Quote from: Thor on May 25, 2011, 08:15:25 PM

I am a blacksmith and take great issue with any railroad spikes being referred to as "high carbon". They simply are not.

What the railroads refer to as "high carbon steel" spikes are simply slightly higher carbon than the standard spikes. The vast majority of railroad spike manufacturers mean 1020 steel when they say "high carbon". A very few go up to 1030 which is still very mild steel, and they usually don't use makers marks any more, so knowing whether you have a 1020 or a 1030 requires very expensive carbon content testing.

A decent all purpose knife is at least XX50, and fine blades are XX75 - XX90 or special tool steels.

I make railroad spike knives as well, but would never sell them for ~$80, and would never claim they were high carbon, though I always use HC spikes to make the blades with, and use a superquench or brine solution in order to make them as decent a blade as possible. These are mostly art pieces, and if you're expecting a top notch hand forged blade, you will be disappointed.

I do not intend to derail this thread, and am glad that people are selling more things for bitcoins, but I do not like people being misled or lied to within the context of one of my passions.

Good info, again I am not the one that may be selling these so I don't know everything about them. I only said that we use the HC variety of railroad spike. If I am unclear on anything please let me clarify. As stated in the OP this thread was to gauge interest (and it looks like we have some). I have another thread where I sell chainmail (that I make myself) and i figured maybe I would set up a shop to sell metal-craft type stuff... who knows.

The guy that makes these doesn't even know about bitcoin... he is an artist working as a cook who is trying to support a young family and i thought maybe the bitcoin marketplace would be good for him. Always good to have more things for sale that accept bitcoin.