Steve Sells Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 you also need to remember the loss of carbon happening during the forge welding process, but that is partially how blister steel was made Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 Can you case harden it to a depth greater than you lose from scale losses and decarburization? I've seen a number of new smiths take high carbon steel and make into mild steel---wouldn't harden! A common urban legend is that folding and welding increases the carbon content of steel. Actually most of the time it decreases it. Some Japanese swordmakers start out with nearly 2% C and by repeated folding and welding get 0.5% steel. (Much more homogenous though! Tamahagane starts out as pretty much a mixture.) Doing a long soak surrounded in high C stuff is how you make blister steel from wrought iron. If you then pile it and weld it, you then get shear steel. Now you can get double blister, double shear steel; but it's costly in energy used. If you make blister steel and then melt it you get Crucible steel, which was done about a thousand years earlier in central Asia than was done in Western Europe. Wootz is one variety of crucible steel. Huntsman had a lot of issues with refractories that would work when melting steel. (See "Steelmaking before Bessemer, vol II Crucible Steel" KB.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted June 8, 2021 Share Posted June 8, 2021 Huntsman had first worked in the glass making trade. So he was familiar with the glassmaking furnaces they used and they were run very much hotter than the standard iron and steel furnaces that were in current use. And he used those higher temperatures to make crucible steel. He also used the flux that the glassmakers used. It's identity escapes me for the moment. (I'll look for it later tonight). SLAG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 Folks, I checked through my files for further information. And these are some of the additional details concerning Huntsman's crucible steel process. He used coke to heat the steel crucibles. This brought the temperature up to 2.900 degrees F. (1,600 degrees C). That temperature melted the steel to produce a homogeneous mass in about three hours. The vessels were sealed with clay so as to exclude air. A coal fire could not get to that high a temperature. I am still searching for the flux that he used. Stay tuned for further bulletins, SLAG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 If I get a chance I'll take a look in "Steelmaking before Bessemer, Vol II Crucible Steel" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 Mr. Powers, Thank you for that. The answer is somewhere in my notes. but your suggestion is more likely to yield results. SLAG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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