Is rebar a legit material or just a budget workaround?

I've put a fair bit of rebar thru my forge over the years, mostly the grade 60 stuff from the yard down the road. It works fine at a good heat but that window is narrow. I made a bottle opener and a few wall hooks from one stick and the ribs took forever to hammer out flat, which honestly is half the work with that stuff. The other half is paying attention at the anvil because it really does split at the edges if you keep hitting it once the color drops. I learned that one the expensive way on a pot rack hook I had to scrap and redo. Where I land is decorative and light duty only. Garden hooks, trivets, that sort of thing. For anything that takes a real shock load like a hammer head or a pry bar I buy known steel, ussually a chunk of 1045 from the steel supplier. Rebar can be all over the place from heat to heat and even along one stick, so I never fully trust what I am holding.

On the food question I am firmly in the no camp. Unknown alloy plus whatever coating might be on it, that is not somthing I want near my family's dinner. A serving fork costs me maybe six dollars of known steel and an hour of work, so the savings on rebar there is basicly nothing. For yard art and practice pieces though, a five dollar stick is hard to beat.

I came down on the other side of this years ago and stopped buying rebar altogether. For a couple bucks more I get a known stick of mild steel from the metal supplier in town, and I stopped guessing about heat windows, cracking edges, and whatever mystery alloy showed up in that batch. My time at the anvil is the expensive part of any project, not the steel, so saving three dollars on material and spending an extra hour fighting unpredictable stock never added up for me. My other gripe is finishing. Rebar always seemed to pit and scale in a way that made cleanup miserable, and any piece I wanted to look decent took twice the grinding. Garden stakes and hook blanks are about the only thing I'd still use it for, and even then mostly beacuse a friend keeps handing me offcuts. On the kitchen question I am firmly in the no camp. I made one spatula from unknown scrap early on, and even though it probaly would have been fine, the not-knowing bugged me every time I used it. Now anything that touches food gets new bar stock with a known grade, full stop. A serving fork only costs me a few dollars in material, and I get to stop thinking about it the moment it lands on a plate.

So my line is practice and rustic yard stuff only. If someone else will use it or eat off it, known steel every time.

The one thing that got me with rebar was the epoxy coating. First time I threw a coated stick in the forge that stuff burned off and stunk up the whole shop for an hour. Now I grind the coating off before it goes anywhere near the fire, saves the headache. I mostly use it for campfire tripods and roasting sticks over the fire pit, wich is outdoors anyway. Hasn't failed me yet, though I keep it away from anything I swing or stand on.

One thing I figured out by accident is to quit fighting the ribs and use them. I twisted a few pieces for candle holders and garden stakes and the ribs actualy give the twist a cool ridged look, like factory corduroy. Half my yard art now is just rebar with a hot twist and a curl on the end, no hammering flat at all. Anyone else doing that, or are you all grinding them smooth first?

Same here with the twists, I quit flattening ribs years ago. Made a batch of tomato stakes and a couple of shepherd's crooks for hanging lanterns, just drew the ends enough to curl and left the rest ribbed. They've been stuck in the garden beds through four winters now and no rust issues beyond surface patina, which actually looks good on them. I keep the food stuff out of the rebar pile too, no argument there.