Steel blanks and a question

Found a good deal on some steel at Enco and bought some in 3/16 cobalt, 1/2 round M2 , 3/8 colbalt and a pc of 5/8 M2 HSS. I don't remember wanting to buy the 5/8 but it was there (probably late at night and i didnt check the order before shooting it thru)
Now im not sure what the heck to do with the 5/8" pc of steel 4-1/2" long

Any ideas ???

What are your plans for the other sizes

Bob Gibson said:

What are your plans for the other sizes

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I'm betting they're for cutting tips for things like hollowing tools and Oland-style tools.

Is cobalt steel real hard, like carbide?
If so, you could make turning tools. But, you already know thet.

yes they will be for turning tools - different profiles for hollowing and and for cutting bowls etc -
good idea on the oland tool......thanks

Frank Fusco said:

Is cobalt steel real hard, like carbide?
If so, you could make turning tools. But, you already know thet.

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It's not - at least it's not harder than HSS. It IS more heat-resistant than ordinary HSS, though, meaning you can hog out heavier material in steel with it. It doesn't actually buy anything over ordinary HSS for turning wood; it's neither harder nor tougher, doesn't hold an edge better except in extreme (orange-hot to yellow-hot) temperatures.

Tim - agree - only a few are cobalt 10% i believe and the others are HSS - just wanted to try them out for the fun of it but i have heard the same thing about cobalt.
I have a friend that suggested other types of steel but im just playing around right now and got these to try different profiles for hollowing....
Thanks Dan

One more thing I might add... I keep my cobalt tooling (I don't have much, but I've got some) apart from all the other tooling, distanced somewhat from my normal work areas. I won't necessarily advocate that you do the same; it may be just my paranoia that leads me to do that.

Reason is that cobalt (even cobalt bound up in steel) is radioactive. Not any huge glow-in-the-dark radioactivity, but some's there. I like to keep my background count as low as I reasonably can, so I keep the radioactive tools sequestered & distanced.

Tim Hofstetter said:

...Reason is that cobalt (even cobalt bound up in steel) is radioactive. Not any huge glow-in-the-dark radioactivity, but some's there. I like to keep my background count as low as I reasonably can, so I keep the radioactive tools sequestered & distanced.

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Wow, learn something new every day. I didn't realize cobalt was hot. Your comment about background counts reminded me of a story...

Years ago my parents ran a materials testing lab, and among the tools they used at the lab were nuclear densometers, which used mild radiation to measure the density of compacted soil and asphalt. In accordance with federal laws, all the employees who used the machine had to wear a film badge to measure their exposure to radiation (radiation dosimeters). The badges were sent in every month and my mom would get the results a week or so later.

One month, my mom got a very urgent call from the dosimeter lab -- one of the employees had been exposed to so much radiation that he should be dead. The readings from his badge were off the charts. After a bit of investigation, it was found that this employee, who always wore his dosimeter on his shirt collar, had forgotten to remove it on his last trip to the dentist. It had been zapped with x-rays during his exam.

That's pretty good! Lotsa' roentgen-equivalents-man there!

I wore a dosimeter for far too long a time; for a while I worked HVAC controls at the Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute (ITRI) at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque. Wore the paper suit, too.

I shoulda' known better'n to've done that, given that I grew up downwind of three sources... so the Civil Defense folks brought us all sortsa' Geiger counters & dosimeters & such out at the farm. Brand-new batteries every year, too. Told us to keep the old ones each year, so we never ran short of flashlight batteries. Didn't find any use for the weeerd li'l high-voltage ones, though - I think they were 76 volts, but I'm not sure. They were about the size of a modern 9-volt battery.

Six years a a nuke in the Navy, crawled all over the reactor during shutdown. I wore a film badge and dosimeter all the time and recived less radiation then 1 set of dental x-rays. I think my accumulated dosage was less then 1/2 a rem.

Tim Hofstetter said:

...for a while I worked HVAC controls at the Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute (ITRI) at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque. Wore the paper suit, too...

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Small world. I grew up in Albuquerque, and before that in Los Alamos. I think roentgens are in our family bloodline. Also had a buddy that worked at the ITRI, so I'm a bit familiar with that lab, too.