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?

3 comments

3 Comments

xena58212d ago

Did you normalize the spikes before hardening? That's usually the trick with unknown steel.

thomasgonzalez12d ago

Drying those spikes in the oven first keeps rust from messing with your steel.

flores.emma12d 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.