History of barstock?

E

elasmonut

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Feb 15, 2006
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I was admiring some of Daniel Winklers fine work in Last of the Mohicans tonight and it got me wondering,before steel or iron was produced in America how did it arrive?
Was it ingots, barstock, round bars, raw iron ore smelted on site? Where did old school smiths get their steel and in what form?
Europeans brought steel with them to every place they colonised but there would have been a need for new tools,nails,hinges,anvils,repairs to other parts of steel or iron so I suppose my question is in what form was raw steel or iron transported or sold in a place that had no capacity to manufacture it?
 
based on some history that I've seen - english settlers arrived in jamestown in 1607 - in 1608 there are records of iron ore being shipped back to england.
the manufacture of iron from ore in Virginia has been traced back to 1622.

im not sure how raw iron might have been transported, but I would think atleast partially it was transported as a functioning object (hammer, horseshoe, etc) and then repurposed as needed.
 
elasmonut said:
I was admiring some of Daniel Winklers fine work in Last of the Mohicans tonight and it got me wondering,before steel or iron was produced in America how did it arrive?
Was it ingots, barstock, round bars, raw iron ore smelted on site? Where did old school smiths get their steel and in what form?
Europeans brought steel with them to every place they colonised but there would have been a need for new tools,nails,hinges,anvils,repairs to other parts of steel or iron so I suppose my question is in what form was raw steel or iron transported or sold in a place that had no capacity to manufacture it?
Click to expand...

This is a good question for Larrin Larrin
 
From my research regarding the American scythe industry I can say that by the early 1800's, at least, iron was being imported from Sweden and Russia and steel was being imported from England, both in bar form despite the fact that there was domestic iron and steel production as the market perception was that the imported stuff was better, regardless of the fact that those in industry seemed to disagree with that assessment.
 
The modern steelmaking process didn’t start until the 1850’s, American industry was sufficiently advanced by that point to make our own. Prior to then there was a whole range of processes to make steel and learning about all of those different types would be at least as complicated as how steel was imported/exported.
 
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