rail road steel

saint o'killers

saint o'killers

Joined
Jul 20, 2001
Messages
1,840
hi guys,

i have some railroad steel that i want to make a sword out of...anybody have any idea what type of steel it is? i'm calculating this steel is at least 100 yrs old.

i'd like to have some swords made out of this stuff.
would anyone be interested in working with some of this stuff?
 
Current rail road regs require rail steel to be 1084. The track clips (J clips) are 1055. They are the right size to do a sword and would make a better one than 1084.

BTW, I contacted Union Pacific for this info sometime back. My son works for UP and I wanted to know if the "junk" he was bringing me was any good, as well as how to heat treat it.

Gene
 
What are you calling J clips? The other question is you said current regs, when did those go into effect?
 
There are track clips that you find around switches and other places. They are about 3/4" square. When starightened they are about 14" long. They make a great sword.

For calulating what it takes to make a certain blade length, calculate AxBxC=AxBxC. It's a volume problem. If you have a piece 3/4 x 3/4 x 14, that .75x.75x14=7.35 Now take that product, figure out the width and thicknes you want for your billet, say 1/4x 1 3/8". .25 x 1.275=.34. Now 7.35 divided by .34= 21.6. So you'd end up with a billet 21.6" long. I learned that from Devin Thomas and boy does it work.

The Federal Register for railroads is where to find it. I don't know how old that is, but it is current. And as far as rail age goes, the track lines are reguarly maintained and replaced. When they are done with a line it's removed. Currently old rails are being heated and drawn into fenceposts. The best bet is to cut a piece off and have it analyzed for composition. Then there is no guesswork whatever.

Good luck,

Gene
 
I got some RR spring clips. They make great swords. I'll be spending some time at Baltimore Knife and Sword next week. we are planning a crucible smelt. I could forge one for you while the burn is going down. What kind of sword are you looking for.

Larry
 
hi Gene M...thanks for the great info...that's fairly accurate it would seem and a great method.

Nowicki, i'm thinking of maybe just a simple user/tac katana, and a bolo sized sword of 18" just for the fun of cutting.

James Raw forges RR and i guess its the nostalgic feeling that go with the steel that attracts me as well.

if you email me: ekim690618@yahoo.com your info i can send you some steel. right now the pieces are 10" long-HEAVY! so i may need to cut them down to half the size. i was thinking of using some of it as an anvil and start learning how to forge in my garage. :)

so yeah...let me know and i'll try to cut these babies to size. :) for you.

and if anyone else is interested just lemme know. i'll try and pass them around while supplies last.
 
Gene Martin said:
Current rail road regs require rail steel to be 1084. The track clips (J clips) are 1055. They are the right size to do a sword and would make a better one than 1084.

BTW, I contacted Union Pacific for this info sometime back. My son works for UP and I wanted to know if the "junk" he was bringing me was any good, as well as how to heat treat it.

Gene
Click to expand...

One question I have is how long these regs have been in place? What has piqued my curiosity is how long back this has been instituted. Please don't read anything into this, I don't want to come across any other way than being curious...

Craig
 
Craig,

Go online and search the CFR's for railroad rails, or call the head office for a railroad. UP is in Omaha.

Russ,

My son told me they were being made into fence posts. From what he described, I took it to mean T posts. Heck, they are spendy enough to be 1084.

UP also has an interesting scrap policy for employess. If you can pick it up by yourself, it's scrap. If it takes 2 or more people to lift it, it's theft. Good thing my son is a strong kid.

UP had to remove most of the Eugene, OR rail yard because the city was screaming about it. Then it turned out to have been a mistake and they had to replace the Eugene rail yard. Talk about bureaucratic screw up. But you can't have a screw up without UP.

Gene
 
Years ago at the NYC custom show, I was told by Howard Clark that rail track was 1080 or a variant of the 80's. I asked him as a lot of the japanese styled swords starting to come out of China at the time were forged from rail steel and I was curious to know what our stuff was made of.

Here in NYC, there is TONS of rail track just sitting on the wayside in many subway stations. They have been replaced, but most are still shiny and just sitting there. It bugs me to no end to see all this good steel just sitting there. But, being in 20-30' lengths I can see moving it would be a problem. Howard even asked me, "how would u cut the actual track and work it"?
If they are being recycled into fence posts, someone forgot to mention that to the transit authority here, as they've been just sitting here for years. Would be great if all the smiths could get together and scoop all this stuff up.

Saint, good for u if u got it in workable lengths. So many pinoy styled blades in the 18" range this material would be great for. I'd be interested in having some just to forge someday.
 
I have cut a lot of track with my horizontal band saw. I used to work for the rr and would pick up short sections and add them to my scrap pile. If you wanted to work the material I would slab off 1 or 2 inch sections and forge that down to make whatever you wanted. If you get some 140+ lb rail (per 3 foot section) 1 inch would make a few knives. That is the nice thing about forging you can do stuff like that. If you see a track gang working on the line stop and talk to the foreman. Tell them what you do and many are more than happy to tell you were to get some material or were to get it. Most have no idea what it is made of but would be interested in getting a RR steel knife.
 
Well Chuck, I guess you've shown us it can be done. I figured as much (cutting it up with a metal cutting band saw that is). I'm in something of a similar pickle with this big rig drop spring which is a 60-70 lb. chunk of 6150! I have enough bar and round stock of good known knife steel that I haven't felt over stimulated to try hacking the thing up . I don't know though, if steel and shipping prices continue to climb...

Junque2RS.jpg
 
No such luck. I try to look out for shorter pieces, but they are very long. On another note, I've also seen lots of old suspension cable laying around on the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge. Again, HUGE long pieces as one would imagine needed to suspend a bridge. Nothing a few people could carry off.

Yup, what Guy said. With prices rising, I would love to hoarde the stuff just to work someday. Though stuff this size is impossible to store. Besides, it would be a cheap albeit good source of practice steel.
 
saint o'killers said:
hi Gene M...thanks for the great info...that's fairly accurate it would seem and a great method.

Nowicki, i'm thinking of maybe just a simple user/tac katana, and a bolo sized sword of 18" just for the fun of cutting.

James Raw forges RR and i guess its the nostalgic feeling that go with the steel that attracts me as well.

if you email me: ekim690618@yahoo.com your info i can send you some steel. right now the pieces are 10" long-HEAVY! so i may need to cut them down to half the size. i was thinking of using some of it as an anvil and start learning how to forge in my garage. :)

so yeah...let me know and i'll try to cut these babies to size. :) for you.

and if anyone else is interested just lemme know. i'll try and pass them around while supplies last.
Click to expand...


I tried to send an e-mail but it bounced. Send one to me and I'll reply: larrynowicki@comcast.net

Larry
 
Before I went to work at Fibre I didn't know much of anything about rail, but maintaining and replacing their tracks is part of what my crew does.

Rail goes all over the place once it is removed from main-lines. We would recieve truck shipments of standard 39' lengths of rail that BNSF had removed from their lines.

One outfit in town buys it and is building a HUGE fence with it.

The recycling outfit bought several truckloads of it, and is using pieces cut in 8' lengths as "ties" with special clips. (you'd be surprised how much a truck load of RR ties costs!!!)

There's an electic vacuum melt outfit pretty close to the mill, and they get pieces and melt it down and mix it with other alloys to make "new" steel.


Sooooo.... while some of it's getting turned into fence posts like Gene mentioned, I'm sure that's not its only final destination.

The stuff we have at Fibre is old... some of it as old as the late 1800's! It's all basically 1080 with some alloy thrown in.

I never had much desire to make knives out of it, but I did see a fighter that Rob Patton had at Blade year before last that looked like really dark damascus. Rob told me it was just forged out of the top rail of a piece of track, heat-treated, and etched... no forge welding, no folds, noth'n. THAT made me want to try it!!!.... but I still haven't.

I have made hot cutters for the press out of the stuff. If you're handy with a torch you can cut it real clean with two to three seperate cuts and a #11 tip. The standard cut on site is to cut the rail from the top, then move and cut the web from the side, and then make a cut or two through the base.

BEFORE I knew anything about rail, I went down to the local car loading dock and asked the owner if I could have a piece that was laying on the ground. He said, if you can lift it you can have it, and laughed. I thought to myself, I have been lifting for years, no biggy... It had 110 written on it in paint marker, so I ASSumed it was 110lb. I stood it up, got it on my shoulder and proceeded to pack it home (about 1/2 mile). I nearly died, but I wasn't going to let that guy see me drop it!!!

Knowing what I know now... the 110 had nothing to do with the weight. It is 112# rail and was 6 feet long. So it was actually right around 224 lb.

I had a big heaping bowl full of Chef-Boy-R-U-Dumb for dinner that night!!! :o


Guy, I have forged several big knives out of those springs and they make some serious cutters!!! I think we "talked" about that on Don's forum awhile back. :thumbup: :)
 
I have a friend that works for the railroad and just last week he dropped of 6 sections between 1/2" and 3/4" slices or railroad track. He claimed when laying new track they square the ends and these were the drops. After watching this thread I think I'm gonna have to fire the forge up and try a piece.

Thanks for the info.

Dave from Diller
 
As far as the metal cutting band saw goes. I have cut up a lot of spring stock on mine. I got 2 cat springs that weigh 200-300 lbs each. One is 2.25 and ons is 2.75dia. It cuts really nice. Just check the material to be cut with a file. If the file cuts use a good blade and have fun.
 
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