Subject: 52100 Med. Chromium Steel

From: Mike Linn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 96 05:23 EDT

An unknown source for 52100 steel is your local neighbor hood industrial
scale shop. Someone who works on large mechanical type truck and railroad
scales. The knife-edge bearings used in these large scales is usually 52100
for corrosion resistance or plain 1096 steel. Both nice steels for hardies
etc.. These bearings are usually 1/2 to 2 inches wide and 4 to 24 inches
long, and ride in a V-block of the same length.
The bearings look something like this:   ^      Looking at the end:
                                        / \
                                       /   \            
                                       |   |     
                                       |___| 
                                                   
         I used a 4" x 1 1/2" piece of railroad scale bearing for a cold
hardie. Be forwarned, the only way I could find to cut it was with a torch.
The chopsaw hardly touched it. Reheat to critical and allow to air cool.
then weld to a hardie sub and reheat all to relieve the stresses. This seems
to work really well. Check with your local scale shop and ask if you can
have the old knife bearings from any rebuilds that are coming up, they
usually just throw them out. By the way US Steel Fairfield has a 1,000,000
lb capacity rail scale for weighing the ladle cars from the blast furnace.
The bearings in that scale take 2 people to lift. :0

mike
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               Michael Linn 
            Artisian Blacksmith
              AFC Web Master
 http://www.the-matrix.com/afc/index.html
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