[TheForge] untapped resource?

[Daniel Kretchmar]

Hey all,
      The other day, while I was driving home from work, it suddenly occured
to me that lawn mower blades are good steel...obvious I know....but I
stopped at a lawn mower store and asked if I could have the old blades that
they took off when they replaced them...They showed me a bin that had about
500 blades and said, "Take as many as you want!!"....long blades.....blades
made of something high carbon and only slightly thick for knives...(3/16)

I did a grinding spark test and also heated and quenched and then shattered
one so I know its at least 1080. I flattened and annealed one and just
finished grinding out a Usuba ocho (japanese vegatable cleaver).  It seems
like the metal is great!  The two stores I called said that I could have as
many as I wanted as often as I wanted........


Sooooo.....Why have I never heard people talk about this resource before?
Have I just not noticed?  Is the metal toxic and contains something that
will kill anyone uses it? :)

Dan
www.irontreeworks.com