Comparing Wrought Iron

[M3F]

This is going to be a long one...

This won't be how to work WI as there are many threads on that topic. This is more my experience for how different grades compared.  I hope some find it useful. It sure helped me and I'd love to get your thoughts. 

I had no experience with WI and after reading through the threads, which have a ton of great info, I decided to do my own experimenting. Now that it's done why not share.

The first WI (sample #1) I got was what the seller described as "high quality."  Well that was my 1st lesson... I assumed that would mean more refined and after forging and etching I would get a nice pattern. To me that means wood grain topography,  not necessarily a dark/light contrast.  If I want that I'll make damascus. Problem was after the snap test, spark test, forging and etching I wasn't sure what i had. The oddest part to me was I could forge it at dull red temps. I tried to get the material to split and couldn't.

Here are pics of that material. 

 

After these tests I had a spectro-analysis done. I just had to know. This may tell some of you more than it tells me. I was told this is as close to pure iron as it gets. Etching this in both ferric and muriatic had the same effect. 

Fe 99.55 ***

Al 0.009

Si 0.01

P 0.009

S 0.024

C 0.00 ***

Mn 0.37

Ni 0.01

Cu 0.02

Sn 0.004

V 0.001

W 0.010

Co 0.010

Any thoughts on uses for this material?

After all that the next step was to get my hands on some less refined WI. Naturally my assumption now was LESS refined WI would give me the aesthetic I wanted, which seems to be the case.

I tested these samples in both ferric and muriatic.  I found etching in ferric gave a more damascus like finish while etching in muriatic gave the more wood grain topography appearance. 

This was WI sample #2. (Less refined from sample #1?) Taken to 400 grit, etched in room temp diluted ferric 4 hrs.

Etched another 2 hours, hit high spots with 1000 grit.  Id like to keep working on how to finish it this way.

WI sample #3 (less refined than samples 1 & 2?) Etched in muriatic 4 hrs. I really likes this one. 

Same piece etched another 2 hrs in a muriatic/h202 mixture which significantly decreased etching time. 

and wire wheeled...

Back to sample #2, this one etched in ferric 4 hrs wire wheeled clean. 

Sample #2 etched in muriatic/h202 4 hrs.

So that's it. I may have a spectro-analysis of sample #2 done just to compare. 

So all in all it was a fun experiment. To sum it up it looks like grinding to 400 and etching in ferric gives a damascus like finish while etching from a forge finish in muriatic gives a wood grain appearance, at least in these samples. 

Again any thoughts are welcomed.