What are they? Artifacts found.

[jmccustomknives]

Got a buddy that metal detects, the iron stuff he used to cast to the side but now he saves them for me.  The property that this was found on made wagons as far back as the 1830's.  The large piece on the top has us stumped (not the chain, that's another aquisition).  I checked it out and it is all wrought iron, not steel.  It's about 2ft long and 1/2" thick  (the links on the chain are about 1" for refrence).  I was shocked that a bladed impliment this big wouldn't even have a steel insert.  Haven't a clue what it was made for.   The large piece on the under it we thought was a buggy spring but it too is wrought.  Did they even make buggy springs from wrought?  The small peices at the bottom I haven't check out yet.  We believe the large round peices are axle bearings for wagons.  See something in that pile and know what it is say so.  fyi, i know what a pony shoe is. ;)  On the bottom right you'll note two curious piece, they are brass that had been melted.  House fire perhaps.  IDK <_<

 

[ThomasPowers]

You can have high carbon wrought iron you know.

[anvil]

the top one could be a sole knife, used to pare away a horses sole,

at least one, if not both of the rings out of flat stock in edge could be hub bands,

the one on the far left w hook could be to hold light chain and prrhaps a buckle. beside it,

the one that sorts looks like s piece of tubing could go on,hopefully the right term,the end of the hames.

a couple of square washers on the right,


the large round "washer" could go under a clevis pin,

the flat piece in the center sorta looks like a step, but its pretty buried.

that's my guesses.

[njanvilman]

Typical farm junk.  Some old, some not so old.  The type of stuff I routinely scrap on my yearly load to the scrap yard.

[jmccustomknives]

The sole knife is intreging but why would a profesional wagon maker have such a crude tool?  I went back out to my shop and the familiararity of the piece came to me.  It looks like my first attempts at forgin a knife.  I am pretty sure that it is the low quality wrought used to make the wagon wheels (of which he has found several).  I'm thinking it was practice for a large knife, the kind used by confederates at the start of the Civil War.  Just a theory.  As for the rest, yes farm junk, but wrought is recycleable isn't it?  ;)

Oh, the long piece that was thought to be a spring.  There are no secondary sparks, it is the same low quality wrought as the first.  It has an of center hole in it.  I think it was a brace of some kind.  It's just fun to play detective, plus see how things were really made back in the day.

[Geoff Keyes]

A spring need not be hardened.  You can make springs out of mild steel and even copper.  A mild steel spring works just fine, up to a point.  Once you exceed the yield point, the mild steel spring deforms and can't return to shape,  A hardened spring has a much higher yield point, so it can take more load before it fails, but then it is likely to fail catastrophically.  A copper spring works until the spring work hardens and then cracks.

 

I can see wrought buggy springs, you'd just have more mass to increase the load rating.

 

Geoff

[Wroughton]

You can have high carbon wrought iron you know.

No Thomas, I don't know. Where do I insert the quarter for more info? :D

[DSW]

Item on the left with a tube looks like it might be a hoe, but it's sort of buried. The piece next to it to the right looks like it might be another hoe, but with a shank rather than a ring to attach the handle. Again it looks buried so it's hard to tell.

 

I dug up a really nice chopping hoe or adze head when demoing an old 1800's house in the northern section of Philadelphia years ago. It popped up in the yard when we were cleaning up the demo materials . I also dug up what was either an old broad axe or a large axe someone had run over the head with a tractor on one job. It;s too rusted to get any details off of it, but I've got it laying on my big bench with a bunch of other assorted "junk" I've collected over the years.

[ThomasPowers]

Well "The Knight and the Blast Furnace", Alan Williams, discusses the metallurgy of renaissance armour which was made of wrought iron and wrought iron derrived steels...  The Tatara furnace is a bloomery furnace and it produces everything from low carbon wrought iron through cast iron.   "The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity", Rehder,  talks about bloomeries. 

 

And perhaps "Steel Making before Bessemer, vol I Blister steel" might be of interest if you have a perverse yen to get into the details of historical ferrous metallurgy.  (vol II is "Crucible Steel"...)  (and yes all of these are on my shelves as a bunch more too!)

[jmccustomknives]

A lot of that stuff is pretty obvious, and since that place was settled back in the 1830's there's a hundred + years worth of stuff.  Most of it is junk, a lot of this isn't salvagable.  My theory about the bladed piece is that during the War someone there took one of the billets and practiced making a D-guard and hid it to keep it from being found.  Otherwise it would have been reused for something else.  Unfortunatly there's a big nick on the edge from where I did the spark test.  At least that's the story I'm gonna tell, I can't bring myself to destroy it.

 

I'm hoping one day he will find an anvil.  He used to avoid the big "iron" hits on the detector now he digs up the big ones.  lol.

[Wroughton]

Butter knife, or mayo spatula?

 

Is it actually honed or forged into a edge shape or fairly uniform through out the draw?

 

It might be a one off that just got tossed back in the pile after it's purpose was served. It might have been and offset for a handle or other mount that was to be joined by welding and someone got carried away. I have some rail car handles that the offset would have been bent, the hard way in the narrow dimension, making a curve to distribute the load. 

 

 

 

And perhaps "Steel Making before Bessemer, vol I Blister steel" might be of interest if you have a perverse yen to get into the details of historical ferrous metallurgy.  (vol II is "Crucible Steel"...)  (and yes all of these are on my shelves as a bunch more too!)

 

 

OK, I was wondering if there was something in the wagons or other period hardware that might have been imbued with carbon for a purpose. Might have something on blister steel. Perverse? Obsessive I'll give you. Sooo, I'm happily going down the metal hole without feeling all dirty. 

[jmccustomknives]

On a slightly different vein, but about the wrought that's higher carbon.  I posted a thread a while back about some round stock I picked up from the same source but a different place.  It was so odd, worked like wrought but sparked like carbon except the sparks were a darker orange (almost red).  Took me a while to figure out it was wrought.  I had to break a piece, it had a fine grain but still broke like wood and after flattening out a sample I polished it up and it had a grain that stood out.  I'm thinking that it was that higher carbon wrought.  Maybee. <_< Oh well, I'm thinking I need to make a trip to the scap yard, cause dang, I'm collecting faster than I'm using. :wacko:

[Steven K.]

JMC,

 

The top item in your picture is a forged Plow Coulter Knife.  I worked for The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown and repaired two plows that used them.  I made one replacement Coulter that looked exactly like your picture.  The ones I looked at in our collection were all wrought without steeled edges.  Sod is very abrasive, and the wrought iron coulter knife was reforged to sharpness when needed.  The round iron rings are Hub Bands, and bind the center wheel hub together to prevent checks and cracking from the pressure of the spokes.

 

You can see one plow I repaired here:  http://ruralblacksmith.blogspot.com/2010/04/finishing-1830s-horse-drawn-plow.html

The coulter knife on this plow is curved, not straight.  It cuts the sod in front of the plow point.  Today we use disk coulters because they stay sharp longer and don't get stuck on roots.

 

You can see a plow like the one that Coulter Knife was from in use here:  http://ruralblacksmith.blogspot.com/2010/04/fresh-tilled-soil-using-1830s-horse.html

 

Great stuff!  

[jmccustomknives]

Thanks Steven, you blew my theory out of the water. :(   'tis better to know what it is.  That's why I posted, I knew somebody here would know what it was.  Thanks! B)

[LastRonin]

Don't scrap it... just get busier ;)

[jmccustomknives]

Don't scrap it... just get busier ;)

Lol :)  My magnetic personallity has gotten the better of me.  I've got 20+ feet of link chain that weighs about 50lbs per 3ft.  IDK what the heck I'm gonna do with it but since some one was giving I took. :blink:   And that's just the beginning.  I can't turn down free steel.  I've got car springs out the :o , old wrought and steel like in the pic ^_^  about 50lbs of that chain saw in the pic -_-  and lets not get into saw blades, cable and other stuff I've picked up.  Make Fred Sanford jelous. :huh:  and my wife :angry: .  So if any one near t-town needs anything give me a hollor ;) I can probably hook you up. B)   Please, come get that big chain, I can't even drag it around.

[LastRonin]

A: Where is t-town exactly? I live in Spanish Fort. (Baldwin County).

 

B: Weld several links of that big chain together to make mailbox posts. Especially if it's the cross-braced links like anchor chain. I see those all the time. Sell 'em for more than scrap money that way.

 

:D 

[macbruce]

Typical farm junk.  Some old, some not so old.  The type of stuff I routinely scrap on my yearly load to the scrap yard.

I think you pegged it NJ......... ;)

[DSW]

.  I've got 20+ feet of link chain that weighs about 50lbs per 3ft.  IDK what the heck I'm gonna do with it but since some one was giving I took. :blink: 

 

 

 

If I was near by I'd take that chain. I'd have to fabricate an anchor to go with it and take it to the local dive quarry I go to. I've been looking for neat stuff to sink there. They'd love some heavy chain and an anchor. I was looking at an old steam shovel to sink, but the cost of scrap is too high, along with transport to get it to them. I'm also on the lookout for one of those old round steel propane cylinders. It would make a perfect horned mine, and with chain that heavy, I probably wouldn't even have to flood much of it other than to equalize the pressure.

[jmccustomknives]

If I was near by I'd take that chain. I'd have to fabricate an anchor to go with it and take it to the local dive quarry I go to. I've been looking for neat stuff to sink there. They'd love some heavy chain and an anchor. I was looking at an old steam shovel to sink, but the cost of scrap is too high, along with transport to get it to them. I'm also on the lookout for one of those old round steel propane cylinders. It would make a perfect horned mine, and with chain that heavy, I probably wouldn't even have to flood much of it other than to equalize the pressure.

Well it's more like motorcyle chain gone "hulk".  Came off a drilling machine.  T-town, home of the Crimson Tide otherwise known as Tuscaloosa.  Roll Tide!

[LastRonin]

:wacko: I shoulda known that.

[Metalsmith21]