Looking for history of 5160 spring steel

[Chris Evans]

Originally Posted by Ian

. It's main commercial use has been in the manufacture of leaf suspension springs for automobiles and trucks. In some parts of the world, such as the Philippines, these leaf springs are scavenged from old vehicles and the steel is forged into edged tools and weapons.

Ian,

Leaf springs have been made from a variety of steels, not just 5160. Over the years I have seen mentioned 9260, L6 and the higher carbon content 10xx series including 1095.

So we must not make the assumption that just because many leaf springs were made from 5160, that all were of the same material.

As an aside, making swords and knives from discarded used leaf springs is not a very good idea because these springs develop micro fatigue cracks that are an invitation for later breakage in a sword of knife.

As another aside, the village blacksmiths in SE Asia tend to only harden the edges with a shallow edge quench and leave the rest of the blade soft, which mitigates the above risk, though it would not work all that well with thin bladed swords, at least not to our expectations.

Cheers
Chris