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If you'd generally want to get an idea of what you're looking for, you might look up "blue tempered steel". I think .040 might be a tad thick for regular hand saws, but look them over if you're buying a new saw for the steel. It may say things like impulse hardened, which may turn out to mean the body of the saw, where you may cut out your part, is not what you're hoping for.

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I'm not sure why you do not buy a piece of tool steel thick enough for your needs. Gunman suggested spring steel, as did I (1095). Knife makers supply, ebay, tons of suppliers online and then you know what you have and how to harden and temper it.


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Have a pole pruning saw blade that is .05", have used for springs. Anneal, shape, re-heat treat
Get a hand saw blade, most likely carbon steel. Others may be high-speed steel.
Chuck

Last edited by Chuckster; 04/29/20 10:16 PM.
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My first instinct is to advise the OP to give this job to someone who understands what grade of steel to use, and how to properly heat treat it.

A beginner determined to make a spring is probably better off buying a piece of annealed high carbon spring steel, and concentrating on correctly shaping it. Correct hardening and tempering will be another educational experience.

Anyone who plans on working on guns as a hobby would do well to latch onto every piece of spring steel they can save. I have a nice selection of new annealed spring steel and quite a variety of flat springs from various sources. Old clocks are a good source of thinner and narrower spring steel. A return spring from a broken tape measure was recently found to be a perfect thickness for a Lefever cocking indicator spring. Recoil starter springs from small engines are a bit thicker. Brush-holder springs from old DC motors are another source for thin stuff. Hand saw blades, as mentioned, are usually high carbon steel, but a lot of the thicker powered hacksaw blades are alloys that can be more difficult to heat treat. The flat springs from animal traps are another common source. The springs from scrap cable retrievers supply a lot of quality material too. Automotive leaf springs used to be mainly carbon steel, but newer cars and trucks utilize a lot of different alloys.

The trick to using all of this readily available supply of free or very reasonably priced spring stock is properly annealing it without excessive scale formation. When a furnace is not available, you can do a good job by putting your pieces of hardened spring stock in a short length of threaded and capped black pipe with a small vent hole. Put some brown paper bag inside to consume the oxygen when it ignites, and bury it in a pile of hot coals from a large wood fire. After 18 to 24 hours, the coals slowly die out and cool naturally. Long heating to a dull red color, in an oxygen free atmosphere, with very gradual cooling, is the key to annealing. The steel will be dead soft, and virtually free of scale.


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O.K. Points taken and thanks for the input.
As I said, I am no expert in metallurgy but learning more every day. I was hoping to circumvent the heat treating step, which is why I hoped that a saw blade would suffice.
Now I see that I must know what type of steel that I'm dealing with in the first place. I will try to source some 01 tool steel in a close enough thickness.
I have much experience sending my English guns out to proper "English gunsmiths" here in Canada and my guns generally disappear for a year, or two or three...
Thus my determination to try this myself.
Question - Must I anneal the 01 tool steel first or is it possible to work with a file and heat treat later?

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If its hardened, you shouldn't be able to file it at all really.

But you can buy the steel already in a normalized/annealed state. Then just harden and temper once you're to shape

To Keith's point, One other thought: consider sending the piece off to be heat treated professionally: i recently used Peters Hear Treating service. They were fast, have verified hardness testing, and cost about $20 for the knife I was doing (which was D2 tool steel)

If you want to do the treatment yourself, just be sure to pick a steel that is known for ease of treatment (liked 1095. Not like D2, which requires a 30 minute soak at 1850f inside an oxygen free environment...)

Last edited by Woodreaux; 04/30/20 07:29 AM.

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O1 is tricky to make a spring from, 1095 or 1075 will be much more forgiving. Buying it in the annealed state will be much easier for you.


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I'd agree to try to steer clear of O1. It's often mentioned to treat it like a simple steel, but decent heat treating is relatively complicated. It has enough alloy in it that even careless drilling can spot air harden it and wreck a bit.

The thought I had about 'blue temper steel', and it should be confirmed, is because it is generally 1095 that has been tempered back to the low fifties (rockwell C), right about spring temper. It'll feel tougher than annealed steel, but it can definitely worked with regular home tools. Careful with creating too much heat while working it, maybe hold it with bare fingers and dip cool it as needed.

Another place you might be able find decent quality steel, that has known roughly spring temper heat treatment, is at a woodworking store. A plain flat cabinet scraper might also pick up a bit of thickness that full depth heat treated (not just the teeth) saws don't quite have. In garage sales and pawn shops, they're thrown in every now and then with screw drivers and old files. I think jump in, you can always send the gun out later if it doesn't work and you aren't altering either the broken part or some other part of the gun.

edit to add, 1075, 1080/84, 1095 are easy to come by annealed and would work with the heat to red and dump in old motor oil method, then maybe do one of the anecdotal oil burn off v-spring tempers? Best of luck.

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The black art of changing a metals characteristics is an art but in days past it was known to a few hence the name Blacksmith but you dont have to be a full time practitioner of the black art to do it on a small scale at home. Looking back at the number of times that needed to use high Carbon steel to make parts was very minimal though it was good to know how it was done, usually the steel I used was a piece of second hand scrap and usually in the hardened state, and of course the part was needed yesterday to no chance of the luxury of purchasing new and in an anniellid state.
So lets do it is not Rocket science.
1) to soften a piece of hardened high carbon steel such as a chisel, old filed saw blades, etc. A gas blow torch capable to heat the price of metal red hot, A little luxury a box of dry sand. To soften the steel from its hardened state you heat it to cherry red and let it cool down slowly, if you bury it in dry sand it will cool slowly failing that just apply some heat now and again to stop the metal cooling down to quickly. If normal high carbon steel it will be soft enough to work with hand tools.
2) Now to harden the steel we heat it to cherry red and keep there for about a minute, then plunge quickly quench into oil or water my prefeed method is having a tin box with about six inches of water and two inches of oil floating on the tot, lets just say the best of both worlds.
Annealing to the required hardness because the steel you have now is glass hard and if you struck it with a hammer it would shatter. To make the steel usable we have to adjust its hardness for what is required of the steel to do. This is accomplished by heating the steel again to the annealing temperature required. For a DIY person watching the oxide colours change with temperature on the steel you are heating after polishing some of the surface rather than an expensive annealing oven.
In the photograph is a photograph of the oxide colours used for differing uses you will see as you heat the metal to anneal it, to fix the temperature you can plunge the metal into cold water.




it all sounds complicated but from start to finish about five minutes. Give it a try, it really is simple and I will say one of the best pieces of information I ever learned during my apprenticeship.


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Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.
I have found a source for 1095, 1/16 thick x 1.5" wide and annealed, $9.00 for a foot and $19.00 for the shipping!
Will report back when I get it and shape it.

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