shock rod hardness
 

Unusual question here.
Are shock rods left at full hardness for maximum anti surface scratchy or are they tempered.

Shooting from the hip here - but generally I think they are nitrided to increase surface hardness. Not sure about tempering etc. The ideal is a shock shaft which is hard (stiff) enough to resist easy bending during the usual racing knocks and bangs, yet not so hard as to be brittle. So toughness is the keyword really.

aren't they nitrided drill blanks?

Drill blanks? I wouldn't have thought so. Too hard to be thread turned the way they are. But I could well be wrong.

I assumed manufactures use silver steel in its annealed/machinable state, machine them, then harden them. Dont know about tempering them.

Dont think they are drill blanks as they aren't machinable.

My insticts say not silver steel. But yeah, a grade of steel that lends itself to machining etc, then hardening/quenching/tempering/nitriding as deemed necessary. The steel family of metals is so large & comprehensive that it's very hard to generalise such is the scope of characteristics.

Silver steel is the way to go though if making some?

Carrot hot with antioxidant, quench, bake in oven at 220c for half an hour?

Oh, got yer now. If you want to make your own, yeah - try silver steel, you can get it in nicely controlled diameters which is handy. Looking forward to seeing your work.

So am I lol. seems like there isn't enough time in the day!

Do you know anything about antioxidants do you? I read somewhere that silver soldering flux is effective. have some of that at work I can try but what the heck gets it off?

It is probably ground rod, a grade of stainless steel (they never rust!) which is then titanium nitrided. That process take place at about 180 degC, so it won't distort the shaft and is unlikely to temper it too much. The base metal itself is soft (easily dented with a pair of pliers, for example) yet tough - and that is the word!

The ground rod will be bar fed into a collet, the thread and grooves machined, then parted off to length. About a 15 second operation on an automatic lathe, probably less on a modern one.

Silver steel is useless, way too soft and only any good if hardened as it will rust. Drill blanks are too brittle, and all features would have to be ground which is too expensive. If you want to make your own, find a grade of stainless steel you can afford, see if you can get it as ground rod, and then turn in the features you need. HTH :)

If the main area of your 'research' is the dual low / high speed damping, I wouldn't get too bogged down with the exact grade of piston rod steel etc, that can all be sorted later on. If you see what I mean.

You are right. the high low thing.
No, I'm not too bothered about making a mega shock rods out of stainless.
Whats important is being able to machine these things without busting my cheap taps.
I know very little about the various grades of stainless or the various grades of anything else for that matter.
All I know is, is that I can get a bunch of very shiny straight machinable rods for just a few quid. If I can harden these things to make them less scratch prone, then all the better.

If silver steel were used to make prototypes (and then hardened), do you think chrome plating would be a reasonable way of making-durable successful results?

Can you not tap and trim polish etc stainless masonry nails
My mate made some (lots) of hingepins for a losi and never bent one again lol