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Hot Rolled Steel Vs. "hot Rolled Steel"


Tim71

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I've wanted to film this for quite a while but after the latest post about HRS I thought now would be a good time. Most braced benders understand the difference but unbraced benders don't really have that luxury.

I filmed a couple of bends and I'll post those tonight (hopefully) but I've taken a picture to demonstrate the difference between traditional hot rolled steel and the stuff you buy at box stores. Disclaimer, I did buy true hot rolled steel once that was marketed by National and sold by a box store but the steelworks stuff has always been something different in the sizes under 5/8 inch. I looked at a store the other day and now I see that even the 3/4 and 5/8 now are no longer true traditional hot rolled.

In the picture you will see A36 hot rolled steel on the left in 5/16 size. It's becoming increasingly harder to find even at steel suppliers and even at those places, I've been wrongly sold dark, dirty cold rolled many times. Hot rolled steel will not be springy and will make a wide "U" shaped bend as you can see. As hot rolled steel is cooled, it also has a carbon scale that will flake off and make a mess when you bend it and it will be very rough compared to cold rolled steel.

On the right in the picture is 5/16 steel works "hot rolled". As you can see, the bend is more like cold rolled steel and as a matter of fact, if it weren't for the label, I'm not sure you could distinguish the cold rolled from their hot rolled. The new benders who are or have bent this and assuming it's the same as other hot rolled steel are actually bending something much tougher. The bar on the left calibrates about 250 pounds and the bar on the right calibrates at around 380ish.

Hot rolled steel is actually fun to bend because you can actually hear it bending. Plus, if you can bend a red nail then you are really close to bending 3/8 hot rolled steel. Once again though, when you jump up to 3/8 inch, the box store stuff is much stronger and calibrates about 125 pounds heavier, if not more.

Hope this helps.

post-8847-0-87553400-1409708919_thumb.jp

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I must be getting the tough stuff from my home depot then because the hot rolled they sell feels like the 380 you mention (little less than a red) and I bought a 3/8 HRS bar from that home depot and cut it down for two of my friends. They are pretty good benders and they couldn't do anything with it.

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Most certainly you are. Probably what the deal is with that steel is that they assume people may want to weld it so they give the HRS a "rough" quick cold rolled so get rid of the scale and make it a little more precise. I've even seen the label call it weld steel and regular A36 hot rolled would not be good for welding because the scale doesn't conduct electricity as well.

So it's stuff that's probably not precise enough to really be called cold rolled even though it's obviously had some final finishing and the cold drawn stresses that it produces.

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I really appreciate the post. Solid information for a beginner bender like myself. Thanks.

Josh

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You're welcome and hope it helps.

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Is there a way to reliably purchase HRS, like a way to make certain its HRS at the point of sale? I purchased from two different steel wholesalers and had less than positive experiences.

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Is there a way to reliably purchase HRS, like a way to make certain its HRS at the point of sale? I purchased from two different steel wholesalers and had less than positive experiences.

I don't think so. In Europe we have very specific markings for the different types of HRS. For a long time I thought that they wouldn't vary much, but after trying the same steel from different suppliers I noticed that they can vary quite alot. I was lucky to find a supplier whom their own steel does not vary hardly anything. All their HRS, Stanless, and different types of CRS have hardly varied at all over many years. But I suppose that can change aswell.

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I've not had experience with any one supplier that has given my 5/16 A36 HRS 100% of the time.

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