rail road spike knives

[trikegeoff]

hello all
i have been reading alot about knives made out of old railroad spikes.
i have been able to find a few of these spikes from southern nsw.
my questions are, how do i know if it is good steel?
how do i work it? i have very limited forging experiance.
and are rail road spikes all about 100mm long? or are the ones i managed to get just been cut off?

thank you all for your help

[pdccr]

The ones i have are around the same length. But some do vary, pm tracker or kimall they have done it before.

[kimall]

You rang..........
Mate all the spikes I have come across have been about 100mm but I have been told of late that the spikes that they use at stations and cross roads are a bit better steel so not sure now if they are all the same or not.
The steel in them is not as good as alot of other scrap that you can get like old leaf springs or files and that is prob a better place to start as you can get material that is closer in size so wont need as much hammering.I make them because I love the look of them and people find them interesting but make no mistake they do take some hammering to get them stretched out to knife length.I have been heat treating mine in very light almost freezing oil and this seems to be putting enough hardness in the blade to make a usable knife.What forge set up have you got?
Cheers KIM

[otis.drum]

geoff,
old cross cut saw blades, files, old car springs which are already hard are better steel

For the tempering of steel;
To anneal; anneal the steel before trying to shape it. Heat it up to red hot and let it cool very slowly (hours). may have to do it several times to get it soft.

To retemper; first you heat the steel to orange then quench in water, brine or oil, then to temper so it will not be brittal, heat to about 400c and let cool.

a few links

http://www.anvilfire.com/index.php?body ... ilfire.com

http://www.primitiveways.com/pt-knives-1.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_4578672_harden- ... steel.html

[trikegeoff]

thank you guys
i love this site for the fast replies to my stupid questions. and also for the inteligent answers.
my forge set up consists of a steel pipe dug into the ground. an old bbq grate over the top of this. four besser blocks surounding the grate and a fire in the middle. i have a hair dryer in the pipe to fan the fire. it is very primative but given my forging/knife making experiance it is the ultimate.
i dont have an anvil but i flogg the hot metal around on a section of railway track.
i have only forged up one knife using this set up out of an old rabbit trap. (i am yet to finnish this knife).
i would have never thought of using railway spikes to make knives except for the recent posts on this site (and they look cool).
i was down around cootamundra nsw and picked a few of these up and thought id give it a go. they are replacing the wooden track sleepers and there is heaps of them lying around.
i will do atleast one of these spike knives but then ill try a file knife.

[jindydiver]

geoff,
old cross cut saw blades, files, old car springs ................
heat to about 400c and let cool.

Otis
If you heat the steels you have listed to 400C you will have soft steel again no good for knives. L6, W2, O1 and 5160 (the steels that make the things you list) all achieve good knife hardness between 200 and 250C

[otis.drum]

thanks for clearing that up jindy, i was just passing on info i found elsewhere. apparently 400c, keeping the hardness and reducing the brittleness.

but there's plenty of wrong info out there, so thanks. that's good for me to know too.

[jindydiver]

It is common with the advent of the internet, we get all the info we can handle and much of it is from OS sources. Note that the figure you saw 400 is around the fahrenheit value for 200C. If NASA can't control for conversion errors then it is easy enough for us to get them muddled up

[otis.drum]

i was thinking when i read your correction that 400f (instead of 400c) was near to the figures you gave.