As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.....
I am fascinated by the fibers of metal. Yes you think that steel is just something hard, but in fact ferrous metals are fibrous things like wood. The process of making strong metals is one not of pouring a blob of metal for it becomes porous in the center while cooling, and as metals vibrate this causes problems in cannons and guns.
Steel must be kneaded like bread, in being worked and welded to build strength, at least in the 19th century methods which I am studying in the work of William Greener. I do not think there was ever a man outside of Carnegie and the Americans who was so determined in understanding what iron was and how to craft it best.
Mr. Greener makes the statement in his view that steel was inferior to forms of iron, as steel was so compacted that it was much too dense. That is a fascinating statement from his perspective of firearms.
He liked laminated steel, which was a process like Damascus in a fusing iron fibers by hammering them onto each other.
Laminated steel was made by scraps of steel from other industries, placed into a drum where they were the abrasive polishing each other to a bright sheen.
These scraps are fused in an air furnace to make rods 6/16ths broad. These rods then are hammered by a 3 ton hammer to form a large bar, which is then reheated and put through a roller mill to the desired size of rod.
Mr. Greener would have rods cut in 6 inch lengths and then welded again and run through the roller mill.
This process can be done indefinitely as the laminated steel the more it is drawn in fiber and worked, the more cohesive it becomes.
The secret in this is of the chemistry, as when the metal is in the air furnace, the oxygen is removing the carbon, which is the weakness of iron. This process leaves iron of the densest kind or a mild steel.
This metal for barrels is blemish free and creates a fibrous metal of great advantage. This metal polishes better and therefore resists leading for a longer time due to the density of the metal.
This metal will withstand 6022 pounds per square inch. This of course is not the modern 40,000 pounds per square inch of steel, but it is an achievement of this metal in being such a creation of art by the makers and those who utilized it for firearms and knives.
It is a realilty of making a metal which in use would never wear out. As V. M. Starr stated of his 11 gauge of British manufacture from the 19th century, he fully expected that gun to be handed down for generations as it was made that durable and the forces upon it were not destructive to the metal.
This laminated steel was never annealed, as in heated and cooled off quickly to induce hardness, as the metal was so dense already that care was taken to not heat it in processing which would injure the laminated steel. This was a completely different process than Damascus of Jowher oriental steel for blades.
It was an event of William Greener taking iron to the highest sort to which it's nature would allow.
William Greener literally brought iron to the status of porcelain did with clay. So much of these artisians knowledge has been lost and will never be regained.
"Gold and silver may both be spread in the thinnest conceivable coat over space incredible ; on the gilded cup, or, still thinner by electric agency, on the plated epergne . But iron alone is to the arts , the “ summum bonum” for which there is no substitute: it is the “sine quâ non” of practical mechanics."
William Greener. Gunnery in 1858 / Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
agtG
