So, I am very new too blacksmithing. My day job is a heavy equipment operator at a steel mill here in Georgia. We roll flats, beams, channels, and angles. As you can imagine, we have tons of scrap. I literally have a treasure trove of things I could forge. What I’m most interested in however, is the drops we get after a sample is sent to QC. When we run flats, they cut a very small sample to test. Each sample is about 2 inches wide, and depending on what size flat we run, it can be 6" to 14" inches long. All of our flats meet a992/a572-50 grade. Can anyone tell me if this is a good steel to forge knives, hooks, etc.?
Hey welcome @Enmartin09
So from what my bit of research tells me, the carbon content is hovering around .4, but I think structural steel like you have may be variable. This is great steel for most common applications, forging knives or sharp tools, it’s not enough - you typically want more than .5 and many smiths go with .8 or higher when dealing with knives.
For hooks, and general purpose - absolutely, and actually this is more carbon than needed. If you run the flats thick enough (3/4" or more), .4 carbon is great for things such as drifts, punches, and other tools that don’t need to be super high carbon and will be put to some abuse. I have quite a few hammers that are 1045 (.45) and I make my top tools (punches, drifts) out of 1045. Tongs too are great to have a little carbon content in there.
Awesome! Thanks for the reply!
We run flats from 1/4 up to 2" thick. So have a lot of material to try and work with