I’ve been blacksmithing less lately due to the extreme heat and humidity. It’s tough to want to turn a 95 degree garage into a 110 degree garage just to play around a little. But I was missing it and I was doing a little welding to repair a chair for Jeff (broken pin upon which the chair swivels). So I got out the giant bag of railroad spikes I found in Illinois and started monkeying around.
The result was Nuthead. I found a nut on the side of the tracks as well and it just seemed to fit. The coolest thing about Nuthead are the hands and feet. Railroad spikes have codes on them, something that seems very planned out. I know that HC means high carbon, 30-40 but still a little soft for a knife, but there are some that are harder. I’ve learned that an additional C means they added copper. As you can see from the head of the spike, it’s a little but difficult to decipher. Also different manufacturers used different codes on their spike heads.
Of course, these spikes are made out of a pretty good quality steel, so there are lots of other things you can do with them. A lot of folks make knives out of them. I have another 50 or so, we’ll see what happens to them.
Metallurgically submitted,
Canoelover