I hope you guys can be patient with three questions at once..

I used a piece fo scrap for the alignment bar for pressing in my bushings.

This came for the local scarppy, was a nominal 1" diameter, slightly pitted with red oxide primer on it. One end clearly had bent and snapped.

When facing that end with an indexable tool at 1200rpm I found that towards the centre the metal distracted to a 2-3 mm pip with both fine and coaser cuts and each time I had to trim outwards with several fine ciuts to remove it (dead on centre height).

Turning it down to my 24mm diameter.. a short length cleaned up then measured and the full 1/2mm or so turned off in one to hit the mark. The finish was superb. This wasn't the usual hot roll I get from scrappy.but the bar was certainly hot once turned despite a good coat of cutting oil fuming away.

The problem came with trying to part it off. I'd slowed to 250rpm for my 2.4mm HSS tool freshly sharpened. it took a lot of pressure to start the cut and the tool stopped cutting about halfway through. Resharpened I couldn't get it to start cutting again to the point that i could see it starting to 'S' from feed pressure. In the end I used a hacksaw and faced that end with carbide.

I'm just wondering what sort of steel that's likely to be or perhaps it was hardened and then tempered more on the outside?

Around here it's more likely to be a chunk off a tractor…

Most of the steel i get from scrappy is bits from a steel barn company he cleans up for..and that's usually hot rolled plate (or if you want rsj beam ends). It does take some effort to get a good surface finish on the mill but as it's virtually free it's hard to turn down for my beginner pratting about..

Yes I have bought known stuff for my attempts at 'real' projects.