Round steel stock for Oland tool

[Glennbear]

Part of the legacy my father left me was the collecting habits of Fred Sanford, and the engineering abilities of Rube Goldberg coupled with the "making do with what's you got" inventiveness of Red Green. In several threads recently members have mentioned difficulty in finding mild steel round stock for making oland tool shafts. In the masonry dept of the local BORG they sell hefty smooth round bars in various lengths used to stake forms. These bars have holes for form nails but enough undrilled shaft remains to machine what one would need to hold a cutting bit. I believe they are a lot cheaper than the round stock sold out of the fancy bin in the hardware section which IIRC is not of sufficient diameter anyway

[junquecol]

What you are looking at are form stakes. They are HARDENED steel. They have to be to stand up to pounding and pulling in the setting and tear down forms. Check with Enco (use-enco,com) for A-2 smooth rod.

[DaveD]

I'll second www.use-enco.com. 1/4" up to about 3" round bars in various steels. Lengths vary from 1' to 6' depending on what you want. Reasonable prices too. You can also get oil or air hardened drill rod too.

[Woodman2k]

I would recommend going to www.onlinemetals.com and checking out there Cold Drawn Carbon Round 12L14 Rod.It's strong enough for the job at hand and it's alittle lighter than some of the other choices.The lighter weight gives you some feel/feedback to help control the snags and over feeding that will happen.Jimwill48 will back me on this one,he turned me on to the 12L14 and it works great.Its very machinable and has a pretty smopth surface.Then go to enco.com for your tool bits.

[John Jankowski]

Fastenal is a very good local source of stock for oland and other turning tools. They have 3/4 and 1" round stock in 3 foot lengths.

John

[Glennbear]

Originally Posted by John Jankowski

Fastenal is a very good local source of stock for oland and other turning tools. They have 3/4 and 1" round stock in 3 foot lengths.

John

Thanks John, they recently opened a Fastenal storefront in South Hill , 12 miles from my house

[jimwill48]

Yep, Do yourself a favor and try to find 12L14 steel, as long as you don't need to weld it, its a great steel for most projects. Tough but easy to work unlike most cold rolled.

James

Update: I just checked the Fastenal website and they do carry 12L14 steel round bars a 5/8" dia is $0.35 an inch. A little high but not outrageous when you think that 18 inch piece will cost only $6.30. You can find it cheaper by ordering from a place like onlinemetals.com but if you only want enough to make a single tool Fastenal makes sense.......jw