Mystery Steel

CDHumiston

KNIFE MAKER
I need a little help. I won a piece of steel a long while back, maybe 10 years. I can't find any of the original posts and I have no idea what it is.

Does anyone know of a way to possibly determine the steel type? I want to make a knife out of it, but heat treat is going to be an issue...
 
It probably costs in excess of a hundie nowadays to send in a piece of steel for analysis. It can be done with something called x-ray diffraction readily and with the sophisticated databases of today they can likely pinpoint the manufacturer.

That said, if you know anyone at a junkyard, they often have x-ray fluorescence handheld units that they use to identify different metals in the scrap pile. That won't be near as accurate, but they can be surprisingly informative.

Good luck. I have steel here like that, but I'm certain it's either 440C or 154CM and I can readily find a crossover temp to austenitize either successfully.
 
Yep! I was going to say the same thing. An XRF is probably the easiest way to go.

If you wanna make everyone else jealous, you can pick up a handheld XRF on Ebay for a few grand, make sure it's meant for identifying metal, though! It's be pretty bad if you spend all that money and you end up with one designed for scanning rocks.
 

Here's a place that rents them (first result that showed up when I searched XRF rental)

I should add, it's actually an XRF Analyzer. Applied Science on YouTube has a great video explaining how it works. Sort of long format, but if you're interested, the video is out there.
 
Last place I worked had an XRF Analyzer in the QC Department. Cost something like 20 grand, but like everything else they've come down quite a bit in price. But still too steep for most of us.

I worked with it a few times and it was very accurate. The guy who usually used it, quit his job, bought one of his own, and began offering independent analysis. Last I checked he was doing quite well.

So...maybe check around in the SoCal area to see if you have some one like that in your area. I think he was charging $50 per analysis. But that was four years ago.
 
I need a little help. I won a piece of steel a long while back, maybe 10 years. I can't find any of the original posts and I have no idea what it is.

Does anyone know of a way to possibly determine the steel type? I want to make a knife out of it, but heat treat is going to be an issue...
Waaaaaay back in 2010 (Jan 12) you posted about having won some L-6 and were looking for somebody to heat treat it. Maybe that's it?
-Mark
 
Last place I worked had an XRF Analyzer in the QC Department. Cost something like 20 grand, but like everything else they've come down quite a bit in price. But still too steep for most of us.

I worked with it a few times and it was very accurate. The guy who usually used it, quit his job, bought one of his own, and began offering independent analysis. Last I checked he was doing quite well.

So...maybe check around in the SoCal area to see if you have some one like that in your area. I think he was charging $50 per analysis. But that was four years ago.
$50 sounds like a good deal to me. Especially if you mind some mystery metal in larger pieces.

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