Very small quantities of tool steel in the Phoenix area

McMaster Carr has a good website, they sell small quantities of various alloys of steel, reasonable prices.

Richard

Rick Cook wrote:

Buy drill rod. It should be available in your area - if not it is a common mail order item.

KBC Tools sells this stuff in flat or round.

Toolroom Accessories->Flat Stock or Toolroom Accessories->Drill Rod

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Thanks folks. I've been ordering the stuff from MSC and Texas Knifemakers' Supply, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a local source in the Phoenix area that won't laugh when you want to buy a piece of flat stock a foot or so long.

--RC

Find someone with a tired, worn out old mill file...

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

Try Capital metal South of I-10 on 48th St.

Joel. phx

Quick qwestDex search: Capital Metals Co

5150 S 48 St Phoenix, AZ 85040 (602) 454-1500

I'll second Capitol Metals. They have a good collection of steel and aluminum cut to convenient sizes. It's expensive though. If you can tell what you are looking at/holding, you can go root around in the warehouse in the scrap bins and stuff is a good bit cheaper for funky sized bits rather than 24x24 or 10' long stuff. I deal with them quite a bit since they are in walking distance of my job.

Davis Metals on Washington has better prices but you have to recognize everthing there, as far as I can tell.

Bob

I'm not a knifemaker myself, but have you tried OCS Steel? I hear it makes really good knives, and it's available cheap at almost any auto dismantling yard you can find...

(OCS = Old Chevy Spring - A hunk of an automotive leaf spring.)

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle... ;-)

-->--

What dimensions do you want? Ill be going by Reliable Tool this week. They have bins of the stuff. $4 a pound. Pay the exact total and the shipping and Ill pick you up what you need.

Email me with your snail mail addy and the sizes. Most of them tend to be .25x 3/8 x 2-3" long, or 3/8" by 1/2" x however long. No heat treating needed, but you will need a decent grinder. Mostly used HSS or Cobalt lathe bits. Hell..Ive got about 150 lbs of stuff at home I can dig out.all shapes and sizes..but its probably rusty.

Gunner

"In my humble opinion, the petty carping levied against Bush by the Democrats proves again, it is better to have your eye plucked out by an eagle than to be nibbled to death by ducks." - Norman Liebmann

I've used leaf springs for some projects, but what I'm interested in is small stuff for small blades. Strip, small bar, drill rod --that kind of thing. That way I don't have to do a much cutting out before I get to the shaping.

--RC

You should try visiting tool steel suppliers, as opposed to "steel suppliers" (go and actually visit, maybe with doughnuts in hand). Here, there are places like Uddeholm, Crucible, etc.

Ask if they sell off-cuts. I would be specific about what you want. W1 or O1 or whatever. If you talk the talk, they'll be more likely to help you out.

HTH.

Regards,

Robin

Do any of you Arizona types know where I can get very small quantities of tool steel in the Phoenix area.

I'm making small carving tools, knives, etc. by hand so I can use pieces that would normally be scrap and cutoffs. However I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount for the material. Ideally I'd like to get some key stock because it takes less work to form.

The type of tool steel doesn't particularly matter as long as it's something I can heat treat at home.

Go to an auto wrecker or spring shop and get a few coil and leaf springs. They are quite good steel. I have made numerous tools for both metal and wood work from OCS (Old Chevy Spring), heat treated them at home using typical old blacksmith techniques and been well satisfied with the results. For example:

On coil springs, I cut of one or so rings and heat and straighten (hammer and anvil). Heat to "cherry red" and bury in ashes to anneal. Saw/machine/grind/file to required shape. Heat to cherry red and quench in oil. Clean to bare metal and gently heat to a brown (hard) or purple (not quite so hard but tougher) and quench again.

After he broke his third Snap-on cold chisel, I made one out of truck-size coil spring for my mechanic son-in-law. This was several years ago. He says it may soon need to be sharpened.

Living in Sydney, Australia, (as I do) I can't help with local suppliers, but, (if you're looking for flatter - thinner stock):

Don't forget saw blades. My appetite for high carbon steel is well-fed by salvaging broken power hacksaw blades and cold cut-off saw blades.

Heck - the hard-back hacksaw blades are cheap enough to buy brand new! They're (from memory) about 1.5mm (wassat? about 60 thou?) thick, an inch-and-a-bit wide and 12" long, and are very nice steel.

The cold cut-off saw blades cost way too much to buy just for breaking up, (about AUD$80 IIRC) but fortunately (!) they are easy to break, so I have a few for recycling. They are about 400mm dia and 3mm thick, and very good steel. Hard as blazes. (Brittle, too, but that's easy to fix).

Thanks for the coil spring idea. Thick I'll try that for thicker stock.

-- Jeff

I'll add old circular saw blades. These have been kicking around our place for years. Nowadays I'm using carbide tipped circular saw blades for all my woodwork. A couple years ago I saw a magazine article on cabinet scrapers and decided I'd like to try one. I cut a piece about

4" square out of an blade with my plasma cutter, rough dressed the edges on the bench grinder and finished it up with diamond hones. I made a burring tool from a piece of drill rod and now have a good scraper.

Ted

Anyplace that sells Starret tools can get flat stock tool steel of various flavors in 12" lengths. Check the phone book for Machine Tools Supplies.

Cheers Trevor Jones