Making Knives/Swords/Daggers Using Old Leaf Springs!

S

SDTruckSprings

Guest
Hey first time post on the forum, was cruisin the net the other day on my break at work and came across a few threeds mentioning swords & knives they made using Spring Steel from old leaf springs. This totally got my motors going as the company I work for we sell new leaf springs so naturally we come across many many old leaf springs that usually just sit there waiting to be scraped. After reading some articles I found out spring steel is a commonly used material for sword & knife making. So I decided to write an article on how it's done, as well as some pictures from customers or we found on the net of swords & knives made from Old Leaf Springs. You can check out the article HERE , hope you enjoy the article and find it usefull, again THANK YOU to all the contributes of this forum for inspiring the idea!
 
Number one, it would be nice to know if you are going to forge blades or work strictly by stock removal. You could use old springs but be aware that they often have stress fractures in them that will ruin a blade. Being springs it's a pretty safe bet that the steel will also be good for making blades but, as with all mystery metal, heat treating will be by trial and error for each piece of steel or each bundle of spring leafs in the spring assembly. If your boss is willing to sell you cut offs from the job, you could start out with a known steel-I'm sure the boss would tell you what it is-and there should be any stress fractures in it.

Doug Lester
 
just about every kukri,parang, kriss ect. that you ever seen were made from a old car spring. it's a good and cheap scorse of usable knife and tool making steel. forging is probbly the best way to use it. just because you will want to anneal and flatten your work piece. no matter how you work it you will have to heattreat it .
 
Nice article, even though we don't "melt" the steel and then pound it to shape. It's nice to see mention of the craft.

I'd like to see you guys package up your 5160 cut-offs and scrap to sell to knife-makers. As has been mentioned before, using old springs can be tricky because we don't know the exact type of metal we're heat-treating. But if you were to guarantee your odds and ends as being 5160 or 1084, or whatever, that would make our job a lot easier and I'm sure you'd find a market for it. Even if you were to package it up and sell it to a retailer like Knife Dogs....

Think about it!
 
Nice article, even though we don't "melt" the steel and then pound it to shape. It's nice to see mention of the craft.

I'd like to see you guys package up your 5160 cut-offs and scrap to sell to knife-makers. As has been mentioned before, using old springs can be tricky because we don't know the exact type of metal we're heat-treating. But if you were to guarantee your odds and ends as being 5160 or 1084, or whatever, that would make our job a lot easier and I'm sure you'd find a market for it. Even if you were to package it up and sell it to a retailer like Knife Dogs....

Think about it!

I don't think I've heard of too many guys trying to "cold forge" a leaf spring either... especially without annealing it first ;) granted, even that wouldn't help too much.
I could be wrong.

You're idea on selling the scraps from a known vendor who might be aware of the specific steel types is a great idea. Especially if they're just going to end up in a scrap yard anyway.
 
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