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hunter63
10-07-2010, 08:15 PM
I am involved in another house/attic/garage/shed clean up project.

As we are tossing, sorting, salvaging, marking for sale a large selection of items, I have been kinda scooping up items most would just toss, go figure....

So now the question, old rotary lawn mower blades, have saved out several.
Doing a search turned up a few leads, but seems the conscious is that they are too soft?
http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/showthread.php?t=11104&highlight=mower+blades

So boys what do you think?

Camp10
10-07-2010, 08:40 PM
They are to soft as is but will harden when heat treated. I just dug a few out of the metal dumpster the other day for knives. I like to make a few knives out of recycled metals to keep on hand as "inventory" and lawn mower blades are a great source for these.

canid
10-07-2010, 10:55 PM
lawn mower blades, like many common salvagables, are problematic because there is no one metal they are made of.

some of them will be suitable, and some will be outright mild steel; completely useless. if you don't need a usable knife from one given blade then there is nothing wrong with using them at all. you just can't expect to know what the composition is. this means you might have to play around with the heat treatments to get them right. i've never minded this approach, and have made perfectly serviceable knifes from all kinds of junk.

like bed frames, i bet the older blades are better than the new ones.

i wouldn't be surprised - since mowers used to be made by manufacturers of farm equipment - to find that the old mower blades like the reel mowers where the stuff that's called ploughshare or improved ploughshare steel in older books. i don't know what grade that would be, but i do know i've seen it recommended for blades. it's the stuff they used to make tines, disks, ploughs, etc for tractors from.

Camp10
10-08-2010, 06:04 AM
lawn mower blades, like many common salvagables, are problematic because there is no one metal they are made of.

some of them will be suitable, and some will be outright mild steel; completely useless. if you don't need a usable knife from one given blade then there is nothing wrong with using them at all. you just can't expect to know what the composition is. this means you might have to play around with the heat treatments to get them right. i've never minded this approach, and have made perfectly serviceable knifes from all kinds of junk.

Excuse me? Are you saying my knives are unusable? I've made several knives from lawnmower blades and have never had one that didnt harden nicely. If there are plain steel blades out there, I've never run into them. While I cant say that they all are usable steel, I can say all the ones I've ever tried worked fine.

Rick
10-08-2010, 06:53 AM
I think you both said the same thing. The way I read that is you might wind up with one that isn't usable. Not that any you make would be bad.

canid
10-08-2010, 07:49 AM
yes; that's clearly exactly what i said. :devil2:

Winter
10-08-2010, 12:35 PM
Some people call it a kaiser blade, I call it a slingblade, urn hrmmm.

Good knife steel.

Rick
10-08-2010, 01:24 PM
What'cha doin' with that lawn mower blade, Winter?

2dumb2kwit
10-09-2010, 05:16 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUfMgc-b9zw&feature=related