??Some Kind Of Socket For A Sailboat 'V' drive I'm Told??

[Highpower]

I think there are a few variables here. The brand of socket (manufacturer) and the finish on the tool. (Black oxide, hard chrome, nickel plate?)
Most of those sockets (the better ones anyway) are made from Cro-Moly steel I believe.

View attachment 365

Most black oxide "impact" sockets mushroom the square drive over time, and will cut pretty easily with HSS.
I agree with Bill -- a file test would give you the answer.

 

[sic semper tyrannis]

V- drives are cool.

Motor mounts backwards over shaft. Vdrives changes direction of prop shaft and gives it about a 10 degree angle down. Allows you to place engine further aft for better space.

Like to see those gears....bet they are weird to cut!!

 

[Tony Wells]

If it were hardened and annealed, I'm sure you would have no problem cutting it. I figure you didn't mean quite that. Annealing is the opposite of hardening, generally speaking. You should be able to cut that material in any case, with carbide, for sure. HSS probably, if you take it pretty slow Those are called spanner sockets in most circles. HP is right, Crome-Moly steel, but machinable in most cases.

A file is always a good test. If it files at all, good chance HSS can do the job, but carbide for sure. If the file "skates", ehhhhh, maybe not so much. Carbide may still be worth a try, but it may be a grind only job. Not likely to be the case, as the tool configuration would discourage that kind of hardness. I'd probably just chuck it up and cut it, using a fairly low RPM just to be on the safe side. The ends, where the dogs are will be an interrupted cut and will be hardest on the tooling whichever you use.

 

[Tony Wells]

In old parlance, it's also known as "drawing back". Usually, the overall process we know as heat treatment can be composed of several things, but we usually mean "harden". But how, and to what hardness. Most carbon and alloy steels are not used in their "full hard" condition, because it is also brittle. So, it is again heated to a slightly lower temperature, held for a certain length of time at that temperature, then slow cooled. That is tempering. Together, the ht industry calls this process Q & T, for Quench and Temper.

Annealing is similar, but higher temperatures are used. Higher than the materials critical temperature, and slow cool.

Some materials, notably the precipitation hardening stainless alloys, my favorite being 17-4 (17% Ch+4%Ni) is hardened in a different manner. PH steels are "aged". They simply take them to heat for a specified time and let them air cool. That's it. For example, the 17-4 I referred to is at its hardest standard state if you take it to 900 deg F for 1 hour, then air cool. It will be somewhere around 44 Rc. The acceptable range for condition H-900 as it's called is 40-48 Rc. The strength of this material in this state is quite good at 200 Ksi Tensile, and 185 Ksi yield. Yet it is still machinable. I hate doing little tapped holes in H-900, but H-1025 is just right. Beautiful chips, and great finish.

I digress, my apologies.