Plated steel rod for lathe practice?

I recently bought a Southbend 9A and I'm a total novice. I went to a "Going out of business sale" and found a piece of 1"x6' aluminum for $15.They also had plated steel rod in different sizes, and was wondering if this was any good for lathe practice.

Any help will be appreciated

Norm

Chrome plated ground and polished steel is used for hydraulic piston rods. It will be easy to get under the plating with carbide tools, and it will be like normal soft or maybe medium hard steel from then out. You can stroke a sawed end of one of these rods to get a feel for how hard it is. The plating will be hard, so don't bother wrecking a file on the side of the rod.

It might be handy stuff for making a boom mount for a microscope, too.

Larry

Norm,

Aluminum is a bit of a different monster, depending on what the makeup is it can be sweet to work with or not so sweet. I would highly suggest you look at getting some 12L14 steel it's very very nice to work with, absolutely great to learn on, forgiving and not very costly. Unknown steels / alloys could be a real pain, especially hardware store crap. http://www.speedymetals.com/c-8225-round.aspx will get you to speedy metals listing for round steel stock, prices are reasonable, shippings quick. 1117 and 1144 are pretty good to work with also, but I think the best cost choice is the 12L14. With a 9 inch your hole through the spindle is 3/4 inch so you may find your best choice is to keep stock size in that range or lower for learning, as you won't need to cut shorter chunks, and remember that thin long stock can be dangerous whipping freely out the back side of the spindle. (hint) a cork with the appropriate size hole, in the back side of the spindle, for the stock to ride in can help a lot =)

In contrast with Mr Vanice, when I heard "plated" I didn't think chrome, I thought bright zinc or cadmium. If that's what you're talking about, then it won't have a hard surface, and provided what's underneath is reasonable steel might be just fine for practice.

Ah yes, the nature of the business that was going was not stated. If it was a hardware store, then the aluminum was probably 1100 and the steel was probably 1018 with zinc plate. Both materials are not easy machining for lathe work, but perfectly OK for learning how to turn. If you learn on 1018, the first time you cut into some 12L14 you will think a miracle has occurred.

Larry

Thank you all for our help