Material for lathe toolholder

ThinWoodsman

Brass
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One of the projects I'm thinking of tackling this summer is a copy of the Armstrong spring toolholder, for use on a shaper. There's a pretty good discussion of them here.

I was curious what form of steel would be suitable, given the inherent spring in the main form. My first thought was to use tool steel, but I see that McMaster-Carr has some 5160 spring steel available, and that looks pretty ideal (if rather pricey).

Any thoughts?
 
That might be overkill, any carbon steel over .04 carbon would do the job, properly hardened and drawn to blue.

Yes, 5160 is a fatigue resistant alloy that you might use in high cycle applications like vehicle suspensions. If you can get hold of a suitably sized ex-vehicle spring that would be great but I wouldn’t buy it specially, and you’d still need to heat treat it. Like Ben says, use a medium carbon steel ideally around the 0.6-0.7%C and heat treat as a spring.
 
Thanks, I'll check what I've got for stock when I get back. The heat-treating reminds me, I've got to keep the toolholder small enough to fit in the muffle furnace. The size shown in the link I posted (6") should fit diagonally, I just need to make sure the spring is far enough from the end of the tool to not hit the corner walls of the furnace.
 
I think 1045, properly heat treated would be just fine.
 
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