Railroad rail steel

[Brad L]

A few years back I found some railroad rail in a swamp. Are they anything other than mild steel? I have a picture of an end of one if that helps.

[John McPherson]

It looks from the weathering pattern like it may be old enough to be wrought iron, and not modern mild steel.

The way to check is with a nick break test: wrought will have fibers visible, and is worth more to smiths doing traditional work.

[Old N Rusty]

I agree with John, You might have some VERY old wrought iron rails. How much did you get?

[Brad L]

I have 4 sections around 12' long. They were thrown down a steep hill into a swamp. Without a doubt the worst things I ever carried out I will have to cut a small section off the web and break it to see if it is wrought iron. The rail line was put in around here in the early 1800's

[MattBower]

I'm already sure those are wrought from the corrosion. Not all WI breaks with the stereotypical green stick fracture. It depends how highly refined it was, and, I assume, the chemistry of the iron. I have some old WI that has very fine slag inclusions and is fairly brittle. It also hardens up a little in water. (I don't think it's shear steel, though I suppose it's possible. I do wonder if there may be some phosphorous in it.) It breaks more like steel than traditional wrought.

Modern rails in the U.S. are approximately 1070. But I'm pretty confident that what you have there is wrought iron. Great score!!

[SmoothBore]

Concur.

As soon as I saw them, I said to myself "Those are wrought !"

Quite a find.


.

[Tom Allyn]

What's old rusty wrought worth per pound?

[teenylittlemetalguy]

You say "Rusty" like it's a bad thing... :D

[Tom Allyn]

Good or bad, what's it worth these days? Approximately. I found one ad asking for $2.50 a pound. I saw some on ebay listed at ~$3.00/pound. But sellers on ebay can ask for whatever they like.

[K. Bryan Morgan]

Its honestly worth what people are willing to pay for it. I've been getting mine for free because of the generosity of friends. The best prices I've seen are about $1.00 per pound. The guys on ebay selling it are on the high side it seems to me.

[MattBower]

These guys ask between $2 and $6 per pound, more for nails. http://www.wisconsin...rought_iron.pdf I have no idea how fast it's selling, though. The rail presumably would sell for less because it'll require a lot of breaking down for most purposes.

[Brad L]

I'm happy with my find. I have had a few projects in mind that I would like to use wrought iron for. With 40-45 of rail I should be good for some time.:)

[nhblacksmith]

I have 4 sections around 12' long. They were thrown down a steep hill into a swamp. Without a doubt the worst things I ever carried out I will have to cut a small section off the web and break it to see if it is wrought iron. The rail line was put in around here in the early 1800's

Spark testing is much easier (and less destructive) than nicking and breaking the iron. You can even use a battery operated grinder to test pieces where they are found. Wrought iron will produce a fairly narrow stream of sparks, maybe 20 degrees give or take, with few forks, rare or no star bursts, and long trails. It will be reddish in color. Barely touch the wheel to the metal, hold a constant pressure near the edge of the disc and just look at the results. Low lighting works best. It is helpful to keep small pieces of known metals to use for comparison.

[bigfootnampa]

There is a LOT more carbon in some wrought iron than is often thought. I have a book with numerous analyses and the carbon content is quite varied. I would think that that makes a spark test fairly unreliable. I have also seen some weird results from the fiber break tests. Wrought iron varied quite a lot. I think the weathering pattern on those rails is DEFINITIVE! I'd say that they are more likely to be worth MORE than less since they represent a pretty good mass of (likely) pretty homogenous material. Most that I have bought has been cheap though... just sold as old junk. How they work for forging would be very important when determining their worth. Some that I have used was pretty tough and discouraging while some is friendly and fun to use. The more fibers the tougher to work in general IME. I expect that the finer fibered stuff is a bit more refined or somewhat better quality to begin with.

[ThomasPowers]

Remember that in the early 19th century rail didn't have that shape. Still could be wrought though rail was an early adopter of Bessemer Iron, in fact the RR contracts pretty much funded the on-going research on the process.

If it shows that much character in the rust it would probably show greenstick fracture.

I found some unexpected wrought in my "regular" scrap pile yesterday, some 3/8" rod. tossed it onto the WI pile.

A fellow at quad-state has been selling WI from an old bridge for about US$1 a pound for a decade of two.

[MattBower]

I agree. The guys who smelt iron say that it's difficult to produce a uniform product. They usually end up with bits of near-pure iron, bits of steel, and bits of cast iron, all in the same bloom. Of course forging it down and repeatedly welding it will homogenize many of the variations within the batch, but batch to batch there are still likely to be variations. Much depended on the skill of the man running the smelter or, later, the puddler. It is not like modern steels, which (with a few exceptions) generally have chemistries within a fairly narrow range. I have read (possibly on IFI) that it was common practice in the old days to test each batch of iron when it came into the shop, to learn what its working properties were.