Identifying steel

[gjemba]

Is there any way to identify steel types. I found some steel rods at my parent's house. Since dad died in '97, I can't ask him what he had. It is not hot or cold rolled mild steel. It is shiny and is also magnetic. At least one or two of the pieces are. All the pieces are approximately 3' long and range from 5/16" to 1". I made a core seeting punch last weekend but did not try to harden it. I wonder if I should try to harden and temper a piece by water or oil quenching?

Thoughts.

Gary

[ANeat]

It would be nice if there was a color code painted on the end.

http://www.southerntoolsteel.com/color-codes.html

If not you may have to resort to a spark test and that would only get you in the ballpark.


If all that fails then run a basic heat treat test on another piece and see how it acts.

Heat to say 1500, quench, see if its "hard", temper it and see how it acts

[bohica2xo]

Unfortunately there is no real standard for color codes... I have a bunch of A2 that is baby blue on one end.

Heat a sample to 1550 - 1575 f & quench with a blast of air. If a file bounces off of it, it will air harden. A2, or another air hardening steel.

Soft? Try again with the same temperature, and oil quench. O1, 4150, etc should be too hard to file.

Still soft? Try again with a water quench.

Still soft? You have ferromanureite.

3 foot lenghts, ground or turned on the OD is probably drill rod of some type.

If it is magnetic, and does not rust easily it could be either 400 series stainless - or D2. How hard it gets will tell you which.

B.

[ANeat]

ferromanureite.

Is that like nobendum and unobtanium

[bohica2xo]

Pretty much.

Imagine the sort of guy that would spend the time to centerless grind a piece of rebar - then replace the stock someone had set aside for a personal project...

B.

[Willbird]

If the stuff is centerless ground "drill rod" then there are fairly strong odds that it is O-1 oil hardening, if your dad was an older guy, it might be water hardening. You can buy other steels centerless ground (such as A2) but O-1 is far more common these days than anything else. The Water hardening steels might actually be superior for some things IF you design you part so there are no sharp corners to act as stress risers and cause cracks when you heat treat and temper.

One shop where I worked the foreman had an OLD book from the 40's or so that explained different steels....and heat treat methods, Water hardening steel to make a bushing for example they used pressurised water to quench...with a jig to hold the part so the water flowed through the inside...this resulted in an almost glass hard surface...but the part got progressively softer below the surface for strength.

Here is a link that talks about the book I am referring to, they laid the types of steel out in a diamond shape, and told you which direction to move due to reason the steel you were already using was failing

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Carpen...els.-a03963298

Bill

[warf73]

Just guessing it could be a chrome molly.

[gjemba]

Guys,

Thanks for all the input. I will cut a small piece and experiment with different hardening methods.

Gary

[KYCaster]

Like Aneat said, a spark test can tell you a lot.....if you can find somebody who knows what they're doing. Call up machine shops and metal suppliers, you may find somebody who can give you a pretty good idea of what you have.

There was one old guy I worked with in a foundry who could ID anything they ever used in that shop. Fascinating stuff if you're into that kinda thing.

A Google search turned up a bunch of sites, lots of general stuff, but not much specific info.

Jerry

[c3d4b2]

In metallurgy class we had to polish and etch a piece of steel. We then took a picture of the grain structure and then we had to identify the composition of the steel by going through a book with pictures of steel grain structures.

At work we take samples to the lab and they have several analytical tools that will identify the components of the sample.