Good recycled bladesteel source

[cwhittington]

I am always looking for useable scrap and a guy told me a while back that bedframes are high-carbon steel and I didn't put much stock in it since I had never heard that before or come across any mention of bedrames as a source of decent blade steel on the net, but I got a piece the other day and put it to the grinder for a spark test and I was amazed to see the tell-tale spark pattern of reasonably high-carbon steel. I got on the net and looked up bed frames, and sure enough, at least some bedframes are high-C. I haven't done anything else yet, but thought that I should post this for anyone who could benefit from it. It seems like it would be good for damascus too, but I still haven't found out any specific steel types that are used for bedframes. Perhaps someone out there knows?

 

[peter nap]

Didn't you ever watch the wood wright shop. He made corner chisels out of bed frames. I have grabbed them from the dump ever since!

 

[mete]

Recycled recycled ? Somewhere I heard that bed frames are made from recycled railroad tracks ! Railroad tracks certainly have a good bit of alloying elements since the tracks have to support great weight. I have welded track and know that it takes special procedures to prevent cracking due to the alloying elements.

 

[Pete Allan]

I picked a piece of bed rail out of the dumpster at work and did some HT tests on it.
It would not harden at all in oil and with a water quench it was a little harder to file than before.
I think no two bed frames are the same metal though because there have been reports of the steel getting stone hard. Give it a test maybe yours will harden just fine.