I'm restoring a 76 f150 and was wondering if there was an easy way to determine steel material/quality. I was hoping to maybe use a leaf spring to make a knife. Does anyone know about quality of steel in old pickup leafsprings and if I could get a good knife out of one?

In the past I made a bunch of knives out of old ford springs........worked just fine.
If you have a forge it's not hard to figure out a good heat treat procedure.
Make an educated guess as to proper HT procedure, try it, and then test cut with the blade. Use it hard and then break it to see what the grain looks like as well as how tough it is to break. Keep notes of all the heat treat steps you do so you can repeat it or tweak it until you are satisfied with the results.
Have fun.
Darcy  

If I can find it I'll post a list of junk yard steels and common types used for different items.  Or you can do a search here or the web for steel types - the list has been here and probably where I found it originally.  

I have made plenty of knives from Ford Truck coil springs so don't forget those if you are replacing them.  

From what I understand it is likely 5160 and makes great knives but is a little tough to get other steel to stick to if you are trying to forge/pattern weld using it.

A lot of older leaf springs are 5160 steel.

Here is one I dd last December, made from a leaf spring and i treated it as if it was 5160 with a heat treat of 400 degrees for 2 hr, and every thing was fine.

Thanks all..awesome looking knife dana

when I went to a two day jungle survival course in the Philippines back in the 70's we were each given a bolo knife/machete made from old leaf springs, mine was easy to sharpen and held up to abuse well. I think we were charged $3 each for them.