out of.

...I've seen quite a few knives made out of railroad spikes, persumbly the HC ones.In my opinon kind of goofy but some people like them I guess I have used them to make a couple small axes but wasn't really happy with them look wise. I used more of the old ones as a source of wrought iron, used to make main spring vises and always made them out of a spike.

I think that old files would be a more reliable and more desirable source of steel for making tools that wood workers might use.....Todd

Re: Railroad spikes and Railroad spikes

Ellis Walentine

>Thanks for that, Todd. If the older ones were wrought iron, couldn't you forge-weld them to tool steel to make Damascus tools? That's something I always wanted to do.

Ellis

Re: Railroad spikes and Railroad spikes

Ron Bauman

>I'm not a metallurgist, but on occasion I've used old files and truck leaf springs to fabricate tools. The files you can get at a flea market for cheap and most old time bone yards will sell you a set of leaf springs.

Re: Railroad spikes

thomd

>The reason there is interest in railroad spikes is that it is a reasonable source of high carbon, low carbon steel: It's not high carbon, but it's the next best thing, possibly 1040 (here is a guy calling it 1030+):

http://bronksknifeworks.com/railroad-spike.htm.

I guess historically it may have been used for knives and camp hatchets, whether or not that is true, now that most structural steel seems to be made abroad, it's getting harder to find the basic scrap a blacksmith uses for his projects.

This whole area got a lot more interesting with the development of superquench, a byproduct of OSHA rules that required Sandia Labs to find something other than the lye quench they were using. With SQ one can harden mild steel to hardness levels that people who buy chisels in blister packs are possibly familiar with. Not worth it for mainline tools but just the hardness ticket for stuff like anvils and hammers. Also for hot chisels, or infrequently used tools for carving soft wood, making cutting dies, and so forth. I used SQ to make a draw bore, the only way to beat the Chinese on the price!

SQ hardening is a one shot process wherein the point total is on the low side so no tempering is required. This makes the whole process fast and easy and the sort of thing where the tool can remain handled but adjusted for different uses.

Nothing other than mild steel should be quenched in SQ, the results of sticking HC steel in there are explosive. Even mild steel hums like a mad hornet in SQ.

What is Damascus? Wow there is a hotly contested subject. Originally if was a multi layered combo of hard and soft steel, where normally a layered pattern is revealed when the steel is ground or etched. These days we have some really interesting artist making Damascus out of everything from nuts and ball bearings to powdered metals that come out with advertising or multi colours on them, to nickel stainless Damascus, or possible electric discharge milling is used to inlay a pattern. That propane BBQ isn't just for the hot dogs any more. Forging tool steel to wrought iron is like what they do with bimetal edges on Japanese tools etc...

There are a bunch of names, that I must admit I make little effort to keep up with, that refer to decorative patterns that may be present in steel as a result of the nature of the steel or it's heat treating (vs. engraving, plating etc...). These are sometimes confused with Damascus. These include:

- Damascus, as mentioned

- Mokume which is like Damascus but non-hardened used in small sculptures, jewelry, fittings on blades, and some woodworking tools, above the edge.

- San Mai, which is a hardened edge inserted into a body as with old western axes, and some Japanese knives, Sloyd knives etc... (not sure whether there is a separate word for where the hard edge is on the outside as with a chisel, but that isn't likely going to be mixed up with Damascus). This can look quite decorative in simple wrought iron if the iron welds are eroded to create a grain pattern. must be a separate name for that.

- And finally we have the Hamon which is the line between the Martensitic stuff and the Pealitic stuff in the blade (I think) when hardening is differential. Simple example is when the blade of uniform steel is only partially immersed in the quench. But there are a lot of ways of doing it, including clay coatings or torch treatments. It's a Hamon if it's intentionally decorative, it's a temper line more generally.

Re: Railroad spikes and Railroad spikes

thomd

>Springs are normally 5160, not super hard but super tough. Nice survival knife stuff. And certainly one can make tools out of them. There is a lot of talk about the high performance knife relative to 5160, but the knife makers who are using it are not interested in our kind of performance (mostly edge holding). They are interested in edge holding in blades that won't chip when severely bent out of shape.

Files may be W1 which is great stuff. Some of the new stock is case hardened mild steel, not worth the trouble as files or tool steel. So as mentioned yard sales are a wonderful source for old files that are good steel.

Re: Railroad spikes

Chris Scholz

>Something like this?

Re: Railroad spikes *LINK*

Dave Burnard

>FYI - The original "Damascus steels" were actually crucible steels, and were not pattern welded as thomd described - the pattern was a crystalline structure inherent in the crucible steel ingot itself. There are lots of articles about how the original steels were made, and how such ingots can be reproduced today.

Here's an interesting paper:


Crucible steel

Re: Railroad spikes

Philip Duffy

>Ellis, I attended a knife makers conference a couple years back and one of the demos was making a hatchet out of a hc spike. He also made a peace pipe. The man at the forge/anvil is a great custom knife maker who sells his items in the $,$$$ range. Pretty impressive hatchets, to say the least. Phil