wrought iron

[divermike]

I just had a problem, I was working with some wrought iron, and tried to put 2 twists in it, when it just popped apart? I was amazed. I have a bunch of this stuff, but I'm not sure if it was something I did wrong, or is it the nature of the material to come apart easily?

[Finnr]

Wrought needs to be worked at yellow heat or it's liable to split.
Finnr

[Steve Sells]

depending in the grade of wrought is can come apart, architectural grade needs a lot of refining, before ya can twist it much.

[dablacksmith]

ya sometimes its good and sometimes not... i save it for historical projects and find it does do that sometimes... how rusty was it ? i had some real rusty stuff that i had to fold back cause it was splitting every time i forged it...good luck

[divermike]

So let see if I get this, I should think about reforging it over a couple times, then work it, it was from a section of fencing, well pitted by rust, someone said to me it needs to be triple refined, wassat???

[Mills]

Forging works the grain structure smaller. Out of the bloom it is pretty rough. forge it weld it back to it self as a big bar again. once refined. forge again, twice refined. guess what triple refined means.

that does not take into consideration other impurities such as sulfur which create some trouble. There is a lot of discussion of this which I have read but have no knowledge of so use this to refine your search for answers. By the time it is triple refined you should be able to handle the problem. ;)

[dablacksmith]

ya treat it like damascus and fold it over or cut and stack ... the pitting can be part of the problem... the rust is stopped by the inpurities (and flux) throught but there can be rust between layers and when twisted it kinda comes apart (at least thats my thought).. good luck!

[Shane Stegmeier]

Wrought iron especially wrought of dubious quality should be worked at or near welding heat for many opperations. If it is heavily pitted you can have some problems with rust infiltrating the fibers of the wrought, and then the best thing to do is to reconsolidate the wrought (ie, forgeweld the material back into a big fat billet, working at a high welding heat and then draw the material back out to the size you need.) It can be a pain, but it is one of the limitations of the material and what would have been done in period. You see this kinda thing in wagon tires fairly often, which I have heard characterized as muckbar, or single refined wrought. I have found bubbles where I assume water has infiltrated the structure and frozen causeing the fibers to seperate. I saw a beautiful Armitage Mousehole anvil 277# that had a huge chip out of the face and the face around it was delaminated, I assume it had fallen over into the mud and frozen breaking the face. (of course it could have been some bubba with a 16# hammer and a wild swing, but that was really the only damage to the face other than some serious rust pitting...)

I have also heard people tell me that wrought twists oddly at the best of circumstances, haven't any experience with that but I remember someone complaining about it. Try working at a welding heat, pull it out at a light sparking heat and by the time you get it clamped in the vice and ready to twist it will be a bright yellow, and should be fine (if it is going to be... ;-)

[David Einhorn]

As others have mentioned wrought iron comes in differing quality. Wrought was made by taking a mass of iron hammering it into a slab, cutting the slab, stacking the pieces and putting it back into the fire to be forge welded. The more times the stack was drawn out, restacked and forge welded, the finer the wrought iron. Low grade iron was drawn out a couple of times, and higher grade was further refined.

I once cut the ends off of an old pair of tongs and tested the two pieces. One piece fell apart like rotted wood, while the other piece forged nicely like soft butter.

If your piece is large enough, you could cut off a small piece and test its quality and the range of forging temperature.

One local smith's secret was that he would purchase "drawing wire" in spools from companies that provide almost pure iron to companies that draw out wire for screens and other stuff. The iron is very much like high grade wrought iron and is wonderful to work with. The draw-back of any iron without carbon is that it is very soft. We tend to be used to iron that is stiff. When using soft iron you will have to use more of it if you don't want it to bend. This can be seen in specifications for iron for the military during the American U.S. War Between the States, as the specifications call for heavy forgings of the contractors providing iron objects due to the soft nature of wrought iron. Wrought iron was still available and still being made in the 1970s, but became unavailable due to lack of demand for wrought iron.

If you find a source of spools of iron wire, especially wire of 1/2 inch or larger, please please please share the information!

[Wroughton]

As Fionnbharr has said before, wrought works best when brought to a high heat and definitely benefits from some "soaking" time in the forge. don't trust that your razoo forge has heated your iron thoroughly. due to its fibrous nature, it insulates its inner core from heating evenly and will look plenty hot on the outside while varying 100's of degrees on the inside. so, when you go to forge your iron will start to fall apart.

wrought works well for me when i put it in a hot forge and i let it soak. it's not steel and shouldn't be worked at a cherry heat. wrought also appreciates being babied on the anvil. light taps and frequent trips to the forge to reheat to avoid tears across the grain while bending and punching. hard, frantic hits tend to shock, cool and cause micro tears across the grain leaving you with something that looks good before you reheat but starts to unravel once you start to forge again as the tears across and with the grain start showing themselves.

pour the coals to it and then work it like it's bronze and you'll have a lot of fun.