304 stainless roofing nails as arming nails?

[Ironbadger]

I bought a 5 pound lot of stainless roofing nails off of ebay, and noticed after that they are listed as 304 stainless alloy.

Realizing that theres several "304 stainless" alloys, has anyone used stainless roofing nails as rivets in armour recently?

Hard/nightmarish to peen? or am I worrying too much?

I'm planning to use them to assemble a set of stainless finger gauntlets.
The stainless I'm going to use to make the gauntlets is mystery metal- Unmarked 18 gauge stainless scrap from the yard I visit for my metal needs.

Its not a general scrapyard- they carry mostly overruns and offcuts from the aerospace, construction and restaurant fabricating industries in and around Anaheim.
So its most likely 304 stainless itself...But I'll be damned if I know how to find out.

I'm not planning to fight in these gauntlets, by the way, so no comments of "steel too thin" please.
I'm making them to try a new pattern, and using stainless as much for practice and to not have to clean them often for costuming.

I also have some roughly 40 year old bronze boat nails that I picked up a while back, but they have rather thin shafts and small heads.
So they won't quite work the way I was hoping in using them for arming nails.


-Badger-

[Steve S.]

There's no way for anyone to know what they are made of. Your best bet is to try and peen one and see if it works as a rivet. Then dunk them in some salt water and leave it to try on your workbench overnight. That will tell the tale.

Steve