What are dowel pins made of?

[Mark Hammer]

I went to a fasteners store in town the other day for some Allen screws, and noted that they had some dowel pins with nice bevelled ends and smooth-finished shafts that were an absolute perfect size (diameter, length) for polepieces. Anybody have any idea what those sorts of things are made of, and whether they would be suitable for magnetizing and using as polepieces? I'm not looking to flawlessly replicate this or that pickup. I mean, is there a reason why I should not use them as polepieces, even in an experimental sense?

[jonson]

steel

Normaly in an engineering sense either hardened steel or silver steel.

[Possum]

...

Just try them, I'm guessing they might be 1018....

[jonson]

As I said normally high carbon content steel which is oil hardened and centreless ground to close tolerance. Try by all means but check for ability to magnetise as some are stainless steel.
Through Hardened Steel - 100Cr6, WS 1.3505 Hardened & Tempered to HV550-650
Mild Steel, Unhardened - WS 1.0718 (9SMnPb28)
Stainless A2 - WS 1.4305 or 303S31
Stainless A4 - WS 1.4571 or 316S11
Just a few possibilities.Depends who you buy them from.

[Joe Gwinn]

Just try them, I'm guessing they might be 1018....

No way, at least not for the well-made ones. They are quite hard, and 1018 cannot be hardened.

Dowel pins are cheap and available. One can anneal dowel pins. Just pack 100 of them in a piece of iron pipe with iron caps, and some paper (to burn and consume the oxygen), heat the closed pipe to red heat in a charcoal fire, and allow to cool naturally.

[jonson]

Cheers Joe.

Good one Joe as I use a lot of dowel pins making jigs and punches and when needing to get one annealed I usually do it one by one with an oxy/acetylene
set up but that is a good way to do a batch. Now Why didn't I think of that.
Cheers.

[Instigator]

I've used those very dowel pins as polepieces on some Rickenbacker-style bass pickups with excellent results. Just make sure you use a STRONG bar magnet to gauss them though, particularly if the pickup is to be installed in the bridge position.

[Mark Hammer]

Thanks for the feedback, gents. Very helpful.

Looking forward to experimenting with them, particularly how much cheaper and more readily available they are. The fact that they come pre-bevelled is no great punishment either.