Mystery Steel

CDHumiston

CDHumiston

Well-Known Member
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.
 

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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.
 
CDHumiston said:
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...
Click to expand...
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
 
Sean Jones said:
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.
Click to expand...
$50 sounds like a good deal to me. Especially if you mind some mystery metal in larger pieces.

Sent from my Champion Forge using Tapatalk
 
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