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Quote:It can also turn you carbon steel (which is a redundancy since all steel has a carbon content 0,7%-2%) into cast iron, one of the reasons metal was pretty much crap in the middle ages.
Your figures are wrong, Mild Steel alone can have up to .25% carbon, and can have significantly less as well, with high carbon having as much as 1.5% carbon content. Who said steel was crap in the Middle Ages? Some of the best metal working was done at this time? Ever see a gothic knight or some equipment used to make build cathedrals?
Are you saying Middle Age metal was less durable or less strong? Different types of steel have different properties, depends on what you intend to use it for
Quintus Furius Collatinus
-Matt
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I'm saying that before Bessamer steel manufacturing was at best an art, know by few.
I'm also saying that yes steel was far less durable and far less strong in the middle ages since you couldn't reach the temperatures needed for some phases (in the context of metalic crystalization), nor you had the proper knowledge and techniques of quenching and heat treatment. You obviously had rudimentary empiric knowledge, but again yes, most "steel" from the middle ages was closer to cast iron than steel.
Also remember that most things that reach us are likelly the best examples of work of the day.
You could actually "cheat" and make some good metal (from burying sheets and then fusing them, to the japanese process of folding softer and harder steel), but not in a consistent fashion.
My curiousity is if indeed the Romans could produce steel in quality AND quantity.
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I've been trying for years to come up with a reasonable explanation for the passage in Diodorus whre he wrote that the Gauls,
bury plates of iron in the ground and leave them there until in the course of time the rust has eaten out what is weak in the iron and what is left is only the most unyielding...[V.33.4]
This passage is starting to make sense.