Thread: Should I just take it all to a scrap yard?

My wife's grandfather retired sometime around 1979 to 81 he was a tool and die maker in Brampton Ontario Ca. He passed in 2003 and his sons just got around to cleaning out his basement of tools. On a visit to her grandmothers home yesterday she asked if I could help her get rid off the stuff her sons didnt want. There were a lot of steel blanks in the basement and she just wants me to take it to the scrap yard. I know nothing about steel, but saw the words hot roll and cold roll on some of the stacks of steel. My question is this should I take this stuff to the scrapyard or would someone be able to make something out of this stuff? There is a total of maybe 100 lbs of the stuff not including the round bars and huge round plates of steel down there.

Tools - a set on Flickr

Oooo, flat plates, round bars, hot roll, cold roll...you sure know how to get attention.

Unless there are more numbers or letters to identify the material, it's very difficult to guess. But, hot roll is usually more high carbonish and cold roll usually has less carbon. I suspect some of the pile will be tool steels of more complicated alloying.

Most scrap yards that take steels will have a spark testing spectrograph that can come pretty close to telling you what the likely alloy is. The yard then decides if it's a kind of steel they want to buy.

For the steel: As long as you dont know what kind it is it only classefies as scrap metal
Someone could make something as long as they dont care about the proprties of the steel

The tools on the other hand i would keep, or you could probably sell them if your sure you will never want to use them

round here hot rolled and no other numbers or letters means A36 mild and cold rolled is 1018

if there was other info that would be a help
like you can get 1095 steel in both hot or cold rolled form

So unless there is any additional info on all the steel its just scrap right. Are there any markings I should look for that might be stamped into the steel? As for the tools I will be keeping the old files and wrenches and the other stuff as well. I have a link to pictures of the stuff at the bottom of the original post.

Scrap yard! Ya gotta be kidding!

Look up a local blacksmith or knifemaker first and see what they think of the steel. Some guys like the challenge of mystery steel and you would meet some interesting people.

Keep a couple of the flat pieces for yourself. They can be used for a number of things in the future. I would use a piece as a base to set a thin thin hone on or as a base for peening a razor.

BTW, you sure do have a lot of barber stuff!