What is Drill Rod used for?

[M.B. Naegle]

Found this old thread on an internet search. It is a pretty old thread so I don't know if this reply will even get seen by anyone.
There was a small industrial supply company went out of business near me. A health/exercise club bought it out for the building. They were getting rid of all the stock. Just throwing it in the dumpster. Tons of stuff.
They let a few of us come in and just take what we wanted. To see it all go into the dumpster was sad and overwhelming. You cant take it all.
I hauled half a pickup load home. One of the things I took was this round stock. It was in a rack that said drill rod. Bunch of sizes. Mostly fractional. Some metric.
There was no other provenance on it. None.
I took all there was. 50-60? lbs. I don't know what to do with it now. Will keep a few pieces/sizes. Maybe make go cart axles. Dunno.
I know it is expensive. Hate to see it made into yard art. Worse yet, go to scrap.
Would like to sell it but with no provenance, who would buy it?
Just thinking out loud here.
Jerry


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The best way I've seen stuff like this sorted out is to cut a wafer off the end of a bar and heat treat it. If it works, then you know what you have, if it doesn't then try another heat treating method. Most of our tool steel is A2 or O1, so any time there's a mystery bar, we'll start by heat treating a sample as if it was A1 and go from there. The paint codes on the ends of the bars will vary from supplier to supplier, but if they all came from the same rack, I'd think you could trial and error one bar and know what the rest is, if it's all painted the same.