As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.....
What would you do without iron or steel, and what would you do to produce your own?
It would puzzle most people to know that the Indian Raj, Porus, presented to Alexander the Great, 30 pounds of steel as a gift fitting for an Emperor.
There is a difference between iron and steel as much as coal and diamonds. Iron was a commodity of smelting or refining in heat with flux as was gold and all metals, but iron was an imperfection as half the metal was left in the slag by early wood pit methods, and it was only with the advent of coal that this slag was drawn from again.
In iron, there is reality that as one attempts to extract the more from it, that it degrades which makes it porous and interupts it's strands in the strength of it.
It was the advent of the blast furnace which revolutionized the world to steel from iron, as steel became the pure form which iron never was. Cast iron was black, but steel would be blue and contain in it the thing of the revolution of mankind.
The 1850 period in the world was much like the 1920 period in the world in the planet changed from wood to metal, and from horse to engine. Ships would be of wood and find themselves facing spitzer shells which could blow holes through them. Likewise the war horse would face the engine of the tank for it's slaughter.
These ages of mankind were transforming periods. The revolution from stone to bronze took thousands of years. It would be one thousand more years from bronze to iron. Mankind would then await almost 2 thousand years for the age of steel and with it within a generation enter the age of the engine.
The next transformation was the computer age which was an advancement not on physical strength by mental power.
The last age of mankind will be the Age of the failed Immortals in the attempt at the Tree of Life.
I wonder of this in Alexander receiving 30 pounds of steel which was worth more than an army. Swords at 2 pounds a piece would mean 15 swords, more powerful, keeping a whetted edge and stronger. This would be an ultimate weapon and would net nations in the cause of empire.
Steel just does not happen. One has to smelt iron first and then the process for steel making takes place.
"The process by which the iron is converted into steel is as follows, and fully accounts for that peculiar quality for which the Indian steel is valued.
The iron is cut into pieces and packed closely in a crucible of clay, containing about 1 lb . only of the iron , mixed with a tenth part of dried wood cut small, the whole covered over with green leaves. The crucible is then stopped, by covering the mouth with tempered clay, so as to effectually exclude the air. After a time that is, as soon as the clay-plugs are sufficiently hard, from twenty to thirty of the crucibles are built up in an arched form placed in a small blast furnace, and kept covered with charcoal; thus being subjected to the heat of the furnace for two or three hours. The process is then complete. As soon as the crucibles are cool, they are broken open and the cakes of steel are found rounded at the bottom.
The top of the cakes should be found covered with striæ, radiating from a centre, and be free from holes or rough projections. If the cakes are honeycombed, the process has been imperfect and incomplete. When re-melted and tilted into rods, a very superior article has been the result.
The natives prepare the cakes for being drawn into bars, by annealing them for several hours in a small charcoal furnace, excited by bellows; the current of air being made to play upon the cakes while turned over before it, whereby a portion of the combined carbon is dissipated and the steel probably softened: without which operation the cakes would break in drawing them. They are drawn by a hammer of only a very few pounds weight, but the repeated hammering greatly tends to the production of a highly condensed and perfect article."
William Greener. Gunnery in 1858 / Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
agtG
