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Old Allen wrenches are a good source of hex tool steel for shop made chisels and scrapers. You can often find them cheap as dirt at flea markets and garage sales.

I routinely grind screwdriver tips onto Allen wrenches for specific screw slots. The leverage gained therein is a bonus sometimes too.

I use O-1, also called 1095 tool steel (oil hardening, .95 carbon) . I've not been able to find in hex or octagon stock these days and I buy round drill rod.

The last batch of so-called 0-1 I got from MSC turned out to be air hardening steel and we couldn't anneal it after forging. It turned out to be a complete waste. I haven't found another reliable source but I'm sure oil hardening steel is available.

I've made tools from Allen wrenches but always wonder what kind of steel it is. I just grind without annealing, hardening or re-tempering.

You know, this discussion is starting to point out a very sad fact: in a generation, we have gone from a society and culture that "makes things" to one that "uses things." Just like many believe that hamburger, milk, and vegetables "come from the grocery store," many believe that guns "come from the gun shop" and tools from the hardware store.

Iirc the octagon tool steel we used at Trinidad was W1 grade (water hardening) and was called "Black Diamond. " I think it was made by Crucible Steel. 105 points of carbon. It hasn't been available for a long long time but was commonplace for many decades. The lengths of handle stock were likewise available in a lot of places but haven't been since folks' making of their own handled tools has gone out of favor. Carpenter Steel's "Solar" hex rod has gone away too. It was a "tough" rather than a "hard" grade and was excellent for making screw drivers. All gone. Now as SDH has pointed out some suppliers don't even know the difference between oil- and air- hardening.

If it can't be made on a cnc machine nowadays (and in a foreign country to boot) it might as well not exist. A while back a fellow was admiring my lathe when he said, "Oh, it's manual. Nobody does that anymore." Yup.

And don't get me started on files. They have all gone offshore and most of them are absolute crap. Nicholson, Simonds, Disston, et al might as well be done. Made in Brazil, Colombia and other locales, I've encountered more junk than I can shake a stick at. I even bought a box of files made in Germany that were some of the worst I'd seen... and not cheap either.

Nobody (present company excepted of course) seems to be the least bit interested in hand work anymore or the tools associated with it. I even saw a Web site for a gunsmithing school proudly displaying CAD and CNC equipment with nary a hammer or forge visible.

So we owe folks like Steven here thanks, kudos, and a huge debt of gratitude for keeping these traditions somewhat alive. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, "Sometimes you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

I would say it is about a 80/20 split in my shop hand work to modern CNC milling. I embrace new technology but also vigorously research and use traditional methodology. I can make form cutters by hand, file out leaf springs, inlet from a blank and am starting damascus refinishing. I also have a shop built pantograph but the last fore end I made from a blank was inlet on the CNC mill to very close tolerances. My personal feeling is that for me, the best way forward is a combination of new and old. The power of CAD/CAM is really amazing. It certainly does not fit every application, especially in a gunshop where most set ups are one offs, but it does have its place. I still very much enjoy making tools by hand and reading posts like Steve's. I agree that it is very important to pass along these skills. It is good to see the strong interest Steve has had in his instructional seminars.

Well put. I don't possess the skills of the great "handymen" of generations past, but I get by in my job as an artificer here at the college, creating 18th/19th century scientific apparatus (both direct copies and concept pieces) for our labs. (Our curriculum is pretty archaic, based on the Great Works of Western Civilization.) They think I'm a god/magician because I can create this stuff, and often have to make the tools to do it with. What's neat though, is some students come to me to learn some of this stuff on their own time. Being young hip products of liberal urban environments, it amazes me that some of them are even aware of our "archaic" crafts, and secondly want to learn a bit of it for their own edification. (One kid had never held a gun in his life and after hearing me talk of it while working with me in the shop asked if he could go along skeet shooting sometime. Four years after graduating he now owns three shotguns and drives 30 miles every Saturday to shoot.) We owe it to the future of our hobby to not be too chary with our help/knowledge.

I'm fortunate in having the contents of my dad and gramp's shops (both machinists, professionally and recreationally) to include a lot of dusty hunks of various "old fashioned" tool steels- O-1, W-1, and S-1 (Bearcat), etc.- and a shelf full of bronze round stock which I'm steadily whittling down into small cannon barrels.

Enco and Victor Machinery Exchange have o1, w1, and air hardening as well.While looking at VME, check out their excellent selection of special taps and dies,including metric. So many people changing to CNC can be good for a hobby machinist.There are now a good many manual American made machines on the market and because many were replaced to upgrade for modernazation rather than wear, many are in good shape.Don't be afraid of 3phase machines, you can often get them cheaper(sometimes a lot cheaper)and conversion units are easy. Besides, instant reversing sometimes is handy.
Mike

A lot of the problem as I see it, being from the younger generation, is the lack of people either willing or able to teach the old school ways. There are those of us left in the younger generation (if you care to consider 35 young) that still have a desire to do things the old ways. Frankly, in my small shop, I can't afford CNC, so I have an old import lathe and a small mill/drill. Granted, it leaves me with a few things to farm out to shops with more precision equipment, but I've learned to work with the slop in my machines and we do okay together.

I'm pretty sure the apprentice way of learning is pretty well dead in the trades anymore. It's been replaced by a handful of schools. Some of them are decent (they seem to vary every couple years as to who's the "best"), others aren't. But I don't see them putting out very many artisans anymore. Part of it is the curriculum, which seems designed to put out someone who can go work as a gunsmith in a big box store or manufacturer. Part of it is the students. I would say 90% of the kids I went to school with were only interested in AR's, AK's, semi-auto's, and "sniper rifles". They had no desire to build a stock from a block of wood, so it was no longer part of the curriculum. Unfortunately, that left those of us who did want to know that stuff scrambling to learn it from the old guard before they all retire or die off.

I'm glad to see shops like SDH bringing in students to learn how to do some of these things. Hopefully it will keep the art side of guns alive. Someday I hope to get to one of his classes, if time and finances ever get together, and he's still teaching them by then.

For now, I will keep trying to glean all the knowledge I can from anyone willing to share, keep taking notes, and keep making mistakes. Every mistake I make puts me one step closer to figuring things out. Like Edison said, I didn't fail. I simply found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb...

W-1 might be a good tool steel to try. Easy to get in various drill rod sizes with less alloying than O-1. I believe O-1 can have a tendency to air harden and it can be more difficult to follow the book recommendations for heat treating.

Great thread, thanks folks.

Starrett sells drill rod, and flat stock in both air and oil hardening, in several base metallurgy formulas. Its not cheap but it is a known starting point. I have used it for several purposes including Lyman 48 blanks, and a couple of hinge pins.
A good option for a critical piece and you want to start from a known material.

Very good and informative thread, thanks to Steve and everyone!