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Sucker Rod ??

George

George

Member
A Guy on a local sell site is selling 5/8 sucker rod in 25 foot lengths for $10 a go. not a foot.. Is this material any good for machining ?
 
So $10 for a 25 foot length? According to the “slang” the sucker rod is used in the oil and gas as a rod to connect the reciprocating pieces in the pump action brining the material to the surface. Could be 4140? If so great. A 25’ length may last ????
 
Do you have a means of cutting it up into manageable pieces? Hack sawing get stale real fast... Ask me how I know:p
 
Yeppers $10 for 25 foot and he has what appears to be Hundreds of them sat on a trailer bed that has been ground mounted. And yes i have a Grinder that will take care of it. Yeah i googled the Sucker Rod and if it was Machinable, mixed report about it, thats why i asked. its located about an hour from me and i dont want a wasted journey if i go for some.
 
Rods get pulled from wells during workovers or abandonment activities. Then inspected for anything that might cause future issues - pits, defects, bad threads, bent... Anyways for chopping up into little lathe projects, sounds like a good source of 4xxx series steel. Maybe not the easiest stuff to turn on small machines, but its pretty tough stuff & can be nicely surface finished with the right technique. You can also heat treat (harden) some of these alloys too if you're set up for that. Hard to go wrong for the price.

The scrap to avoid or at least be aware of is chromed or semi hardened material, usually shafting or big pins. It can be ugly on our cutting tools. Some people will try & anneal semi-hard chunks in their BBQ but now you're trading gas for mystery metal.
 
Some of this stuff is machinable, i had a bunch of larger dia. rod that was chrome plated or something, not machinable at all. Tons of this stuff gets turned into cattle feeders and corrals.
 
I machined down a 3/4" sucker rod and it seemed to machine quite easily with my cheap Busy Bee carbide insert cutters. The outer most of the rod must of been harder then the inside as the surface finish looked like crap, but once I broke through the hard layer surface finish improved. It was almost like machining hot rolled. I have no idea the grade of steel, maybe there are a few Petroleum Engineers here that can enlighten us on that.
 
6.5 Fan said:
Some of this stuff is machinable, i had a bunch of larger dia. rod that was chrome plated or something, not machinable at all. Tons of this stuff gets turned into cattle feeders and corrals.
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Good chance it may of been either a sinker rod or polished rod(approx 1.25"-1.75"). In the old days rifle barrel makers would snap up old polished rods to make barrels. Apparently it was great steel for barrels and the price was pretty cheap as well.
 
I know a very renowned barrel ( makes "cut rifling barrels" second to none in North America) maker that lives 1 hour NE of Calgary. He is quite a story in itself as far as a self-taught "hobby machinist goes" in the extreme.

One time he claimed to a customer that he could cut a barrel as good as most "off the rack" barrels imported from the U.S from a piece of re-bar...and the bet was on. Ron drilled, reamed , cut-rifled (broach-cut to some) & chambered a piece of 1" re-bar . Ron shot international Swiss Shutzen competitions and put that rifle against his competition guns. he claimed it was almost as good at new but didn't now how many rounds the mild steel would hold accuracy with modern jacketed bullets.
 
I know as a forum we're not supposed to get too much into firearms with full blown pics & such, but do people like your friend hang out on specific forums where some of the machining / construction aspects are discussed or detailed? Its not one of my hobbies, but I find a lot of what they make is of personal interest - machining, fixtures, heat treating... the list goes on.
 
PeterT said:
I know as a forum we're not supposed to get too much into firearms with full blown pics & such, but do people like your friend hang out on specific forums where some of the machining / construction aspects are discussed or detailed? Its not one of my hobbies, but I find a lot of what they make is of personal interest - machining, fixtures, heat treating... the list goes on.
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Some very talented individuals hang out here.

https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/91-Gunsmithing
 
My lathe is far more forgiving with carbide of any steel. Heck I even turned hardened stuff. Inserts are cheap. This is not the same as for the mill where it is hard to thread 4330 with HSS and end mills from China may be "cheap" but at least 10x the price of an insert. I would not worry at all about how hard steel is to machine on a lathe - unless its like titanium or something. Even smaller machines with carbide have no issues with 4330.

I also have a bar of chromed steel - no issues working on it on a lathe.

Harder steels were an issue when you had HSS tooling and carbide was "special" - today you can get inserts of your favorite size on aliexpress for like around $1 each and on eBay in random sizes for say 25c each.
 
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