yen and yang of wrought iron

Raymond Richard

Raymond Richard

Joined
Jun 17, 2001
Messages
5,705
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.

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Looks good Ray! I'd call you lucky, but it sounds like you worked hard to get at it. :)

-d
 
deker said:
Looks good Ray! I'd call you lucky, but it sounds like you worked hard to get at it. :)

-d
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It wasn't to much work. Luckily they didn't have ready mix back in those days. It was more sand and big chunks of rock and stone and not to much cement. No building inspectors either. :D
 
mete said:
Early version of steel reinforced concrete !!!
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Thats exactly what it was besides getting rid of some junk. I thought the placement of the 6' cross cut saw blade could have been better. It created a cold joint since they laid it flat and not on edge. Kind of felt like I was opening up a time capsule.
 
Ray,
Waht are you doing? Cutting half way and then just breaking the rest?

My family used to own a precast concrete company. One of my jobs was demo man. I've busted apart soooo many sets of front steps I don't even want to think about it. You find lots of fun stuff in them and under them!
The most common of which was beer cans!
Mace
 
Sometimes, with higher grades of wrought iron, even the cut half way and break in half method isnt good enough to tell if it's wrought or not. Usualy it's the lower grades of wrought which leave the real visible strands, because it hasnt been refined as much. That stuff can be a nightmare to forge too, because it needs to be kept just about welding temp the whole time it's being forged otherwise it falls apart.

I've got some very high grade wrought bar stock that i want to grind and polish up a piece and etch it to see how the pattern looks on a really high grade wrought piece vs the lower grade stuff.
 
Mace said:
Ray,
Waht are you doing? Cutting half way and then just breaking the rest?

My family used to own a precast concrete company. One of my jobs was demo man. I've busted apart soooo many sets of front steps I don't even want to think about it. You find lots of fun stuff in them and under them!
The most common of which was beer cans!
Mace
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I'm cutting 3/4 to 7/8 threw and then bending. If its wrought iron you'll see whats in the photo. If its iron or steel it will just snap. Reason I did the test on the one piece again is it just looked strange. Glad I did now.

I use to form up a lot of concrete steps. Its a 2 beer job for the carpenter. If there were more than 2 cans it means the carpenter also poured and finished them.
 
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