When was cast steel first made?

[Ramsberg]

Hi all,

I am wondering if anyone knows the year or a rough estimation of when cast steel was first made or when it was first made in different countrys.

Thanks,

Caleb Ramsby

[petere76]

Ramsberg,

On a small scale steel production started thousands of years ago. However the science of cooking iron ore, loosing the impurities and adding alloys was happening by the 1840's. the Bessemer process in Germany was the standard of the day and I think by 1850 or so the Germans were prodcuing steel product in the 55 to 100 KT range. Our own Andrew Carneige was instrumental in making the process happen in the US. The civil war and the rail roads expansion west provided the demand for the material and Andrew sought the funding (mostly from european investors) to make it happen. That was the birth of US Steel. All sorts of folks at that time were onto this as the profit incentive was really high. A good read is the Andrew Carnage bio.
Peter

[matt87]

'Cast steel' was produced by what we now call the Wootz process from around the 3rd century BC. It was probably the raw material for the swords that European Crusaders found in Damascus.

In the mid 18th century an horologist by the name of Huntsman created his own version of cast steel, taking blister steel and melting it in a crucible in a coke furnace to kill the majority of the impurities. His method produced some of the finest steel available in the world, and was the method by which tool steel was made for the best part of two centuries. It turned Sheffield from a nationally-known steelmaking area to a world-renowned gold standard of steelmaking. The method lends itself to adding extra alloying elements, such as chromium (this is how 'stainless' steel was invented by Harry Brearly in Sheffield in 1913).

[orgtwister]

now i'm not an expert or even close but isn't cast steel and cast iron totaly different i have worked with both . old harley frames the joints were cast steel not cast iron so whats the right time frame as i think there would be a difference if any one knows

[Ramsberg]

Orgtwister,

That is what I am wondering. Specificially about steel that is cast into the shape that it will be used in, not cast into an ingot and then forged into a shape.

The reason that I am asking is that in 1893 Sir Hiram Maxim made a steam powered airplane(yes, laugh all you want;>), he used cast steel cylinders for the pistons and crosshead(double acting) of only 3/32" thick and cast steel HOLLOW crankshafts.

Two engine on the plane, driving 17 feet 10 inch props with 16 foot pitch at 370 rpm, making 180 hp per engine, each Double acting, compound engine weighing only 300 lbs! For such a low speed, low pressure(300 psi) steam engine that is astounding, not just for 1893, but even today.

I have no idea what types of cast steel were being made at the time, the steel tubes that he used in the boiler, of about 3/8" od were made in FRANCE and the strongest and lightest that he could find. Total boiler weight minus the 200 lbs of water was only 1,000 lbs! This boiler provided 360 hp at the props, 4.4 lbs per hp total powerplant weight! Not bad at all, the props could provide well over 2,000 lbs of tractive effort, when testing it on a specially made rail way(so they could test lift and tractive effort without the chance of lifting off, although even without using all of the air planes on it the last test lifted the whole 10,000 lb machine off of the tracks sort of crooked and there was a bit of an accident, resulting in flying for 300 some feet before touching down), when they let the hold rope loose it threw some of the operators off of their feet.

It didn't have a cab, just a platform for the boiler, controls and operators, the engines were up above and out of harms way.

Matt and Peter,

Is woozt or Bessemer steel capable of being cast into its usefull shape, or must it be forged?

Thanks for the replys,

Caleb Ramsby

[ThomasPowers]

Wootz was not cast to shape; neither was Hunt'sman's steel or the Sheffield steels which were all teemed into an ingot and then forged out.

Casting of steel usually left it large grained and thus weaker which the extensive forging of the material would counteract.

Now cast steel was the name of the *material* at that time; just like I have quite a few tools marked cast steel that were forged and machined to shape *from* cast steel and not cast to shape.

So were these items actually cast to shape or just made from cast steel the material? If it said that they were cast steel then they were not cast to shape but made of the material cast steel.

You may be interested in reading "Steelmaking before Bessemer Vol II Crucible Steel" for more information on the process. ("The Arms of Krupp" also discusses the cast steel "contests" on who could cast the largest ingot in those days)

[Paul B]

Well I'll just throw this in because I know it from my racing days. You could get cast and forged crankshafts for chevys. The forged crankshaft was the prefered because of its superior strength.

[ThomasPowers]

Unless you were racing clipper ships, metallurgy has come a long way in refining grain of cast steels since the 19th century.

[dablacksmith]

i would bet the cylinders on the steam engine were forged from "cast steel" because until the besemer system was adopted and used for many years (i figure ww2 or later) the ability to cast anything and not have problems with porosity wasnt available especially for that thin a cyl wall ... i think that would still be a problem today! cast steel was a buzzword for the 1880- 1920 pereod it meant that the person was useing good quality steel (there was still "shear " steel available) . hope that helps..

[Paul B]

Unless you were racing clipper ships, metallurgy has come a long way in refining grain of cast steels since the 19th century.

So are you implying that the cast crank is just as strong as the forged item. I think GM would disagree with you along with about a half million racers.

[ThomasPowers]

I did not mean to imply that; but if you study modern investment cast and vacuum cast high alloy steels you might be surprised.

Unfortunately Car companies are usually trying to get the cheapest thing that will work; not the best; even for race cars; else all cars would have stainless steel bodies and frames and rust out would be a footnote in the history books...so if a forged crank at $5K will work enough why go with an extremely high tech cast item at $50K?

My father used to say that every engineering equation should have a $ sign in it somewhere and I've come to believe he was right even if some of them are only assumed or implied.

Bessemer/Kelly process came around in the 1850's; but still in the late 1880's/early 1890's it was still a "new" material to many smiths. "Practical Blacksmithing", Richardson, has several discussions on how to use/flux/weld the "new" steel vs wrought iron they were used to. In the 1900's real wrought iron was still being spec'd for many special uses, (mainly high corrosion environments); but the great depression of the 1930's did away with much of it and the last commercial WI producing plant I know of went out of business in the 1970's and donarted their plant to the Blsit Hill Museum in England where they current re-process scrap WI and sell it at the "Real Wrought Iron Co, LTD".

Edited November 20, 2008 by ThomasPowers

[dimenickel]

not sure on the date.. but i believe the chinese first made it.. i'm sure you can google it

Greg

[Irish Rover]

article:

Steel could be 800 years older than previously thought.

Researchers in West Yorkshire think they have found evidence that steel was produced 800 years earlier than most experts thought possible.
Dr Gerry McDonnell and Ivan Mack from the University of Bradford believe Saxons who lived in England more than 1,000 years ago used the same type of high quality steel that made it famous during the Industrial Revolution.

The ingots were discovered in the ancient buried port of Hamwic, now called Southampton.

=================

This turns the conventional idea about early iron-making on its head, said Mr McDonnell.
It proves that blacksmiths made high-quality, clean steel a thousand years before Huntsman's developments in Sheffield in the 1740s.
The fist-sized chunk of metal was most likely developed as a small nugget of steel that was would have been made into knives and other tools,

reports the Human Oasis website.

Research indicates the steel used is two to three times stronger than other techniques of the time previously known.

This steel was only probably made in small quantities and was very expensive, added Mr McDonnell.

I believe that statement may be found inaccurate in time as i feel steel was in greater demand then known at this time.

When the demand for steel increased in the Middle Ages, mass production of poor quality metal forced out the higher-quality product.

Or as is the practice of todays merchants to buy cheap and sell junk for high prices.

The above discovery was made as part of research carried out by the Ancient Metallurgy Research group of Archaeological Science.

and heres a little food for thought:

Sutton Walls
Catterick, England
Cow Park, Hartfield

One Roman anvil was excavated at Pompeii. Two Roman anvils have also been excavated in England.
The first, from Sutton Walls, weighs 50.5 kg (111 lb). The second, from Stanton Low weighs 23.2 kg (51 lb).
Both contain holes for heading nails or rivets, and it is probable that they were both welded together from a number of pieces of metal weighing about 7 kg.
A wrought iron beam which weighed 250 kg (550 lb) was excavated at Catterick, England, so we know the Romans must have possessed even larger anvils.
Both of these anvils share a similar shape to the Celtic anvil shown at left, with a tapered base presumably intended for mounting into hole in a tree stump.
The carbon content of the Sutton Walls anvil is 0.5%, and the face was hardened to 190 HV (Vickers hardness scale). Similar examples were found at Mainz and Kreimbach in Germany. Both were very similar to the Sutton Walls anvil, but the Mainz anvil had a flat, rather than a tapered base.
An more unusual anvil was found at Cow Park, Hartfield. It consists of an iron plate 600 x 230 x 40 mm resting on two tree trunks. It dates to 50-135 AD and was found at a bloomery furnace site. Presumably it was used for initial forging of the large iron blooms. Bicks, or Beak-irons were also used, but seem to have been rare. An example weighing 20 lb was excavated at Silchester, England. Another was found at Heidenburg, Germany.

and one last thing,
some years ago it was proven several tribes in Afica far back in history made high grade steel by stirring the molten iron with certain woods which imparted carbon in to the metal.

[ThomasPowers]

Ahh, crucible steel was being made in central Asia at the time as those finds were deposited. Rather than positing a whole industrial process for which there has been no remains or documentation found; I had rather believe that trade was perhaps a tad bit better than we might have thought. After all silks from even farther away than the crucible steel lands are known from early medieval digs. (and silks would have traveled through the areas of crucible steel making!)

If you talk with the Rockwood bloomery folk you will find that they have made quite large pieces of wrought iron by smelting one bloom on to of a previous one---no anvil needed.
In fact is you are building up a beam of wrought iron you can just use the previous part of the beam as the "anvil" and weld directly to it from the forge as well, (both pieces having the welding side heated) Or you could use rocks as we have quite good documentaion of the Norse and African bloomery smelters doing.

BTW molten iron is most likely cast iron---melts *WAY* lower than wrought iron does and well with in bloomery temperature ranges---and to make it steel you need to burn off carbon not add it; look up "puddling". And remember that they may have thought that that's what they were doing but that doesn't mean they *were* doing that. "Sources for the History of the Science of Steel", C.S.Smith has a number of examples of Europeans thinking that what they were doing to make steel vs what was really happening---the list of suggested renaissance quenchants is very amusing to read through.

I've been part of a bloomery crew for close to 15 years now and researched these topics a bit; seen the beams and anvil at Bath and the beams at the SaaLburg; been to the museum in Rome, remember that a lot of archeologists have little practical knowledge of metallurgy and smelting---why the Archeological Metallurgy mailing list was created; a good place to lurk if you have an interest in some of the newest data on such things.

Also on the ammounts made: look at all the difficulties Huntsman had with refractories working from a much more advanced industrial base. We have the techniques for growing saphire in window sized pieces yet I don't know anyone with such scratch proof windows. It may not matter if demand is high if the cost is higher!

[matt87]

An interesting coincidence that the Hamwick steel has been brought up -- I recently read the article in Historical Metallurgy. Turns out they found an artefact which they think is a piece of steel stuck to a piece of grey cast iron. I'll dig the cite out when I can.

[ThomasPowers]

It's quite possible to make anything from zilch carbon wrought iron to natural steel to cast iron in a bloomery; but the technology to use some of that can be a problem---we have a great new material when you heat it and quench it in water it makes the hardest sword known---unfortunately it shatters if used, oops.

One of the things mentioned in "Sources for the History of the Science of Steel" was that platonic idealism was doing quite well in Renaissance Europe people thought of steel as a more refined form of iron---harder, whiter, stronger and if you think about it, how would you produce a natural steel bloom? Let it spend more time in the bloomery shaft and so "refine it more". Unfortunately it's tricky to get it just enough and not too much and end up with at that time useless cast iron. Not to mention that some ores don't make good steels why oregrounds iron was specified in England for use in making blister steel.

"Mechanicks Exercises", Moxon, published in 1703 has a listing of various types of wrought iron from differing countries and what they are good for and how to test them.

[matt87]

The low slag inclusions and the high carbon uniformity are major elements to this, Thomas.

Try reading the article if you can get hold of it -- it's I. Mack, S. Murphy, P. Andrews and K. Wardley: Liquid steel in Anglo-Saxon England, Historical Metallurgy 34(2) 2000 87-96 with printer's corrections in HM35(1) 2001, 65-66

[Ramsberg]

This is turning into a very informative discussion, thanks to everyone for the replys and refrences.

Caleb Ramsby