If you look for 3/8" stock that is 9.53mm and will actually come a fraction under that so should suit your needs.

If you need it an exact size I would suggest getting 3/8" precision ground mild steel and making your holes with a 3/8" H7 reamer

Silver steel can be milled without issue, just a little bit harder than mild steel

What are you making, is it to fit an existing part which may well be imperial size eg 3/8" or are you working to an imperial drawing that has been converted to metric with only one decimal place used?

Edited By JasonB on 11/11/2017 13:28:50

Should not be too difficult to find 3/8 steel,silver or otherwise. I,m sure I,ve seen silver steel from some of the usual suppliers in both systems and 3/8 mild steel can be bought off the shelf,and it,s near enough to 9.5mm.

I have machined silver steel on my mill,just a bit harder than mild.

You are very unlikely to find 9.5mm steel, as it isn't even on the list of 3rd preference metric sizes.

This took a lot of googling to find. It's dead easy to find charts for resistor sizes, pipe sizes etc., but this appears to be the one for metal bar. You can move the decimal point left or right for larger or smaller sizes:

Note the metric sizes are NOT rounded up from standard preferred values!

Neil

Silver steel is closer to American W1 (water/brine quench)

Gauge plate is oil quench, like O1.

Neil

If the 9.5 is a hole in the 100W soldering iron it is probably 3/8 anyway. Is the welded joint taking a lot of stress? The problem with welding is not that is doesn't melt but that the high carbon leaves it in a potentially brittle state when the weld suddenly cools, which can cause cracking too. If you preheat the pieces you can reduce the cracking during the weld and then heat the finished item to red hot, hold for a minute, then cool slowly.

If you are making a bit for a soldering iron then copper has to be the best choice, over time it will be attacked by the solder but can be re dressed with a file, commercial bits are iron coated to combat the erosion problem but I don't think this is a home process. The iron coating only prolongs the bit life, it too will finally fail.

Mike

My experience with Weller bits is the same as Johns, when I did bench repair work my iron was on all day and once the coating failed the erosion was rapid. Copper bits that are only heated on demand do not suffer such rapid erosion as continuously heated bits. I suppose the rate is the same but as the heated time is so much shorter the erosion is not so obvious, my tin-mans gas heated irons last years but they spend most of their life in a drawer.

Mike

Doh! A copper-bottomed mistake. Meant to type "The bits used on Electric irons for electrical and electronic work are made of iron-plated copper."

Oh! It would have been better, in my view, if we had been told this at the beginning. We could then have advised about the tread-grooving devices used on commercial truck tyres.

Regards, Tim