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Bar-steel, as it comes from the furnace, is divided and sorted, and the pieces free from flaws and blisters are rolled out and converted into files, knives, coach-springs, razors, and common implements, according to quality. It will be seen that there is a good deal of science and judgment required to manufacture the best steel.
Sheer steel is made from bar-steel by repeated heating, hammering, and welding. Cast steel, a very valuable invention, which has in a great degree superseded sheer steel for many purposes, was first made in 1770 by Mr. Hunstman, at Allercliff, near Sheffield.
It is made by subjecting bar-steel, of a certain degree of hardness, to an intense heat, for two or three hours, in a crucible, and then casting it in ingots. The Indian Wootz steel, of which such fine specimens were exhibited in the Exhibition, and from which extraordinary sabres have been made, is cast steel, but, from the rudeness of the process, rarely obtained perfect in any quantity.
There was a storm of sparks, a deluge of nails, an ocean of pistons, vices, levers, valves, girders, files, and nuts; a sea of melted metal, baulks of timber and bar-steel. Iron filings filled your throat. There was iron in the atmosphere; the men were covered with it; everything reeked of iron.
Bar-steel is manufactured by heating the iron, divided into lumps, in pots, with layers of charcoal, closely covered over with sand and clay, for several days. By this means the iron is carbonized and converted into what is commonly called blistered steel. The heat is kept up a longer or shorter time according to the hardness required.
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