Thread: Almost tried damascus with the wrong steel

It doesn't make sense for spikes to be .9% carbon tool steel to begin with.
Unhardened, it doesn't make sense because you might as well use 1030.
Hardened, it doesn't make sense because you want those spikes to not be brittle at freezing temperatures.

Originally Posted by Bruno

It doesn't make sense for spikes to be .9% carbon tool steel to begin with.
Unhardened, it doesn't make sense because you might as well use 1030.
Hardened, it doesn't make sense because you want those spikes to not be brittle at freezing temperatures.

Exactly. Steel is more prone to fracture when it's hardenable and much more prone to fracture the colder the temperature goes and the steel has been hardened. A lot of invaders found out the hard way that Russian winters were tough on bladed or steel based weapons.

The rail companies want a malleable steel that will bend before breaking. One of the AREA requirements is that the track spike will bend 180 degrees without cracking on the outside radius of the bend. It makes no sense to harden a track spike when the premise is to avoid de-railing a train.

I forgot to add: railroads are subject to alternating stresses. Even if you'd use annealed or severely tempered tool steel for spikes, they'd work-harden because of the stresses and that would be -really- bad. Stresses on one nail are virtually the same as on the next nail. So if they'd have enough carbon to work harden, they'd fracture more or less around the same time. And if whole sections of track would suddenly lose their anchoring to the cross beams, bad things would happen.

High carbon spikes is a concept that sounds cool but which does not make any sense at all.

If they are good for nothing else, they are still great for practice.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I forgot to add: railroads are subject to alternating stresses. Even if you'd use annealed or severely tempered tool steel for spikes, they'd work-harden because of the stresses and that would be -really- bad. Stresses on one nail are virtually the same as on the next nail. So if they'd have enough carbon to work harden, they'd fracture more or less around the same time. And if whole sections of track would suddenly lose their anchoring to the cross beams, bad things would happen.

High carbon spikes is a concept that sounds cool but which does not make any sense at all.

You are right on Bruno...I'm a locomotive engineer. Track is date stamped here in the US (I am not sure elsewhere) and we have track ranging from the 1920's to present. It's amazing to see a train moving at slower speeds and see the track flex as much as it does & you can't help but to wonder how many times a train has been over that piece of steel. To give you an idea of how much weight we are talking, we estimate a empty rail car to be approximately 30 tons & loaded 120 tons. The contact patch of those steel wheels on the rail at any given time is about the size of a dime....that's quite a bit of pressure on one spot at a time. Figure a normal loaded coal train for us is 135 cars and between 19,000 & 20,000 tons & you can see that it takes a LOT of engineering to get the steel right so that things aren't brittle or work harden. Yes, rail does break from time to time, but it's mostly due to other reasons than "fatigue".