Thermite:
Your prose and wit takes a bit for an old thick-headed dinosaur such as myself to understand sometimes, but I do appreciate it. Each of us has our writing style, and this 'board is a great place to share what we can bring to the table as well as our writings.
If your cutting wit could be channelled properly, it could precisely shape steel. I enjoy reading your posts !
I use axle steel because of my time in South America. Seems a sin to throw away a piece of axle steel. I soften and anneal axles in the firebox of my coal fired heating boiler during the heating season. Wait for a warmer winter day when the firebox is on low draft, bury the chunk of axle steel in the glowing coal/coke bed, and let it soak for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. Pull it out with blacksmith tongs and stand it on end in a steel bucket of coal ash and clinker. Come next day or two, I take the axle steel out of the ashes, up outside the garage, and run over it with the air needle scaler. This knocks off the scale and adhering cinders. I then wire wheel it and inspect for cracks and obvious damage. I keep a few of these chunks of axles around for projects. I always try to take a heavy roughing cut to get thru any surface cracks. Never had a bad piece of axle steel.
The steam engine at Hanford Mills has the thrust rod in its governor made from a piece of 1970's F-250 rear axle. A few more shafts and odds-and-ends are made from WWII Jeep axle steel.
I work out twice a week doing Pilates. I recommend a system of regular stretching exercises to anyone, particularly as our numerical age creeps up. I am going to turn 70 in September, but can drop and give about 40 pushups and can do situps until the person holding my ankles gets sick of counting or gets bored. It's a great thing for working around heavy equipment, locomotives, and doing smithing and fabrication work. No cricks, aches, pains, or problems as a rule. One day, while working out, I noticed that my Pilates teacher's equipment needed some modifications and parts made. I offered to make the necessary parts (some non-standard tee nuts, machined washers, and stock threaded aluminum knobs and threaded studs). I had a chunk of a Toyota Camry front axle in the shop with the splines. I softened it up in the boiler firebox and cut off a chunk. I simply polished the OD in the lathe, drilled a hole down the center, and "cut the salami" to make the washers. My Pilates teacher thinks they are great, liking the effect of the splines, and enjoying how well her equipment now works. She maxxes out the springs for me and has me doing advanced exercises, so I get to have my own work used to keep me in shape.
I use snow plow cutting edge steel (which our town highway department throws in their scrap pile). This is usually a 1060 steel. I anneal it as it is fairly hard and has had a lot of impact loading on the highway trucks scraping along. Once annealed, it machines nicely. It also hardens nicely for things like parallels, setup tooling, vise jaw plates, and similar.
I use truck and locomotive spring leaves as well. The old locomotive spring leaves are likely a 1090 or something close to it, and the newer truck spring leaves are 5160. I anneal the spring leaves (which are usually busted pieces). My first act is to "slick off the surface" with an angle grinder and finer grit disc. This usually discloses any cracking. Used spring leaves often have hairline transverse cracks. I machine below the cracking before using spring leaf steel. I've made motorcycle parts, wrenches, and kitchen knives from old spring leaves. I forge the tools and knives to shape rather than just cutting away the extra steel. The 1060 and 5160 harden nicely in used vegetable oil left over from frying turkeys.
For hammer heads, I got hold of some heavy rebar when we were building a power transmission line. We were putting in deep caisson foundations, and the rebar cages were made with rebar a bit over 2" diameter. Sometimes, the foundation contractor would hit rock, and it the rock was deemed competent, we'd issue a change order for a "rock socket". This meant field cutting the rebar to shorten it and grouting the ends into holes drilled in the bedrock. Needless to say, I grabbed a bunch of that large diameter rebar. This was rebar made to a known specification, and is re-rolled railroad rail steel. Makes fine hammer heads and anvil tools, but you better have (or know someone who has) a power hammer to work it down.
Chunks of old railroad rail also can be made into good tools, aside from the more usual use as small anvils.
My wife knows I have incredible vision, able to see chunks of scrap steel along the shoulders of roads, even when obscured by fallen leaves or cover of darkness. She also knows that I WILL put that steel to good use. Recently enough, a buddy with a repair garage gave me the tie rod from a mutual friend's Dodge Ram diesel pickup. The tie rod is about 1 1/8" diameter, not full-hardened. It machines beautifully. I've made a few mandrels for running jobs in the lathe out of that tie rod, as well as a couple of parts for the old Airhead BMW motorcycles (centerstand pivot bushings which had worn out after 40 + years).
I'm slowly designing a steam engine as I go along building it around a cylinder, two crank disc castings, and flywheel casting. The cylinder finished up at 2 7/16" bore x 3" stroke, and the flywheel is about 12" diameter x 2 1/2" face width x 1" bore. I am making the crankshaft from a tow truck rear axle. A neighbor had a repair garage at the foot of our road for many years. Towards the end of his life, he cleared out his iron pile for metal pickup day. I got there first. I grabbed what was useful to me, including a rear axle from his old tow truck (complete with flange plate and studs). He was originally from Haiti, and had a reputation for never throwing anything away and "cobbing cars together" with stuff from his back iron pile or other hoards. He and I got on famously. The neighbor died not long after he put his beloved iron pile out for metal pickup, into his 80's. I figure to memorialize him by using his tow truck axle in the crankshaft of my steam engine. Another chunk of the other tow truck axle will get forged into the connecting rod. I annealed the tow truck axles and have to say they machine nicely and with a properly ground HSS tool bit, give a finish like precision grinding.
Old timers like myself were taught to spark test steels to determine alloying elements. We were also taught to use our senses, using files or a hammer and center punch, vise/hammer bending, drilling into a sample, or notching a sample with a hacksaw, the heating/quenching and breaking (or bending) to determine roughly what we had. I learned this at Brooklyn Technical HS (1964-68), and then oldtimers in the shops expanded my knowledge. Seems to have stood me in good stead all these years.
Forging tools is one of those things I picked up along the way, and just enjoy doing. As a kid at Brooklyn Tech, we were acquainted with the grain flow in forgings, and it reminded me of how a tree trunk, when sawn, will show a grain flow and the strength the tree had from it. It also reminded me of the way shipwrights used to look for particularly shaped oak trees to use for the frames of wooden sailing vessels, or how country people would find trees with a "bow" or "crook" to use for the runners on bob sleds (the kind used for hauling loads such as timber). We learned that machining "cuts thru the grain", and in later years in my career, I came to realize that some metals will "self relieve" once the rolling lines in it are cut. Forging seems to give the best stress distribution and better strength, but that's just my oldtime half-baked thinking. The closest this old dinosaur comes to "additive manufacturing" is to buildup a part with welding or brazing. Can't wrap my head around 3-D printing as producing working parts that can handle stresses, pressures, temperatures and erosive environments such as steam or parts of an I/C engine.