yen and yang of wrought iron

[Raymond Richard]

Not sure if this will be of any interest here but what the heck.....

I spent a few hours over at a friends place yesterday. He lives in Damascus. He gave me a little history lesson saying that Damascus was one of the first area's home steaded for folks coming over the Oregon Trail. Main reason I went over there was he was starting to knock down some old cement foundation walls. He had showed me a wagon wheel and a horse shoe that you could see in the cement wall. We only worked a couple hours but got most of one section down. Got the wagon wheel, 4 or 5 horse shoes, 8 hay rake tines, some real odd ball steel or iron things, one cross cut saw, and some bar stock iron that was most likely used for farming. I was pretty positive the wagon wheel would be wrought iron but also checked the iron bar stock. Right off the bat one was for sure was wrought iron. The other I had thought was just iron until I decided to re check it this morning. It turned out to be wrought iron also. The piece I re checked is the one that is stacked. The piece sitting on top was from the cut I did yesterday. The fiberous looking grain is what your looking for to determine if its wrought iron.

 

[Keith Montgomery]

Sounds like you got yourself a fair bit of material to use.

 

[A C Richards]

Ray,

Great way to tell if you have wrought iron or mild steel. There have been a few posts on telling the difference. Some wagon wheel tires had been replace with more modern steel. I had 2 huge ones that my father had picked up that turned out to be Mild Steel.

Chuck

 

[Raymond Richard]

Ray,

Great way to tell if you have wrought iron or mild steel. There have been a few posts on telling the difference. Some wagon wheel tires had been replace with more modern steel. I had 2 huge ones that my father had picked up that turned out to be Mild Steel.

Chuck

You gotta make sure there not re-treads. I went through more of what I brought home and most of what I got is wrought iron. Stuff I thought was mild steel turned out to be WI.