wrought iron

C

claude

Joined
Sep 29, 2000
Messages
40
Hi There
Just a quick question about wrought iron. I was at the farm a couple of weeks ago and found some old wagon wheels and old farm implements. How can a person tell if it is wrought iron or not. I will send a couple of pictures and hopefully they came through.
Claude
 
One sure way is to cut the pice approx. 2/3 through and then bend it at the cut until it seperates. Wrought Iron will display fibers (almost looks like strings) at the broken ends. This is silicon slag that was part of all wrought. One side caution...... some old wagon rims and even the hub bands where made of "left overs" or whatever the blacksmith had laying around. In those days steel was a precious resource, and many times if a blacksmith did not have the proper size stock to produce an items, he would simply forge weld a bunch of whatever was laying around until he had a piece large enough to create what was needed. I have had several old wagon wheel hub bands that I cleaned up and etched in ferric chloride..... you could actually see nails, barbed wire, etc in the pieces!
 
Thanks Ed
I found it at the farm and it was a big wheel so I had to cut it into three pieces to get it into the truck. I will cut it and bend it to see what it looks like, I can't seem to get the digital pictures to work on the web so I will have to figure it out and then send them back again. But thanks for the reply
claude
 
Bump what Ed said. I cut up some wagon-wheel rims and etched one of the cuts in vinegar. The layers or extras showed up pretty clearly. It looked almost like a low layer count damascus.
 
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