[Vincine]

Originally Posted by willshoum

Ouch......

I'm sorry. I meant to cause a smile or two, not inflict a pinch.

[willshoum]

Originally Posted by Vincine

I'm sorry. I meant to cause a smile or two, not inflict a pinch.

I'm lol, I'm old school, so much so that I even had teachers in grade school that taught my father......Now thats old school.......No Problem......Oh by the way I keep a salt shaker next to my computer. lol

[linuxuser3890]

Originally Posted by Vincine

Duh! Of course! Grainger!
I'd have to buy a lot to order from Atlas and there only enough on ebay to make a bracelet.

You could also try lowering your standards to just plain ol A36.

[St8LineGunsmith]

ya A-36 is used in boilers and pressure vessels and is machineable and easy to weld it should work good for gun parts.

[Jim1611]

A-36 is the equivelent to cold rolled steel. It's fine for allot of things but not gun parts. If the part has allot of wear potential, like a hammer and sear, then it needs to be made out of tool steel and hardened. If it's a frame or slide it doesn't need heat treating but the material needs to be tough, like 4140, 4130, or some stainless. These have a fairly high rockwell number so they come fairly hard.

Speaking of hardness a file is about 65-70 rockwell. Hard but brittle. The hammer or sear are usually about 54-60 rockwell and that material could be A-2, D-2 or some of the less common tool steels. The frame and slide would be about 28-32 Rockwell and could be made from 4140 HT, it's pre hardended but can be machined with high speed cutters but it tends to work harden when machined so you might eat up allot of cutters. Carbide is best and indexable carbide with flood coolant is even better.

[St8LineGunsmith]

most cold roll is 1018 or 1020, A-36 is hot roll and can be hardened to R 42 and does not need annealing before machining
it would be perfectly acceptable for making a lot of gun parts,
you wouldnt want to make a bolt or firing pin from it or sear mechanism for modern high powered rifles but it would be fine for other applications
like Black powder rifles and pistols and black powder revolver frames and even cylinders.
it is not a replacement for ordinance steels, Chromalloy and 316 stainless but it is acceptable for certain applications.