Stephen Olivo

A good use for a 3 lb like that is to anneal it as best you can then handle it and use it as a hammer solely for striking tooling. I have one of those and they work great after a good anneal on my fully hardened and tempered tooling.

on the pictures it looks like you are holding the camera to close for it to focus on the piece your trying to take a picture of. Try moving the camera back to about half your arm length or more.

IF you can case harden them they work for quite a lot of tools. You can also weld higher carbon steel to the mild steel. The mild steel becomes the tool body and the higher carbon for the edge of the working tool. Knives, axes, struck tools, hammers, chisels, plains, saws, scissors, Just about anything you can think of. Mild steel also does great for springs for post vices and saw frames as in jewelers and hacksaw. 5160 doesn't like to weld to itself so a little bit of mild between the 5160 allows a nice easy weld. Good way to use up leaf springs off of vehicles. You can also make tables for around the workshop out of mild steel and fixtures and vices out of mild steel. Anvils can be welded up of various mild steel pieces and then faced with a plate of 5160 truck leaf spring as in my stake anvil. It can be used as rivets, screws, bolts and nails. You can use it to make blister steel, or as an ingredient in any number of crucible steels. You can remelt it in an Aristotle furnace to make cast iron or steel. Great for letter openers or bottle openers…..etc….etc….ad nausium. Thats were I will quit. It is only limited by your imagination and understanding of the properties of the material.

I have used flux like that and it works best on parts that need heavy forging after you weld them as it leaves a bumpy surface if it doesn't get touched enough by the hammer. I have used it to close up voids in my first damascus billet when I was forging my wife's ring out of it. Worked great. If I was doing flower and leaf welds I wouldn't use it as the stem would be left with this bumpy surface so often I use it in conjunction with my borax the iron included flux used directly on the faces to be welded and only there. The borax then used on the rest of the metal that will be up to a welding heat to try and protect it from scaling away as I weld the parts together. Just another tool in the box to help with my welds.

You can do the entire weld of cable with twisting then just work it into a bar at a welding heat. Thats how the marking knife I linked was made. Look up flux less welding. It is gaining some steam as of late. It has to do with the atmosphere inside the forge. Wrong atmosphere and you could have a very bright looking piece of steel that has oxide layers between the steel. Try it with a higher fuel to o2 ratio.

you have two different oils. If you have used canola and found it works well for this kind of steel then I would stick with it. There is no telling how the other oil might change things. That being said you have an unknown steel so all bets are off.

I have used muriatic acid for all of my etching. I have found no difference. 2 cable pieces http://ipneto.deviantart.com/art/Cable-test-peice-403623604 http://ipneto.deviantart.com/art/Striking-knife-for-wood-work-403630540 not the best photos of them but best I can do at the time.

nicely carried out. I like the effect you got.

always fun to captor these fun moments.

I thank both of you for your posts. An interesting thing to read through. I did find this post interesting both in its original content and in that added by the discussion. Nice work on the spike. I found the lock braking thing interesting. Just another reason I check this site daily. Have a good night everyone.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks but thats usually where I start. Google can be a boon at times.

interesting hadn't heard about salt. I have used muriatic and vinegar…now I will have to try salt.

very nice. I am a fan.

Nice clean work. I love it