Blacksmith: Where and what (tool) steel to buy

[last revised/updated 2020_09_27]

Foreword

This series of posts is for novice to intermediate blacksmiths and attempts to be succinct and useful. If you find it useful, drop me a note in the comments.

Blacksmith: Where and what steel to buy

When you are just getting started, visits to farm, estate, and garage sales or a local junkyard can provide easy (and cheap) access to the mild, medium, and high carbon steel alloys you need to learn and make your first tools and projects. Because it has already been hardened, used tool steel requires the extra step of annealing before forging.

For tool steel, the spark test will give you an idea how much carbon is in it. But you can never be quite sure what steel alloy you're working with. Some alloys can be normalized. Others cannot. Each alloy will anneal, harden, and temper at different temperature ranges to different levels of hardness. Because you rarely find an unlimited supply of said mystery metal, by the time you figure out how best to work and heat treat it... it is usually gone. And you're on to figuring out the next bit of mystery metal.

When you need a reliable supply of mild steel, your local steel supplier is likely the best and lowest cost solution. Do a google search on: steel near me. And sift through the results. Your best bet are the steel suppliers that sell 20' sticks. But that may only be an option if you have a truck with a rack. Here in Atlanta, GA the nearest one to the author is Steelmart. 

When you visit your local steel supplier, be sure to ask if they have a "drop" room or drop yard. You can often get significant discounts on the bits they have left over after making custom cuts for other customers.

Your local metal fabricators, mechanics, and machinists may also present opportunities for bits and scraps. You would be surprised how much gets thrown out or given away to scrap metal recyclers.

Consistent and Predictable Results

However, if you want to be able to develop the ability to provide consistent and predictable results, when you're making tools it is good to work one specific steel alloy until you've mastered it... Then move on to picking specific alloys for specific purposes. 

In Mark Aspery's book series The Skills of  A Blacksmith, he recommends using 4130 or 4140 for most hand held tools: punches, drifts, chisels, butchers, stakes, and fullers and for hammers, top and bottom tools. 41xx is relatively inexpensive. Another benefit of this approach is that all your tooling shares the same characteristic hardness and toughness. So the face of your 4140 hammer won't get scarred by your S7 punches and chisels.

There are horses for courses. Different steel alloys have different properties. You can look the steel alloy's properties up on www.MatWeb.com. Some alloys can be normalized. Others cannot. Each alloy has different temperature ranges at which to anneal, harden, and temper, and produce a different range of resulting Rockwell hardness.
 
4140
Melting: 2580°F
Normalizing: heat to 1550-1650°F and air cool
Annealing: heat to 1450-1550°F and cool 20°F/hour until 665°F then air cool
Hardening: heat to 1500-1550°F and quench in oil
Forging: heat to 1650-2200°F
Tempering: heat to range between 400-1300°F
Rockwell: HRC 22

When you are ready to buy an alloy or tool steel, your local steel supplier may not be the best deal. You may want to check out online suppliers. When comparing prices be sure to include shipping costs. Check to see if they have a local pickup option. Shipping steal is heavy and heavy costs. An online steal supplier with a  local pickup option is likely to be your lowest cost option.

Online Steel Suppliers (in alphabetical order):

Some of the online steel suppliers regularly allow you to sign up for and receive coupons and/or have customer reward programs.

Here in the Atlanta metropolitan area, OnlineMetals.com offers local pickup and sends out 15% coupons. That makes their prices very hard to beat.

Thank you for reading. Hopefully it has been helpful. If you have any feedback or thoughts you would like to share, please leave them in the comments below. If I've missed any great steel suppliers let me know.

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 17, 2022 at 9:33 AM

    NJ Steel Baron is beating all of their prices from what I see.

    ReplyDelete

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