Inexpensive/easily found tool steel.

I 100% agree with Bob, and with that there is, of course an exception. The flat plate chromed weights that used to be used for competitive weightlifting - Chrome looks like crap on cast iron, so they are usually made from 1045 or something similar. My horizontal mill has a fixture plate made from a 35 lb weight and it is SOLID. Stronger than the machine by far. I don't know where the previous owner foind it, but it was a great idea. He used it as a fly cutter to surface large pieces.
 
For cast iron stock, I would rather find a cast iron machine that is being scrapped and knock off some chunks with a big hammer. Or simply grab a table, knee, or other part that has the part I want to make hiding inside of it. I would no doubt feel bad about doing it, but scrap is scrap. Then I would know that I have cast iron suitable for machining.
 
No experience with the weights, but the bed frames yes. Everybody always thinks they're such a find -- free angle iron!-- until they try to cut one. They eat saw blades like they're going out of style. Yes I have suffered through and made ONE thing from them, but it was painful.

-frank
 
+1 on bed frames. Easier just to buy your angle iron, and if you wreck a blade, cheaper, too!
 
Dabbler said:
+1 on bed frames. Easier just to buy your angle iron, and if you wreck a blade, cheaper, too!
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Use either good band saw blades, or a cut off saw and bed frames are good to work with. They are tough. But they make good table legs and are plenty strong


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Use either good band saw blades, or a cut off saw and bed frames are good to work with. They are tough. But they make good table legs and are plenty strong
Click to expand...

Using an abrasive cutting technique is probably cheaper and less risky. I killed a Lennox blade cutting bed frames. never again.
 
Bed frame material is just scrap metal that is melted and rolled into bed frames. There are no standards for it, or testing of the finished material. Whatever scrap ended up in the furnace is what got made into rails. One batch might have a bunch of good metal in it, and the next batch may have cast iron weights, for which the only test is whether they can make the bar fit roughly through the hole. Feel lucky?

Dabbler said:
I killed a Lennox blade cutting bed frames. never again.
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Getting a new blade probably cost more than you saved on material, and in the end you bought the material AND a new blade along with wasting time and frustration. I agree with you, Dabbler, never again!
 
If you have no idea of what the material you have is and are not going to have it identified due to cost making anything from it is a crapshoot at best.
It may not be hardenable
It may not be weldable
It may well have machining properties that are difficult at best and nearly impossible at worst
Beginning a part with a known material will make things much simpler, I rarely have this problem because I work in a machine shop and the material is always specified by the customer's drawings.
We have 125 finished parts that have been on a shelf for 3 years, they are 2 1/2" Dia X 4" long round HR steel with a tapered spiral groove on one end.

The drawing specified 1018 HR steel with material certification, someone ordered the material without the MC, the customer would not accept the finished parts without the Certs.
We made them a second time.

These are parts for steam boilers, the steam industry is very keen on the materials used.

Fortunately it was the company owner that ordered the wrong material so no one on the floor had to eat dirt (-:
 
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