Anybody know of a source for carbon drill rod in sizes between AWG 65 and 72 in 36 inch lengths? Did a search for steel and looked up Buffalo Precision and Windsor Steel, called several houses and no, Small Parts does not carry it either.
I need to anneal, shape and harden it for gongs, and piano wire does not sound as clear drill rod after I am done.
If anyone can - I bet these guys can!
I have used them before - they do normal drill blanks and specials and have unique.
Nice people.
Martin
Brain cramp. Drill sizes 72, 70, 66 and 65. Thanks.
Piano wire does not not have the clear sound of drill rod after all the procedures.
No, these are gongs for pocket watches (minute repeaters, quarter repeaters, clock watches, etc.)
Tried em (and one or two others). The American drill houses use HSS for the drills smaller than 52. My oven only goes to 2000 F so I can't heat treat HSS. One guy said he could grind 8 in lengths of o-1 to the needed sizes but it would add $2 per length. Given I want 4 X 36 inches of each size, this quickly adds up.
From the looks at the catalogs on the websites, I suspect American production does not go below 1/16th in carbon drill rod. Then you have to go to straightened piano wire which does not work in this application.
Have you tried a Casenite immersion heat treat? You should be able to get full penetration and quite a bit of carbon into just about any steel that small.
Start with generic piano wire and do a full hard case hardening. The stuff will be as brittle as glass. You will need to figure out the carbon bake times and tempering.
All I can say is that the tones are VERY different. I don't even go to purple, I leave em straw.
I have an electric oven that hits 2000 F. I bake the wires at 1500 F; form em, heat to cherry, quench, temper to 440 F (good 45 minutes).
I did not know the mod elasticity and density were the same. I thank you for your comments.
I suppose it could be the "piano wire" I am using; but it was sold to me
*as* piano wire.
For some reason, piano wire(at least the stuff I've got) doesn't respond too well to this. Annealing works fine, you can anneal the ends of a piece to form loops and such really easily. When you go to reharden, though, you get a really coarse grain structure and the piece usually breaks or shatters, even after tempering. For winding springs, I wind the stuff as-is and cold.
O-1 drill rod is NOT straight carbon steel, there's some other alloying elements in there. All drill rod isn't the same composition, I don't know what the O.P. has on hand. I've even had some "drill rod" from the hardware store that was nothing of the sort, it was drawn steel shafting, not hardenable at all, but was sold as drill rod. Nasty stuff, unturnable, unhardenable. Since then, I don't buy anything like that without a pedigree and heat treating instructions. For chimes, the O.P. probably wants as hard as he can get without the piece shattering.
Stan
Brownells sells a reasonable range of sizes of W-1 and O-1 drill rod. Their catalog has the specs on the material, complete and detailed instructions for hardening and tempering. The same catalog page also has handy dandy tables of annealing temps, metal melting points, and tempering colors for carbon steel.
Brownells will send their catalogs to anyone, even the totally inept. That is evidenced by the bold faced warning, "DO NOT USE A MICROWAVE!" in the instructions for tempering.
They also sell some mild steel, brass, and stainless steel rounds, squares, and flat bar.
And they sell assortments of coiled, straight, and flat spring steel stock for making springs.
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