Possibly wrought iron?

[Reeltree]

Found a bunch of old rods coming out the ground by the old barn, Sparks orangish with a few forks on the ends  

[Daswulf]

Looks like it. 

[Reeltree]

Ok thx,,pull this out the weeds some 30+ years ago, been using it as a trough feeding square bales. Gonna haul up to the shop test the round rods.  Was wrought made into angle iron too?

[Daswulf]

That will be a nice batch of its all wrought iron. 

I guess on the angle test it and find out. I'd kind of doubt it will be but you never know. I'm sure they made angle iron out of wrought just like most things were when it was the main go to. Old farms can have quite the mix of materials together to get the job done. 

[arkie]

The rods you cut and bent are wrought iron; notice the fibrous texture.  Do the same to the angle iron as well as your spark test and look for fibrous texture on the angle.

I was working on a piece of bar stock the other day and thought it was just another piece of mild steel in the scrap pile, but upon making some very pointed curves quickly found that it was WI when it splintered and raveled on me!  I then forged it hot as wrought should be, and it worked fine.

[Reeltree]

ok thx,, I must of overlooked the forging temp difference in the half dozen WI articles I read in the Pages section.. Im guessing WI should be hotter ?  I used one round bar to make a handle to roll the forge around,, was a bit stiff when not orange heat

[arkie]

Forge wrought iron bright yellow to white. Too cool, and it will splinter on you.

[ThomasPowers]

Remember that real wrought iron contains a lot of ferrous silicates in it---the coarser the larger and more by weight.  So you have to forge it while they are molten!

Otherwise they will fray out like a broom.  Luckily real wrought iron welds nicely so you can generally  heat a frayed piece up and just forge weld it back together.

This should be in Every article on working real wrought iron!