Shear Steel?

about the only way you are going to find it is to make it yourself. lots of luck if you do find any, you can let the other 3-4 thousand knifemakers who are looking for it the location and price. link to steel history.

shear steel
 
Like Dan - said either find old cutlery, etc made from it or make it yourself - first you make blister-steel:

from Knight's 1881 Mechanical Dictionary http://www.princetonimaging.com/library/mechanical-dictionary/subjects/idx_metallurgy.html

Blister-steel. Steel formed by roasting bar- iron in contact with carbon in a cementing furnace. It is so called from its blistered appearance. To improve the quality, it is subjected to two subsequent processes, which convert it into shear-steel and cast- steel.

Shear-steel. Blister-steel, heated, rolled, and tilted to inmprove the quality. Several bars are welded together and drawn out. Shear-steel is named from its applicability to the manufacture of cutting instruments, shears, knives, scythes, etc. The bar is sometimes cut, fagoted, reheated, and again tilted. This may be repeated. The terms single shear and double shear indicate the extent to which the process is carried.

Cast-steel. Blister steel which has been broken up, fused in a crucible, cast into ingots, and rolled. The blocks of steel are melted in crucibles of re fractory clay, and the molten metal is poured into ingot-molds of cast-iron. These are opened, to let out the red-hot ingot, which is then passed to the rolls. See CRUCIBLE; INGOT-MOLD. The process of making cast-steel was invented by Benjamin Huntsman, of Attercliff, near Sheffield, England, in 1770.

Some more info:
Very briefly, the cementation process involves placing alternating layers of iron bars and charcoal into refractory chests, which are subsequently sealed, or cemented, closed. This prevents the charcoal from igniting. The chests sit in a large furnace, which is then fired for a period of a week to ten days. The firing is monitored to maintain a temperature below the melting point of the iron bars, while carbon from the charcoal diffuses into the iron bars. These bars tend to have a blistered, or scaled, appearance when they emerge from the process - hence the term, blister steel.

The process of producing shear steel from blister steel was introduced into England by Wilhelm (or William) Bertram, of Germany, who was apparently shipwrecked on the North Durham coast in 1693. Before long, he was involved in steel making in Newcastle. Bertram's stamp was that of a pair of crossed shear blades, which came to be associated with the product/process he pioneered. Interestingly, this process doesn't seem to have been introduced into Sheffield until about 1767.

Again, very briefly, shear steel is produced by cutting selected bars of blister steel into shorter lengths (ca. 18"), fastening them into bundles using wire, then hot forging them (presumably through the use of tilt hammers) into an ingot. This results in some hammer refining and a flexible steel particularly well suited for certain kinds of cutlery work.

Shear Steel - Before the development of Crucible Steel, Blister Steel was forged by repeated folding and forge welding to mix the areas of high and low carbon steel. Shear Steel was the lowest quality generally created and further folding and welding created Double Shear Steel. Long regarded as ideal for blades and cutting edges, primarily because the slag trapped within the steel lead to a serrated edge without it being purposely formed. Until the mid-18th century, the quality of steel was unreliable. Steel was made by heating iron bars, covered with charcoal, for up to a week. The end product was called 'blister steel'. Blister steel was then turned into 'shear steel' by wrapping blister steel bars into a bundle and re-reheating them before forging the bundle. The heat and action of the forge hammer welded the bundles together to the required size. Although this steel was used to make razors, files, knives and swords, the process was extremely laborious and no more than 200 tons a year were produced in Sheffield in this way. Benjamin Huntsman's invention of the crucible steel process changed all of that. He was the first person to cast steel bars, producing tougher, high-quality steel in large quantities. In 1846, the French metallurgist Monsieur le Play wrote of Huntsman: 'His memorable discovery advanced the steel manufactures of Sheffield to the first rank, and powerfully contributed to the establishment of the industrial and commercial supremacy of Great Britain.' Within 100 years, Sheffield was producing 40% of total European steel production at this time.

At first, Sheffield cutlers refused to work with crucible steel because it was much harder than they were used to.
French cutlers had no such reservations, providing a ready market for the new steel and producing higher-quality cutlery that began to challenge Sheffield's dominance. When the British government refused the Sheffield cutlers' demand that Huntsman's exports should be banned, the cutlers were forced to start using his steel for their own products.

http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_hist/perret.htm
 
so there's no way to really make it at home. but what tools out there can we look for to find the steel. what was it most ocmmonly used for. is there any chance of finding it? even if you dug through a huge metal scrap yard? :confused: :( :confused:
 
surgical instruments,etc. from the info Wild Rose provided. of course it must be pre-1820 or more than likely it isn't shear steel. :)
 
Sure, if ya want to go thru all the work.
Rick Furrerer cooked up a mess of blister steel at Harley's a coupla weeks ago. Next step with it would be to forge weld together to create shear steel.
As an aside, there are a group of sword makers who are producing steel in bloomeries, refining it and then making Japanese swords. They do everything frm cutting timber for the charcoal making, digging ore, the whole nine yards. Louie Mills is one that comes to mind. bruce
 
Here's a picture of what my stash looked like 3 years ago. Its down to a few small piece. I've got enough to do maybe 6 smallish blades. Now if I do 2 blades out of it a year I can stur up the hive 3 more times. Who would have thought that that rusty pitted piece of saw steel would have amounted to anything? I certainly didn't......
 

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ray what's the size of that piece in the pic?
so saw blades are worth checking out? any old farm equipment or what? i have access to some good stuff now and then. what shoud i look for ray?
 
hmmm... there are a bunch of old saw mills in the area....... maybe something old they have laying around out back..... you all know the stuff that wa your great great grand daddy's but you never use it... don't know why its there. but everytime you clean you just move it to the side or lean it up against a wall where it looks decorative
 
Michael, I think it was about 1/4 of a 3' lumbermill saw blade when I found it. It had inserted teeth but they were not carbide. If you see carbide teeth most likly it will be to new. Its a crap shoot. Old saw steel and old old knives are the only sorces that I've seen it in and so far its just been the one saw blade. Over the last couple years I have bought around 10 saw blades with no luck as far as shear steel goes. Just remember if it looks like crap it maybe shear steel...... :D
 
thanks ray i'll have to look into it. there's a few saw mills around and that big ol scrap yard has to have something.... a few phone calls tomorrow and i'll see what i can find. thanks
 
so old saw blades from lumber mills are most likely shear steel? i have a freind with an old barn that just fell down, and he said we can have anything we wanted out of it. ive already got a two man sawblade from there, and ive spied a couple big saw blades. i think ill go for it. any idea what the carbon content would be? thanks
 
Ray, Do you know if they used shear steel in the old cross cut timber saws of yesterday that were so common. I know a lot of the big circular saw blades that are laying around toady are made from modern steel and one would have to acquire a lot of them before he just might by chance stumble on the real thing. Ron
 
I just find it odd that an inserted tooth blade body would be made of shear steel to begin with. I think you probably had something pretty rare on your hands Ray.
 
I tend to doubt that an inserted tooth blade would be made from shear steel.The whole point of inserted teeth is the use of high carbon (now carbide) teeth on a milder steel core. Most old two man saws are something like L6 or 1095.Most "old" saw blades are only 100 years old or so.At the time of Shear steel and wrought iron,steel was scarce and was recycled as much as possible.A large flat piece like a mill saw blade would not likely escape reuse.
As the article stated,if it isn't 200 years old,it probably isn't shear steel.The "magic" of shear steel,wrought iron,and such is in the use of a ancient piece of steel that some smith took a lot of time to form.Modern steels are far superior as far as the metallurgy and quality is concerned.Although I would love to find a 1780-1820 era plow blade.
 
I've got a piece of the steel sent to a maker friend of mine in Germany. He'll be getting it analized in a month or two.

Mark, I think I got something extremly rare. Its been at least 3 years since I made the first knife out of the old saw blade and from that time on its got a number of makers looking for it. I would have thought by now someone would have found at least one saw blade of the shear steel. As far as the inserts go it could have been made with out and someone had it machined at a later date. I'll take a look around and see if I can find one of the inserts but I think they could be long gone. I did spark one and from what I could tell it looked identical to the body of the saw blade.

As far as the old cross cuts go I was going to get one and try it out but the steel was extrem thin so I got a drag saw blade instead. I also think the steel in these are more of a modern steel.
 
As the article stated,if it isn't 200 years old,it probably isn't shear steel
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Actually shear steel was still being used for fine cutlery, shears, etc. up until WWI when the whole Sheffield steel industry changed - many if not most of the younger Sheffield cutlers went to war and many did not come back and many of those that did no longer had jobs due to the wartime changes in the industry - one might sya that the chain was broken and was never to be re-forged.

As Ray and Mark said the piece he had if found to be truly shear steel (and by the looks after being etched does look like the real McCoy) than a piece that size would be extremely rare.

Although I would love to find a 1780-1820 era plow blade.
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Plow blades were usually of wrought iron with a steel insert and most if not all of the industrial steel of that period would more than likely have been either blister steel or crucible steel - again shear and double shear steel was in the main a product of SHeffield and was used almost exclusively for cutlery.
 
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