First, just make one out of mild steel, and try it out.
If your work is nice and cherry red, and you dont need a thousand pieces, you can probably get away with it.
I have found that plain old A36, which is mild steel from the steel yard, has so much variation in it these days because it is mostly electricly remelted scrap, that it has a higher carbon content than "mild" did 20 years ago, and that it can actually be hardened to a small degree just by heating to red and water quenching. This may be hard enough.
If you want to get serious about making tooling, yes, you need a higher carbon steel. There are air hardening, water hardening, and oil hardening steels, with different techniques used for each.
A good hot working steel is 4340, which needs to be oil quenched. This is what Grant uses for all the off center forge tooling that he sells at kaynes- www.blacksmithdepot.com
A lot of blacksmiths us S-7, or some H series steels as well. Tooling is an art and a science, and it takes some time and experimentation to get it down.
Does grant already make a tool that does what you want?
He makes quite a few, in both single sided and spring swages.
First, just make one out of
First, just make one out of mild steel, and try it out.
If your work is nice and cherry red, and you dont need a thousand pieces, you can probably get away with it.
I have found that plain old A36, which is mild steel from the steel yard, has so much variation in it these days because it is mostly electricly remelted scrap, that it has a higher carbon content than "mild" did 20 years ago, and that it can actually be hardened to a small degree just by heating to red and water quenching. This may be hard enough.
If you want to get serious about making tooling, yes, you need a higher carbon steel. There are air hardening, water hardening, and oil hardening steels, with different techniques used for each.
A good hot working steel is 4340, which needs to be oil quenched. This is what Grant uses for all the off center forge tooling that he sells at kaynes- www.blacksmithdepot.com
A lot of blacksmiths us S-7, or some H series steels as well. Tooling is an art and a science, and it takes some time and experimentation to get it down.
Does grant already make a tool that does what you want?
He makes quite a few, in both single sided and spring swages.