only good way to cut embedded rebar........Hand held core drill w/water coolant......Rebar cutters suck 1 cut is all you get!!!!!

Oxygen lance?

Cumminsguy71,

From what you've described, you might not be too far off with the "manganese" alloy. If so, YEP it has probably been work hardened into a Brinell Hardness of somewhere's around rhenium diboride at 4600 HB...
One of my instructors in the early 70s had retired from a steel mill in Pa. before taking up teaching the welding trade. Since trains service these steel mills in both raw materials and finished products, they cut a deal with his employer by selling them unimaginable tonages of worn out rail track at a very reasonable price... perhaps even for free. After all, they are the railroad and the government has treated them well over the decades with free land, financial incentives etc. According to his story, all this track material was turned into rebar since at the time, it had very loose specifications on chemical makeup. Recycling was all but nonexistent in those days and it was too expensive to melt and sort out the various alloying ingredients, hence millions of tons of track was as he called it "Rerun into rebar".

Here's some common rail materials with compositions and mechanical data.
http://www.arcelormittal.com/rails+specialsections/en/chemical-composition.html
http://www.arcelormittal.com/rails+specialsections/en/mechanical-properties.html

Now back to your issue... You're screwed if it is indeed the recycled track. The only thing I can think of is if they will not allow a thermal cutting process, then maybe perhaps you might get away with convincing them to let you anneal it with a torch. Of course doing so there is always the "chance" that you might accidentally hit the the oxygen lever...... in which you could then clean up the mess with a die grinder and some really aggressive carbide burrs. I didn't say that did I???? Seriously, it sounds as if annealing might be the best option before mechanically cutting it.
The problem with running an acetylene torch in confined spaces like that are A) oxygen starvation snuffing out the flame, B) blow back heat ruining all your tips, C) causing a chance for backfire blowing up the torch, and D) the venturi effect sucks particles of, well everything into the orifices of the cutting tip. They don't last long under these conditions.
Don't know if you've ever used MSC, but they have just about everything metal working related. This is the baddest one in their inventory that will get down deep. 1/2" shank and 5" long. OOOOooooohhhhh baby!
http://www.mscdirect.com/browse/Abrasives/Points-Burrs/Burrs-Burr-Stands/Burrs?navid=12100073+4288246844+4288210979+4288223475&searchterm=carbide
This page will allow you to refine your search by style, shank length, tooth, etc.
http://www.mscdirect.com/browse/Abrasives/Points-Burrs/Burrs-Burr-Stands/Burrs?navid=12100073+4288246844+4288210979&searchterm=carbide

When I was setting imbed hangers in the Nuke Plant, whenever we hit rebar, we just called in the Engineers and they would relocate/redesign the hanger based on the assumption of the grid layout of the rebar. Of course once the change order was submitted, it would only take maybe 1 to 3 months and, Voila! We'd have a new drawing!...
I'll sleep on it and maybe have an epiphany later on.
Sorry I didn't have any magic cure for ya.
Good luck.

Not knowing the exact location of your work on this bridge, my question Shawn is if this rebar is at all structural?  Is the separation going to weaken the structure?  I would suggest you consult the engineer regardless of what you come up with for getting the holes completed.  Interesting read by the way from John.  Add's greatly to knowledge base of rebar.

Have a Great Day,  Brent

Ditto on the core drill using continueous water to keep the bit cool.  The lab at my company gets lots of drilled concrete core samples in for various testing.  Sometimes they have rebar in the cores.  Decent size stuff too sometimes like #6 or #7 rebar.  It takes a while to cut through the rebar but it can be done.

I was kind of surprised to hear the EOR was letting you cut the ReBar, especially on a bridge.  I've had to use multi-hole plates in the past, if one hole was a hit just move to the next hole, then fill in the bad hole with epoxy.  Anyway, if you're setting those embeds with epoxy it would be best to core drill the hole so you don't get dinged by the inspector for under-length over sized holes.  I've rejected plenty of embed holes that didn't meet epoxy manufactures recommended size or length.

Can't move the plates. The pipe dictates the location as it is thru the abutment.

What it is, two, one inch plates around 18 inches long with a radius cut in one side of each plate, to capture the pipe or at least wrap around it. These bolt to the abutment. You have two 3/4" strips that go opposite the seam on the one inch plates and use the same mounting holes. There are six holes drilled and tapped to accept a split megalug around the pipe. The megalug bolts to the plates and has "megalugs" that tighten down against the pipe. We replaced all of the joints on this bridge with these to halt any movement in the pipe, mostly.

So, long story, long. There is no supporting load on the one inch plate, no lateral load, no obscure articulating converse loading whatsoever. The only thing this system(cough) is supposed to do is to keep the pipe from quite literally pulling out of a very large concrete abutment where it has been quite stable since 1969. In order for said pipe to do this, 499.9 feet of pipe must be shifted either left or right horizontally thru the opposite abutment in order to put any type of strain on the anchors securing the one inch plates.

We have wt beams going in that mount to smaller anchors(2) next to the one inch plate. The wt's are tied in to every truss under the bridge by other structures(shyte, and shyteloads of it!) where the wt's are then tied in to the pipe with more structure(yes, more shyte). As if this was NOT enough, we also have more brackets(dear god, more shyte!) bolted to the truss that capture the pipe to remove any possibility of lateral movement.

I'm serious as a heart attack, an asteroid, possibly a nuke will dislodge this pipe from it's current location when we get finished! If we have another flood it would quite possibly wash the entire bridge down river as a complete assembly ending up in the Gulf on the beach with people standing around scratching their heads wondering where this odd looking barge came from.

If by some act of God an anchor becomes loose the client is not the type to say, "it's your fault" and point the finger at me. The anchors were set as deep as we could go without, (A) damaging the existing rebar and most importantly (B) not getting the engineer involved delaying this project further and costing my client more money and costing me job opportunities by waiting around on other people. Lost 2 tower jobs funkin' around with the detailer and engineer playing tidly winks with the plans. If an anchor becomes loose the client will be told to get with the engineer, all of the structure to secure the pipe will be in place and done. The plates can be removed and while they play figure out the rebar location and inform me of their intentions then we can proceed. Until then, we soldier on.

Hahaha!! What a darn mess it is!

Thanks Dualie, I am logging this diamond core bit info in my notebook! After I inform the engineer we might be going this route.