skills and techniques of old time metallurgists?

I find myself wondering often how it was that skilled metallurgists of 100 + years ago - who frequently achieved pretty impressive results - managed to do it so effectively prior to all of the modern technologies and techniques that we now have to so precisely analyze and assay ingredients, molecular-level alloy structures, etc.- I'm sure empirical experience showed that certain ores from certain locations had specific tendencies... but I am still amazed because there must have become the need to work with raw materials from many sources and still achieve repeatable results.

I am partly interested due to strong general fascination and admiration about how those who came before us did so much with what we would now consider very little to work with - and partly due to personal family heritage- my ancestors had been deeply and successfully involved in the steel industry in Wales and were originally brought to the USA in approximately the 1840s as consultants to help this country come up with more durable metallurgy for railroad rails. The general family history has been well preserved but any know-how of the specifics of their metallurgical techniques didn't make it much past 1900, as business fortune sent the once-successful (the second generation stayed in the US and had successful steel businesses here in the USA also) family businesses into irreversible decline (I think it was in part because of the large scale consolidation of the steel industry around the turn of the 20th century).

I know that this is slightly OT from any specific antique machine tool- but hope that it is not prohibitively OT- since I know that folks here have a tremendous reservoir of knowledge and experience and might have directions to point me to learn more. It does at least in some sense have to do with the raw materials that vintage machine tools were made from- and what the vintage machine tools then made other things with.

Thanks

Lots has been written if you care to bone up

Just a sampling of five from here, all at least 100 years old

Principles of Iron Founding by Moldenke

Steel and its Heat Treatment by Bullens and Battelle

Blast Furnace Construction by Joseph E. Johnson

Principles, Operation and Products of the Blast Furnace by Joseph E. Johnson

(The world lost Joe Johnson at age 48 due to being run over by automobile while walking to train station
The Cornell Alumni News - Google Books )

Measurement of High Temperatures by Burgess and LeChatelier

ON EDIT - for later efforts on the study of the subject

The two volume set by K. C. Barraclough Steelmaking Before Bessemer

American Iron by Gordon

Bottom line is, 100 years ago was 1917. Steelmaking and metalurgy were pretty
avanced at that time. Folks were gearing up for WW1.

I find it very interesting to consider a bit further back...
V. Biringuccio's "Pirotechnia" was written back in the 1500's, the first book on iron smelting of its scope. Back then not much was known of what we call metallurgy today, but iron masters had thousands of years of accumulated passed-down practical knowledge of ore assessment and processing, furnace building, and smelting variables. Yet, iron was still described in terms such as "wild and sour" which is how Biringuccio spoke of an ore from a certain region. That particularly struck me. It was as if he was speaking of a food or something, not the ubiquitous metal everything is made of today. Often he would describe properties of steel that are well-known, and yet totally fail to correctly explain the underlying physics... and not for lack of trying!
Then, to think of the first precision machines... the ones shown in threads here, for the making of wooden blocks in 1700's naval technology, and subsequent machines by Bramah, Maudslay and the like- the steels they had to work with! I imagine double shear steel, or some of the early crucible steels, case hardened irons and on the raw side blister steels and the like... it must have made things very much more difficult in ways, and yet easier at times too (filing and scraping steels with no trace alloys such as manganese yet!)
And all of this, in such a relatively recent past... mind boggling. Heck, fusion welding is only a little over 100 years old even now.

Good question!

This is a fascinating question, and one which could take us down all sorts of alleys.

No doubt the science of metallurgy has its roots in alchemy, and important techniques would have doubtless been developed in the race to convert base metal into gold.

The more I think about it, the less I know about the broad picture, but the question has taken me to books in all sorts of fields to seek answers to a variety of supplementary questions. How were high temperatures measured? What was the history of chemical analysis? When were spectroscopes developed?

As a starting point, I went to one of my older books, A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, by Andrew Ure in 1839. The science of metallurgy was already well developed by then. In the section on Iron, Ure describes in detail the analysis of iron to determine its constituents and their proportion. In essence it involves a lot of processes which can be summarised as dissolving in a variety of acids, evaporation, washing, filtering, heating, looking at the colour, etc., etc., and central to all these activities is the use of accurate chemical balances for weighing. Not all of the processes were suited to the needs of the waiting furnacemen! Determining the quantity of sulphur in cast iron involved dissolving it in muriatic acid, passing the released hydrogen through a solution of acetate of lead, and weighing the precipitate. The dissolving process took 10-15 days!

Then there were the more pragmatic methods, breaking samples open to estimate the fibrosity of wrought iron, sectioning ingots to take sulphur prints, polishing samples for microscopic examination.

The instrument maker had a key role in aid of the metallurgist, producing thermometers, microscopes, scales, etc, and it would be interesting to know to what extent the development of certain instruments was led by the metal industries, or vice versa. In turn, the production of these instruments placed demands in the field of precision engineering. For example, at some point dividing engines were needed for making diffraction gratings for spectroscopes. Of course other fields of manufacturing were called upon – for example, makers of laboratory glassware, acids for testing, etc.

kd1yt said:

I find myself wondering often how it was that skilled metallurgists of 100 + years ago - who frequently achieved pretty impressive results - managed to do it so effectively prior to all of the modern technologies and techniques that we now have to so precisely analyze and assay ingredients, molecular-level alloy structures, etc.- I'm sure empirical experience showed that certain ores from certain locations had specific tendencies... but I am still amazed because there must have become the need to work with raw materials from many sources and still achieve repeatable results.

I am partly interested due to strong general fascination and admiration about how those who came before us did so much with what we would now consider very little to work with - and partly due to personal family heritage- my ancestors had been deeply and successfully involved in the steel industry in Wales and were originally brought to the USA in approximately the 1840s as consultants to help this country come up with more durable metallurgy for railroad rails. The general family history has been well preserved but any know-how of the specifics of their metallurgical techniques didn't make it much past 1900, as business fortune sent the once-successful (the second generation stayed in the US and had successful steel businesses here in the USA also) family businesses into irreversible decline (I think it was in part because of the large scale consolidation of the steel industry around the turn of the 20th century).

I know that this is slightly OT from any specific antique machine tool- but hope that it is not prohibitively OT- since I know that folks here have a tremendous reservoir of knowledge and experience and might have directions to point me to learn more. It does at least in some sense have to do with the raw materials that vintage machine tools were made from- and what the vintage machine tools then made other things with.

Thanks

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you pour cast iron you always fight oxidation or lower carbon content which gives white iron its hard and low ductility. if you pound red hot cast iron it will crumble. if you add alloy ferrosilca you can get grey iron but it can get bad properties if too much. old timers often melted together stuff to get different properties
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if you take wrought iron and put in box with carbon and heat red hot, iron absorb carbon. it can be hardened but cold and hot ductility changes too..
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when you melt in crucible cast iron and wrought iron you get steel but sulfur and phosphorous can also effect ductility both cold and hot. again if you forge hot steel and it crumbles that not good. they understood bad alloys. they might not have known exactly what was doing it. they understood some fluxes absorbed bad stuff too.
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i believe they understood the metal burning and contamination like from sulfur and phosphorous. since they did not have fast metal analyzing equipment often cast iron was poured into a wedge shape and broken and thickness at which its white and grey showed hard white iron and softer grey iron. with steel they can heat red hot and pound and see how easy it crumbles rather than stay together and allow forging.
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if you melt cast iron in a foundry you can make a lot of bad casting which get remelted. you might not realize high scrap rate cause all you see are the good metal castings. all the bad ones were remelted and tried again

Salem Straub said:

I find it very interesting to consider a bit further back...
V. Biringuccio's "Pirotechnia" was written back in the 1500's, the first book on iron smelting of its scope. Back then not much was known of what we call metallurgy today, but iron masters had thousands of years of accumulated passed-down practical knowledge of ore assessment and processing, furnace building, and smelting variables. Yet, iron was still described in terms such as "wild and sour" which is how Biringuccio spoke of an ore from a certain region. That particularly struck me. It was as if he was speaking of a food or something, not the ubiquitous metal everything is made of today. Often he would describe properties of steel that are well-known, and yet totally fail to correctly explain the underlying physics... and not for lack of trying!...

Click to expand...

Scientific texts were written in Latin for centuries. The Romans did not have words for things invented or conceptualized in the 14th century, so new Latin terms had to be devised in order to write about them. Then these "modern" Latin terms had to be translated into other languages after it was no longer common for educated people to know Latin and Greek. I would not be surprised if "wild and sour" is an example of a translation difficulty.

I have read that one of the greatest translating jobs in this area was done by the Americans Herbert and Lou Hoover in 1912. Hoover was a mining engineer before he became President and his wife was a geologist and knew Latin, making them a perfect team for the job. They translated the famous 1556 text, De Re Metallica (Latin for On the Nature of Metals [Minerals]) into English. I think the author was mostly concerned with non-ferrous metals, as mined in Bohemia and Saxony, so iron may not be discussed except as tools. Anyway, the Hoovers had to figure out those peculiar Latin technical terms that the author invented or adapted, and the footnotes discuss their reasoning on some of the tricky bits. Probably the Hoovers could have done better than wild and sour if they had been hired to translate Pirotechnia.

De re metallica - Wikipedia

Larry

blacksmith burn oxidize metal often they forge weld small pieces together all the time. they used to burn down house to reclaim the nails. iron was expensive steel even more expensive. in todays dollars probably closer to $100/pound or more for steel.
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blacksmith see hot short and cold short all the time. crumbles if hot forged or breaks apart if cold worked. they understood adding carbon and removing carbon. sulfur and phosphorous contamination was much less with charcoal. more a problem with coal. they understood charing coal making coke burned off bad stuff. they learned cause used for other trades even cooking food you got better tasting food using coke and not coal.
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again you read about old stuff methods you might not realize the high scrap rate and bad parts and metal cause they were melted down again. it is said to make 50 lbs of wrought iron you need over a ton of wood to make charcoal. and you are not guaranteed 50 lbs of usable wrought iron. often they forge welded small pieces driving slag out but reforging welding together and pounding flat again many many times.

1840's were still before Bessemer process and metallurgy was still pretty much "this mine produces brittle iron and the mine in Sweden is good for sword steel."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddling_(metallurgy)#Puddling_furnace
Oregrounds iron - Wikipedia

SKF's rise to world leader in ball bearing market was partly thanks to high quality ore available in swedish mines.

MattiJ said:

1840's were still before Bessemer process and metallurgy was still pretty much "this mine produces brittle iron and the mine in Sweden is good for sword steel."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddling_(metallurgy)#Puddling_furnace
Oregrounds iron - Wikipedia

SKF's rise to world leader in ball bearing market was partly thanks to high quality ore available in swedish mines.

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I think I read about 60 years ago that early 19th century Swedish horse shoe nails were used in the USA as raw material for fine parts.

This is a very informative short article on the history of iron making. It mentions that iron ore in Sweden and Wales had no phosphorus, making a better grade of iron and steel back before removing phosphorus had been figured out. It also mentions Andrew Carnegie's effect on the many small steel mills that existed in the late 19th century.

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/h-carnegie-steel.htm

Larry

crucible steel was made long before Huntsman.
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Crucible steel - Wikipedia
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basically took time to get furnaces to go that hot AND to make crucibles from material that could take the temperature. i had a exhaust heat preheating kerosene burner crucible furnace. you could always tell where hottest part of flame was touching crucible. too hot you can melt a hole in side of crucible
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hot temp ceramics often require calcining or heating the clay material to burn off impurities which lower it temperature rating. off shoot of making plaster and lime cement. you calcine the limestone to make CaO which reacts with water. they calcined clay to make white porcelain ceramic pottery and found it took higher temps too

WOW, thank you all very much. I just read the Anselm.edu "brief history" and learned a lot right there. I'd previously heard of but then forgot about the Hoovers' work. I will be very interested to follow up on some of the other works and sources that many of you have suggested. I really appreciate all of the knowledge and suggestions that all of you are offering. Thanks again

Bottom line is, 100 years ago was 1917. Steelmaking and metalurgy were pretty
avanced at that time. Folks were gearing up for WW1.

Click to expand...

I read in gun forums people talking about steel in guns like the P-08 as if the steel loses strength over time like we old men do, "You better be careful, that's old steel".

Other than corrosion and heat or over pressure damage a 100 year old action should be as strong as the day it was sold new I believe.

If you want your own personal hard copy of Agricola's "De Re Metalica," you can buy a Dover Publications Reprint:

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486600068.html

Ditto for Biringuccio's "Pirotechnia":

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486261344.html

I have long held that if no one BUYS the sort of books that I find interesting, then no one will publish them. Thus, I make it a point to buy some books, even ones I don't wish to keep for life.

In general, you will find the Dover catalog to be a treasure trove of "Quaint and Curious Forgotten Lore"

John Ruth

partsproduction said:

I read in gun forums people talking about steel in guns like the P-08 as if the steel loses strength over time like we old men do, "You better be careful, that's old steel".

Other than corrosion and heat or over pressure damage a 100 year old action should be as strong as the day it was sold new I believe.

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Mostly true, if anything the modern production is more constant in quality.
Bit of suprise was for me that ball bearing steels have improved to todays level as recently as between 1960 and 1980's
Not hardness or strenght but fatique life and more predictable lifetime thanks to less inclusions and crud inside steel.

jim rozen said:

Bottom line is, 100 years ago was 1917. Steelmaking and metalurgy were pretty
avanced at that time. Folks were gearing up for WW1.

Click to expand...

My lathe has 1912 cast in the legs and it blows my mind to think good casting and smart machining could create flight.

partsproduction said:

I read in gun forums people talking about steel in guns like the P-08 as if the steel loses strength over time like we old men do, "You better be careful, that's old steel".

Other than corrosion and heat or over pressure damage a 100 year old action should be as strong as the day it was sold new I believe.

Click to expand...

hat speifically might be as much to do with the production method as the age of the steel itself. Old guns were often made by wrapping a strip of steel around a mandrel, and hammer-forging the coils together into a barrel. Looks fine, works with black powder, but won't stand modern powder. Then, just over a hundred yeas ago, processes were changed to accommodate modern powders. You may see mention of "fluid steel", or other terms, in relation to the newer barrels.

It is not the steel aging, so much as the age of the processes. Although, corrosion on the forge lines might cause a "wrapped" barrel to weaken over time. That might also be the origin of the comments.

you ever do foundry casting ? especially cast iron ? get too low carbon or ferrosilica mix off and casting too hard to machine. partial filled molds cause metal not hot enough.
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spending over 4 hours getting mold made and metal melted only to get a bad or partially bad casting. lot of failures or partial failures. you might not realize cause all the mistakes get melted down.
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that is why parts are often machined from a big rectangular or round cast iron bar rather than casted. you might not realize the labor involved.
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in the old days you want a hole and need to use a hand crank drill to drill a hole. you might find it takes a hour to do what can be done in a few minutes with a electric drill. not sure i would be wishing for the good old days

Old guns were often made by wrapping a strip of steel around a mandrel, and hammer-forging the coils together into a barrel.

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Not the forums I view, I'm not interested much in pre Boxer primed guns, your going way back to black powder ("Damascus" barreled shotguns, finished that silliness about 1910 I suspect).

The barrel of a P08 made in 1916 is very nearly likely as strong as the day it left DWM. That is unless something else was done to it that should not happen to any fine gun.

The cylinders of early Walker Colt revolvers were known to come apart, made of wrought iron. Rifle barrels have normally been drilled from solid for the last 150 years, forge welding them is pretty far back I think.
But I'm talking 20th century handguns. Perhaps plated guns had a few cases of hydrogen embrittlement. DWM was well aware of that as it was common knowledge, it's unlikely that many gun makers making guns for governments would not avoid it in the last century.

My metallurgy professor as a young man had worked on the analysis of tank fragments from the 1919 Great Molasses Flood in Boston. The techniques used were essentially the same as we were taught.

• Perform tensile and fracture tests on samples.
• Embed, polish, and etch samples before viewing under a microscope.
• Perform chemical tests.
• Perform flame spectroscopy tests.

All of these were known by the late 1800s.