1/2" taper rebar drift punch

Found another short piece of rebar today this time a 1/2" and 14" long figured it would go well with the previous one which is 3/8" and 9 inches long
This one I managed to turn the taper on the lathe then heat to cherry and quench it became hard enough to resist a file so I heated to light straw and air cooled it is pretty tough but not brittle Should complement my collection of punches.
I also have some 3/4" rebar and a piece of 1 1/2" rebar but think I might make other plans of them.
Attachment 30761

I would have never thought of using rebar as tool steel. I know it's "mystery" metal, at least when purchased from the local home supply. I will look at it as high carbon steel in the future.

I made some sand blast nozzles the other night from 1/2" oil hardening drill rod, them I did not temper.

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Originally Posted by metric_taper

I would have never thought of using rebar as tool steel. I know it's "mystery" metal, at least when purchased from the local home supply. I will look at it as high carbon steel in the future.

I made some sand blast nozzles the other night from 1/2" oil hardening drill rod, them I did not temper.

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Will you be showing us the nozzles? I have made holdfasts from rebar, but they lose their spring rapidly, and have to be bent again. (I’ve made better since.) I take it, Frank, that you do not intend your punches as drifts, to drive right through material?

Rebar is absolutely underrated, check for yourselves what some ingenuity and cheapness can achieve!:

Attachment 30763 Attachment 30764 Attachment 30765

For the nosy ones: Rebar barrel

Note the wire and bubble-gum-colored pink (!) epoxy for the scope rings and front sight mount - keeping it cheap-to-the-bone.

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Originally Posted by metric_taper

I would have never thought of using rebar as tool steel. I know it's "mystery" metal, at least when purchased from the local home supply. I will look at it as high carbon steel in the future.

I made some sand blast nozzles the other night from 1/2" oil hardening drill rod, them I did not temper.

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I wouldn't put it in any class as tool steel. The properties of rebar are too loosely controlled. While some of it will have a higher carbon content it is not consistent. Rebar can be a lot like the old bed frames made a long time ago some can be drilled while there can be hard spots and soft spots. I've seen some bed frames that you could drill with bargain basement bits then just a few inches away not even a cobalt bit will go through.
You can get lucky and heat treat rebar so that it will resist a file on the surface but just under a thin case hardened layer it will still be butter soft. I try to think of it as the poorest excuse for Damascus without the pattern and no expectations of hardenability. If I can get a slight case hardening then I will stress relieve it and hope for the best.
With drift punches I often just need something to nudge 2 parts into alignment to be able to bolt something together.

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Originally Posted by Philip Davies

Will you be showing us the nozzles? I have made holdfasts from rebar, but they lose their spring rapidly, and have to be bent again. (I’ve made better since.) I take it, Frank, that you do not intend your punches as drifts, to drive right through material?

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Once again, I've hijacked Franks post.


Pretty boring nozzles, just straight sections of 1/2" material, bored out 17/64" nozzle hole, with the 120 degree conical lead in from a larger drill. I heated them to cherry red heat with the O-A torch, and dropped them in a jar of peanut oil that was sitting out in my shop for some unknown reason. I used a piece of welding filler rod, I bent a small dog leg hook on. I let gravity hold the nozzle on the hook, then when up to heat flicked them over the open jar of oil. The hot drops caused the jar to crack, but all of these cooled off. I think I should have used water.
Attachment 30772The gun came with the sand blast cabinet.
Attachment 30773Top side of gun showing set screws for holding the nozzle, and the air jet that is 1/8" diameter.
Attachment 30774This is a real crappy sketch I made of the gun back in 2001 (on a calendar sheet).

I just tested them on my Rockwell hardness tester, C scale they are 64-66 hardness. One was 52, that is now a reject.

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Originally Posted by Frank S

I wouldn't put it in any class as tool steel. The properties of rebar are too loosely controlled. While some of it will have a higher carbon content it is not consistent. Rebar can be a lot like the old bed frames made a long time ago some can be drilled while there can be hard spots and soft spots. I've seen some bed frames that you could drill with bargain basement bits then just a few inches away not even a cobalt bit will go through.
You can get lucky and heat treat rebar so that it will resist a file on the surface but just under a thin case hardened layer it will still be butter soft. I try to think of it as the poorest excuse for Damascus without the pattern and no expectations of hardenability. If I can get a slight case hardening then I will stress relieve it and hope for the best.
With drift punches I often just need something to nudge 2 parts into alignment to be able to bolt something together.

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Back when I was building my garage (1988), I threaded the ends of 56 of 1/2" rebar I used for the hold downs that the code requires on slab built buildings. I laid up 3 courses of concrete block, on top the slab, so my building was up out of the splash zone. So every 4 feet I had one of these rebar stubs. I made an extension for the concrete drill bit, so I could hammer drill in the 3/4" Red Dot threaded concrete anchors for the rebar bolt downs down in the cored block holes. Lots of work, but it made the inspectors happy.
I chucked the pieces in my undersize 10x24 lathe, removed the raised surface, then used a 1/2x13 die to cut the threads on each end of the 2.5 foot rebar bolt. I ran into what must have been a ball bearing, as there was no threading of that section, and it destroyed the die. That is when I learned about true HSS dies as well, as I thought those hex dies were for cutting new threads, which I learned are rethreading dies (lasted for 6 threads each). (I was pretty ignorant back then, probably still).

Your sketch is perfectly clear. I wasn’t sure at first what you meant.

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Originally Posted by Frank S

I wouldn't put it in any class as tool steel. The properties of rebar are too loosely controlled. While some of it will have a higher carbon content it is not consistent. Rebar can be a lot like the old bed frames made a long time ago some can be drilled while there can be hard spots and soft spots. I've seen some bed frames that you could drill with bargain basement bits then just a few inches away not even a cobalt bit will go through.
You can get lucky and heat treat rebar so that it will resist a file on the surface but just under a thin case hardened layer it will still be butter soft. I try to think of it as the poorest excuse for Damascus without the pattern and no expectations of hardenability. If I can get a slight case hardening then I will stress relieve it and hope for the best.
With drift punches I often just need something to nudge 2 parts into alignment to be able to bolt something together.

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Amen. One is not only risking one's own life and limb with this very dangerous use of steel of indeterminate quality, but also those in the vicinity of the rifle when it is in use. Ricking one's own life and limb is one thing, but putting others at risk especially when they are probably completely unaware of the danger is immoral and unethical.

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Originally Posted by Dr Stan

Amen. One is not only risking one's own life and limb with this very dangerous use of steel of indeterminate quality, but also those in the vicinity of the rifle when it is in use. Ricking one's own life and limb is one thing, but putting others at risk especially when they are probably completely unaware of the danger is immoral and unethical.

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Agreed,
That is a post that should be pulled.

I'm not sure i would agree that the post needs to be pulled, but it does bear careful thought. that's a 1" piece of rebar firing .22LR: a small diameter low pressure cartridge if there ever was one. You certainly wouldn't want to do that with higher pressure cartridges. The minimum yield strength of rebar in the US is 60,000 PSI, and the fact that the chamber portion is encircled with the high grade steel of that Yost action is even more of a safety factor.

Let's not get carried away with concern, eh?

Bob

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Originally Posted by rebuilder1954

I'm not sure i would agree that the post needs to be pulled, but it does bear careful thought. that's a 1" piece of rebar firing .22LR: a small diameter low pressure cartridge if there ever was one. You certainly wouldn't want to do that with higher pressure cartridges. The minimum yield strength of rebar in the US is 60,000 PSI, and the fact that the chamber portion is encircled with the high grade steel of that Yost action is even more of a safety factor.

Let's not get carried away with concern, eh?

Bob

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The problem is there is always someone who ignores the issue of ignition pressure and builds something for a bigger bore. Then, because many folks don't take responsibility for their foolishness, lawsuits happen. It is best to be safe in this regard.

<chuckle>

if we are worried about lawsuits, Jon had better yank all those posts about novel wood splitters :)

The Last of the Mountain Men Sylvan Hart (clever name, eh?) who resided in Hell's Canyon on the Snake at least into the 1970s demonstrated the manufacture of black powder rifles using jackhammer steel. He claimed to have rifled them with a hand tool.

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Originally Posted by Frank S

Found another short piece of rebar today this time a 1/2" and 14" long figured it would go well with the previous one which is 3/8" and 9 inches long
This one I managed to turn the taper on the lathe then heat to cherry and quench it became hard enough to resist a file so I heated to light straw and air cooled it is pretty tough but not brittle Should complement my collection of punches.
I also have some 3/4" rebar and a piece of 1 1/2" rebar but think I might make other plans of them.
Attachment 30761

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I used to work in a mini mill and when we rolled rebar, the specs were very forgiving, as a result it was rolled from billets of various grades that did not meet their respective grade for whatever reason. As a result, there was some fine steel going in to the rebar, however some of it was so hard it would actually shatter on the concrete floor when dropped. Bottom line; it could be almost anything depending on where it came from.
All said, this is a very cool application, and there have been a multitude of rebar projects from all over!

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Originally Posted by Howder1951

I used to work in a mini mill and when we rolled rebar, the specs were very forgiving, as a result it was rolled from billets of various grades that did not meet their respective grade for whatever reason. As a result, there was some fine steel going in to the rebar, however some of it was so hard it would actually shatter on the concrete floor when dropped. Bottom line; it could be almost anything depending on where it came from.
All said, this is a very cool application, and there have been a multitude of rebar projects from all over!

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Rebar and oilfield sucker rod are 2 of my go to items for making things
While in Kuwait I had my own QA&QC department with testing facilities in the factory that I had built to my specs by our own staff. the Head office was forever getting requests by our much larger competitors to do 3rd party testing since we had a letter of approval as a testing lab from the ministry of building and construction.
All too frequently my engineers would have to tell those companies engineers that whole batches of sequential lot numbers of materials would have to be rejected. or used only in specific non structurally demanding areas.

There has been many uses of odd materials and like Frank it is a go to metal and bed frames. Something we are overlooking is the man that did the rifle barrel is in Sweden. There metal might be of better quality than ours. And if he is a gunsmith, he might have done a good heat treat that could have brought the stress factors up. I do not think it would be my choice but interesting the same.

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Originally Posted by ncollar

There has been many uses of odd materials and like Frank it is a go to metal and bed frames. Something we are overlooking is the man that did the rifle barrel is in Sweden. There metal might be of better quality than ours. And if he is a gunsmith, he might have done a good heat treat that could have brought the stress factors up. I do not think it would be my choice but interesting the same.

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bed frames, bed frames , bed frames to use or not to use when to drill and when to give up and use a torch.
Most newer fed frames are made from hot rolled sheets then sheared and formed
Pretty easy to spot the ones that may have ball bearings in the steel because at the break in the metal you will spot tiny little stress cracks once in a while.
It is the older mill formed frames that look like actual angle iron that are the real mystery metals. you might start to drill a hole and not even a cobalt bit can penetrate all the way through but move as little as half an inch and a bargain counter bit that will bend before breaking will drill through like drilling a hole in a tin can.
Have a band-saw that you don't like the blade that is in it toss an old bed frame in it then try and make the cut all the way through while still having enough teeth on the blade to recognize.
I've even seen them glaze over a disk in a chop saw.
As far as the rifle barrel goes due to it being a full bull barrel bored for .22 ammo I wouldn't worry much about that.
Yes there are folks trying to build a gun or rifle barrel who have no business doing so. Anyone who does not understand the effects of combustion pressures of a given caliber has absolutely no business attempting to manufacture a fire arm.
We had a young man on HMT.Net a few years back who was wanting to build a M6 Scout. a very simple little survival weapon that anyone with "MEDIUM" gunsmithing skills should be able to make, as long as they also possess some knowledge in the many different types of metals there are out there GALVANIZED water pipe is NOT one of the accepted mediums to make a .410 shotgun barrel out of.
Fortunately he posted some pictures of some pipe fittings he had tried to weld together and without shaming him too badly the members of theses forums managed to empress upon him that he needed to acquire some better skills before even considering such a build. Sadly though he left before we were able to help him much more than that.
I'm not a gunsmith don't claim to be and have never played one on TV but I have bought dozens of non operational guns over the years and repair them to safely fire their intended ammunition and yes I often have to make my own parts sometimes by having a blank piece of stock or a freshly machined part clamped in a vice and file away with jewelers files with a loop over my eyes to get the part just right. I've never had a repair to go bad but I don't use mystery metals in making those parts either, I don't take chances when it comes to working on fire arms.

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Originally Posted by ncollar

SNIP/Something we are overlooking is the man that did the rifle barrel is in Sweden. /SNIP

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-Umm, a small correction - Ron Smith isn't Swedish, he's a Canadian, based in Alberta.
Quality (or lack thereof) of rebar here is about the same as everywhere else.
Cheers