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Shoutout to the old timer who told me to stop quenching my railroad spikes in water
This guy at a hammer-in last summer said I was ruining my toughness by dunking hot spikes straight into water. He told me to let them air cool or use oil instead. I tried his way on a batch of 10 spikes and only got 3 that cracked versus 7 out of 10 before. Has anyone else had better luck with a different quench method on mystery steel?
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xena5822mo ago
Did you normalize the spikes before hardening? That's usually the trick with unknown steel.
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thomasgonzalez2mo ago
Drying those spikes in the oven first keeps rust from messing with your steel.
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flores.emma2mo ago
Honestly, did you check if those spikes have a higher carbon content than usual? Some of them can actually benefit from an interrupted quench instead of a straight dunk.
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