1022 rod...

[David King]

There is this stuff:
http://www.dura-bar.com/
Unfortunately the smallest rounds are 5/8" I think. It's great if you need a non warping, easy to machine, stiff, wear resistant material with good bearing qualities. You could get a 3/4" x 2" bar and slice it up but I don't see any way of getting 3/16 rods cheap..

It comes in three flavors:
Ductile Iron in grades 65-45-12, 80-55-06 and 100-70-02
Gray Iron in grades G2, G1A, G2A and G1
Ni-resist Iron in grade 201 Type 1

[Joe Gwinn]

There is this stuff:
http://www.dura-bar.com/
Unfortunately the smallest rounds are 5/8" I think. It's great if you need a non warping, easy to machine, stiff, wear resistant material with good bearing qualities. You could get a 3/4" x 2" bar and slice it up but I don't see any way of getting 3/16 rods cheap.

The problem is that it is hard to keep a 3/16" by 6" rod in one piece, given the brittleness of cast iron. Nor is there much industrial demand for CI rods that small.

[black_labb]

if you are asking for iron (ie as close to pure iron as possible) its not used, and i think it is very expensive to make. the reason carbon is in the cast iron is because of the process of turning iron ore to cast iron, involves replacing the oxygen in the ore (iron oxide is the element within the ore, ie rust) with carbon in a blast furnace. cast iron was the first source of iron to be discovered. steel is made by blasting the molten iron (cast iron, not the elemet) with oxygen. the oxygen and the carbon in the cast iron burn together making carbon dioxide, as well as keeping it nice and hot. this reduces the carbon content to 0.3% or so for steel, which is softer but much less brittle. getting the carbon levels lower is expensive, and doesnt provide a particularly useful product (pickups aside).

im a mechanical engineering student and did a couple subjects a few semesters ago relating to manufacturing methods and chemistry of materials.

interestingly but a bit off topic, but there are some meteors in the desert in india that are virtually 100% iron, which have not corroded or rusted in 100's if not 1000's of years. scientists are researching why the pure iron hasn't corroded where iron with impurities corrodes easily. from memory it even has a nice shine to it. i cant seem to find anything on the net about it, so my memory may be quite off. seems to me that they could probably replicate the pure iron or whatever made it special for testing. either way, i dont think you would be able to get parts of it for pickups.


mild steel would probably be close to what you want, but that's not much different from what is being used, and is probably pretty common.

speaking about this makes me want to take apart this output transformer from the 40's and use the laminates for some blade pickups.

reguarding the iron dave king linked to:
the ductile iron is just cast iron with some manganese or another element in there to make it less brittle, but still have a low melting point to make casting relatively simple. it still has the high carbon content.

have a browse through matweb, as it has thousands of different steel types that should be interesting to find something that could be interesting. i think some even give the magnetic permeability. wether it gets you anywhere, or just gives you ideas for alot of unobtainable materials i dont know. designing something usually has alot of spare time researching minor things though.

http://www.matweb.com/

[Joe Gwinn]

interestingly but a bit off topic, but there are some meteors in the desert in india that are virtually 100% iron, which have not corroded or rusted in 100's if not 1000's of years. scientists are researching why the pure iron hasn't corroded where iron with impurities corrodes easily. from memory it even has a nice shine to it. i cant seem to find anything on the net about it, so my memory may be quite off. seems to me that they could probably replicate the pure iron or whatever made it special for testing. either way, i dont think you would be able to get parts of it for pickups. http://www.matweb.com/

I think they are really a nickel-iron alloy, not chemically pure iron, despite the imprecise description in most media accounts.

The lack of rust is due to the low humidity in the desert. And the nickel perhaps.

There is a man made iron tower in India somewhere that's something like 1,000 years old. I have not found the URL I recall, aside from references to a perhaps mythical tower built by Nagarjuna, one of the ancients of Buddism. Here are a few:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanishka_stupa

http://books.google.com/books?id=kAP...jIOkB4J8&hl=en

There are iron towers in China as well:

http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_tr...tent_34494.htm

http://www.sinoptic.ch/histoire/figures/stadlin/debut/

[David Schwab]

mild steel would probably be close to what you want, but that's not much different from what is being used, and is probably pretty common.

I think all this pretty much answers the question... I guess when people said they use iron for pickups (as in the early patents) they were referring to mild steel.

Does anyone know off hand what kind of stainless steel is used for flatware? I'm always amazed that the butter knives I have in my kitchen are magnetic, since I always think of SS as being nonmagnetic.

[jonson]

stainless steel

Stainless steel is available in two qualities: 18/0 or 18/10 (there is also 18/8 but this is similar in properties to 18/10) The '18' refers to 18% chromium which is added to the steel mix to give it stainless properties. The '10' refers to nickel which adds to those properties and also gives a silvery sheen. 18/0 is much less expensive than 18/10 and most cutlery sold today is made from this material. 18/10 gives greater protection against corrosion and has a softer shine: most contemporary patterns are made from this top grade stainless steel. 18/0 being the magnetic grade.

[black_labb]

I think they are really a nickel-iron alloy, not chemically pure iron, despite the imprecise description in most media accounts.

The lack of rust is due to the low humidity in the desert. And the nickel perhaps.

There is a man made iron tower in India somewhere that's something like 1,000 years old. I have not found the URL I recall, aside from references to a perhaps mythical tower built by Nagarjuna, one of the ancients of Buddism. Here are a few:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanishka_stupa

http://books.google.com/books?id=kAP...jIOkB4J8&hl=en

There are iron towers in China as well:

http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_tr...tent_34494.htm

http://www.sinoptic.ch/histoire/figures/stadlin/debut/

you may be right, i got a bit sceptical once i couldnt find ay info on wiki.

[David Schwab]

Stainless steel is available in two qualities: 18/0 or 18/10 (there is also 18/8 but this is similar in properties to 18/10) The '18' refers to 18% chromium which is added to the steel mix to give it stainless properties. The '10' refers to nickel which adds to those properties and also gives a silvery sheen. 18/0 is much less expensive than 18/10 and most cutlery sold today is made from this material. 18/10 gives greater protection against corrosion and has a softer shine: most contemporary patterns are made from this top grade stainless steel. 18/0 being the magnetic grade.

Thanks!

[corduroyew]

who said Montreaux's slugs are 1022?

His sluggs and poles both are. He told me in an email and shortly their after it was added to his price list.

[pilotjones]

Stainless steel is available in two qualities: 18/0 or 18/10 (there is also 18/8 but this is similar in properties to 18/10) The '18' refers to 18% chromium which is added to the steel mix to give it stainless properties. The '10' refers to nickel which adds to those properties and also gives a silvery sheen. 18/0 is much less expensive than 18/10 and most cutlery sold today is made from this material. 18/10 gives greater protection against corrosion and has a softer shine: most contemporary patterns are made from this top grade stainless steel. 18/0 being the magnetic grade.

While his may all be true (I'm not arguing it), it is far from a complete picture. There are hundreds of stainless steels. In commercial fabrication the most common are 300 and 400 series. 300s you generally see are 303, 304, and 316 and 316L. These are nicely noncorrosive mostly nonmagnetic, although they can become mildly ferromagnetic, particularly after cold working. 400s, such as 404, are austenitic stainlesses. They are hardenable, with less corrosion resistance, higher strength, and are generally mildly magnetic.

Beyond these there are many many less common types.

These numbers are from (IIRC) the UNS numbering system, which then relates to the AISI designations. I think I once saw a table correlating these and the 18/x nomenclature.

[Possum]

desert?

I think you're wrong about that iron pole not rusting because its in a desert? It does rain in deserts and it sure rains alot in India. Scientists wouldn't be so puzzled by why it doesn't rust if it wasn't in a rusting environment, eh? As far as I know they still don't know why that thing is rust free. Maybe it was MADE from meteorite materials, I know some knife blades were like origina Bowie knives and those things had some real odd properties that have never been reproduced as far as I know....

[pilotjones]

While they do eventually decay, iron meteorites tend to be a kind of stainless steel.

Most iron on Earth also rusts away very quickly. But the iron-nickel alloy in meteorites is a naturally rust-resistant steel, so iron meteorites can last for thousands of years before weathering away.

Also, it's common for knives to be made from meteorite iron, particularly in societies that do not have advanced metalworking.

METALWORK

The 407-kilogram (897-pound) fragment of Cape York known as the Dog was extensively hammered by Inuit workers—just like the fragment called the Woman, which was found about 30 meters (100 feet) away.
...

HAMMERING AWAY

Although iron meteorites are incredibly hard, the Inuit people successfully chipped off pieces of the fragment known as the Woman using hammerstones made of basalt. The iron was then used to make tools such as knives and harpoons.

When explorer Robert Peary located the Woman in 1894 with the help of an Inuit guide, some 10,000 hammerstones were scattered around the three-ton meteorite. Over the years, Inuit people had carried these basalt stones to the area from far away because the rocks found naturally around the Woman were too soft to break iron.

TOOLS FROM METEORITES

Few trees grow on the rugged arctic terrain of northwestern Greenland, so the native Inuit population long made tools and weapons out of such materials as walrus tusks and reindeer antlers. And until the mid-1800s, the primary source of metal for their knives, harpoons and spear points was iron from meteorites.

[Joe Gwinn]

I think you're wrong about that iron pole [tower] not rusting because its in a desert? It does rain in deserts and it sure rains alot in India. Scientists wouldn't be so puzzled by why it doesn't rust if it wasn't in a rusting environment, eh? As far as I know they still don't know why that thing is rust free. Maybe it was MADE from meteorite materials, I know some knife blades were like original Bowie knives and those things had some real odd properties that have never been reproduced as far as I know....

There are lots of iron towers, it seems. Not all of India is wet.

The Vikings used meteor iron a lot as well, but the issue was availability more than anything else.

It appears that the pig iron was smelted on the spot, and poured in successive rings, causing the rings to be welded to one another.

Nickel loaded cast iron is quite corrosion resistant. Adding meteoric iron to the melt while smelting from ore or remelting from ingot would do the job.

http://www.dura-bar.com/products/201-type-1.cfm

[jonson]

this should keep you metal guys interested for a while

Posted a word doc on the rust free Gupta tower in Delhi and found quite a few other towers in China and India, but, they painted and rusty, but, then the Chinese discovered cast iron in 300 a.d. and us Europeans caught up in 1300, so our eastern friends got a few more years experience than the rest of us. Sorry no meteorites or hocus pocus Possum just good metalurgy.

[Possum]

...

then why can't they duplicate it? :-) Why can no one duplicate an original Bowie knife blade? hocus pocus :-)