recycling steels

[sardine]

Anyone know what scrapped stuff to look out for to salvage usefull hardenable engineering steels ?

 

[rtbcomp]

Leaf springs, files.

 

[Gareth0123]

Ground contact tillage equipment, worn bucket edges, tractor PTO shafts, solid drive shafts, muck/manure fork tines, Baler & forage harvester knives, Combine harvester rasp bars, loader pins, lawn mover blades, etc.

 

[roofman]

concrete breaker tooling

 

[Parm]

Plus one on leaf springs and files, I've got some leaf spring if you wNt, sure we can do a trade and only down the road

 

[skotl]

Leaf springs, files.

I'm on a 4x4 forum (www.l200forum.com, since you ask) and replacing the leafs (either cos we bust them, or to put in stronger ones) is very common.
The old springs tend to just get taken to the tip.

If leaf springs are useful to folks on here then I'd recommend signing up to landrover, l200, navara forums, etc. Honestly - we just ditch 'em (threw one snapped and one whole set in the bin a couple of months ago).

 

[Parm]

I'm on a 4x4 forum (www.l200forum.com, since you ask) and replacing the leafs (either cos we bust them, or to put in stronger ones) is very common.
The old springs tend to just get taken to the tip.

If leaf springs are useful to folks on here then I'd recommend signing up to landrover, l200, navara forums, etc. Honestly - we just ditch 'em (threw one snapped and one whole set in the bin a couple of months ago).

Leaf springs are like gold dust, they contain the right carbon content to make knives that maintain wickedly sharp edges

 

[skotl]

Wow. On the forum I mentioned, we send people toward vendors of replacement / sexier leafs. Nobody talks about what to do with the old knackered ones.
You should definitely target 4x4 forums, then. We bust leaf springs like they were made out of cardboard (which some of them appear to be). Offer someone £20 + P&P and they will likely bite your hand off.

 

[Parm]

It's strange isn't it, last year I really got into this and made myself a forge, bought an anvil etc etc, but cost of tool steel was prohibitive for me. Quick blast around the web and hey presto leaf springs are better than sliced bread. Gotta say I gotta a whole leaf from one side of the truck, it's quite long, very heavy and lots of layers. If I made a knife once a month it would last me a considerable number of years

One mans rubbish is another's gold

 

[Rocketman]

Old injection mould tools often just get weighed in for scrap after the moulding is no longer needed. There could be all sorts of tools steels on them.

 

[Gareth0123]

Damaged and worn circular saw blades, worn out and broken power hacksaw, and worn and snapped bandsaw blades are also very good sources of HSS & SHSS. I collect up damaged ones and none reshapenable ones from a large local timber mill, local steel stockists, a few tradesmen, and every time I go in with my cold cut saw blades for a resharpen, the local saw doctors always have a couple of very badly damaged blades for me.

I have a good friend who is a back garden, over charcoal, blade smith and he welcomes these old saw blades as knife making material.

 

[MrFluffy]

I had a spate of cutting parting tools out of old saw blades, the carbide tipped ones are brilliant in particular as you can always find one in decent shape still. I use insert parting tooling now though.
The other one is driveshafts & axle halfshafts. While you can't rely on the grade, they are usually of good quality and often respond to heat treatment well, and a handy diameter for large section boring bars, shafts, pushers and all sorts of stuff. I have a friend who runs a garage, and I raid his scrap bin every visit. Some massive pieces of bronze last time, out of the remains of a renault van gearbox.

 

[sardine]

I know someone with a big pile of old rusty pneumatic drill / concrete breaker bits, what steel would they be ?

I've got a few vehicle coil springs ?

 

[magnet]

I work in prosthetics and orthotics, we use alot of en9 among other things its a forgiving hardenable steel i've made some pretty good edge tools from it.

 

[paulmitchell1984]

has any body got any pics of their work from doping this, sounds quite interesting

 

[roofman]

I know someone with a big pile of old rusty pneumatic drill / concrete breaker bits, what steel would they be ?

I've got a few vehicle coil springs ?

theres a guy on youtube who makes broaching tooling from them