Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom Maringer, post: 363471, member: 7033&quot;]Yes, have a pile of 30&quot; long 3/4&quot;&nbsp; W-1 tool steel bars here... probably more than I&#039;ll ever use. (I thought it was W-2, but on looking again, it is marked W-1) By &quot;rough finish&quot; I mean they have been sitting around and are rusty... but they WERE finish ground bars once upon a time... so they&#039;ll clean up to be very close to 0.750&quot; exactly. I have a chop saw and could knock off a couple 6&quot; or 6 1/2&quot; pieces and turn the ends down square on the lathe. That would give you two ends to work on for each. (If you screwed one up you would have a second chance on the other end). I&#039;d do those for you for $10 apiece, plus $5 to ship them Priority. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve seen people do a lot of hand-hammered coins with this steel without heat-treating the dies at all. The hammer end will mushroom and the die face will begin to sink or &quot;dish&quot;... but you could probably get a hundred or so strikes before it got so bad you&#039;d want to quit. </p><p><br /></p><p>If they&#039;re heat-treated they&#039;d last for thousands of strikes. Heat treating means heating them up evenly to about 1550 degrees F, a bright red heat, then quenching them in oil, followed by tempering&nbsp; in an over for a couple hours at 350-400 degrees F. The problem of course is that this is something of a pain to do. I use an electric furnace, which spins my meter at the rate of about 14000 watts while running and it takes about an hour to reach temperature. So I charge $50 to do a run. But these are small and could piggyback in the furnace next time I run dies... which will probably be within a month or two... and then I wouldn&#039;t charge you for it... but... I couldn&#039;t promise when I&#039;d get them done.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in