Differentiating Iron from Steel

[WadePatton]

Testing for spark on the grinder is my method now.  Red is iron.  You'll know it when it happens.

 A KING branded woodstove lid lifter was the piece (heavily pitted and no better than the one i made).  I was surprised that the two hammer forged pieces i found were steel (forgeries?). 

Making batches of acid/iron with different metals.  Have enough old barbed wire to do 100 batches, but wanted some genuine iron for at least one batch.  Red sparks.

[PPatch]

Got Red Spark? From what?

[WadePatton]

the KING woodstove cooking eye lifter handle.  I know where i have some old cast grates too, maybe even a discarded stove. 

Probably not a significant difference, but why not try it to see. 

[rich pierce]

The simplest difference between iron and steel is the presence of carbon.  You can take wrought iron and turn it into steel by cooking it with charcoal (case hardening).  Now take a nail that is wrought iron and one that is now steel because it has been deeply case harmed, and allow it to oxidize (rust) in either vinegar or nitric acid.  What is going to happen to the carbon in the steel?  It will become CO2.  And how would the carbon affect the staining qualities of the aqua fortis?  I think there is a lot of hocus locus to the idea that "pure iron" will yield better color.  And that's not even paying attention to the fact that cast iron and even wrought iron are seldom pure elemental iron.  And cast iron often has a TON of carbon content.  Ever wonder why it shatters so easily?  So all these experiments a fun but not necessarily going to be based on actual chemical content of the metal, because there a some questionable assumptions being made.  Because something is called cast iron does not mean it is highly pure elemental iron.  Because something is called steel does not mean it has a lot of other metals or elements alloyed into it.

[Acer Saccharum]

The best method is to find a metal that works, and keep that for making your stain.

And then find wood that works with the stain you've made.

By the time you have all that figured out, you'll be too old to use up the vast supply of stain and wood you've accumulated. (not to mention the associated parts piles)



There is a tremendous amount of accident and mystery in this pursuit for me. Never a dull moment.

[Dphariss]

In my experience the presence of carbon has no effect on the making of ferric nitrate stain. Made with steel wool, made with modern nails, made with chips from an old wagon tire: All the same color on maple.
It the iron that does the staining. Apparently the source of iron is not important.
If you are getting red sparks with no life it may have nickle or chrome in it.
Nickle steel as been intentionally made and used for at least 110-120 years so finding an "old" piece that produces low sparks is not surprising.

Dan

[WadePatton]

So King wood stoves would be cast of nickle steel?

They'd run a separate casting operation for lid lifters?  Methinks not.



(borrowed image) lifter is the thing on top that's not a shovel.  branded the same as most of these old stoves.  I heat my workshop with one like this.  Have a more modern design in the house.

I know it doesn't matter, but old rusty metal is usually free and the acid i'm using is extraordinarily cheap.  So i'm running more than one batch (because i can).  Also, what i like about really old rusty stuff is that there's no need to clean the oils from the surface-and there's nothing else to do with it but sell it for scrap at pennies the pound.

[Dphariss]

So King wood stoves would be cast of nickle steel?

They'd run a separate casting operation for lid lifters?  Methinks not.



(borrowed image) lifter is the thing on top that's not a shovel.  branded the same as most of these old stoves.  I heat my workshop with one like this.  Have a more modern design in the house.

I know it doesn't matter, but old rusty metal is usually free and the acid i'm using is extraordinarily cheap.  So i'm running more than one batch (because i can).  Also, what i like about really old rusty stuff is that there's no need to clean the oils from the surface-and there's nothing else to do with it but sell it for scrap at pennies the pound.

Sigh....
It is possible that there is nickle in the alloy or some other spark reducing metal that was not intended but there due to the technology of the tome OR the people casting them did give a hoot so long as the mould produced serviceable handles.  Many cook/heating stoves had nickle plated parts by at least the late 19th c. and likely earlier  so its possible some nickle could get into the parts if broken pieces were recycled.

So far as the stain is concerned. It appears that iron is iron. Cast iron is very high in carbon 3% or more IIRC (1095 is less than 1% modern iron is less than 1/10 of 1%) but this is meaningless in making stain. The stain is the iron. But even simple iron, especially old iron, may have all sorts of stuff in it in the form of slag or natural amounts of perhaps manganese etc.
The handles may have been cast steel for all I know.
Today the difference between steel and iron (just like in the old days) is Carbon content ONLY. 1010 is steel 1008 is iron. The difference in the .02 of carbon is not much and I doubt anyone here could tell one from the other if it were not labeled. In the OLD days if it would not harden it was iron. This means a lot of Iron from the past might actually be 1018.
So I suppose I could use chips from 4150 rifle barrels or almost any other steel. I could put a piece of wagon tire in the mill and make a pile of chips, again, and make stain with them, again, but why waste the time and wear on a 20-40 dollar cutter? But why would I bother when a handful of small finish nails does EXACTLY THE SAME THING? I can run to basement or attic in the shop and find some left over nails from some project and its far faster than spending time on old wagon tires. Besides i might want to use it for something else.
Did you know the British used to make gun barrels from old horseshoe nails? Now thats recycling.

Dan

[WadePatton]

Hey Dan, I do appreciate your input (and respect your opinions) and have read many if not most all of your posts on this topic, as well as the bulk of the others' (ever posted in the "new" boards).  From that, and this most recent post, I'm quite sure that you are sure of your convictions with regard to (WRT) alloys and acids and stains. 

But that at least two ALR members have reported that they themselves are equally convinced that they do certainly get different results from stains derived from different metals contributing the iron content.

I don't know if my results will mirror theirs or yours.

I was just sharing one of the "quickie" ways of half-ass sorting one's scrap metals for use in such a manner. nothing more. 

[Dave B]

It was a number of years ago when I had the opportunity to try a new Aquafortis  sold by L&R Trading co. out of Sweet Home OR. Their first offering of the Three Rivers Aquafortis was Blue in color and produced a mild walnut medium brown.  I prefer a more reddish brown and recalled Herschel House showing how to saturate the nitric acid with steel wool till it would not take (dissolve) any more.  So I tested the theory with this new stuff adding about  3/4 pad of 000 steel wool to it. The full amount caused saturation and no more would dissolve. Now the solution was a muddy color but when used had a deeper brownish red under tone. I liked this much better to my thinking. I do not know the ratio of the iron in the original formula but the saturation of the steel wool changed the tones for the better.  Does any one know what the make up of steel wool is?

[oakridge]

According to Wikipedia, steel wool is made from very low carbon steel, closer to being iron than steel.

[oakridge]

Lustersheen makes oil free steel wool, which they say is made of high quality steel (high carbon?). I don't know if it would be any better for making aqua fortis, but at least you don't have to degrease it. It's already clean and oil free.

[WadePatton]

I don't think you'd ever want "high-carbon" steel wool, it'd be brittle or not bendy.

(difficult to anneal steel wool ).  

"High quality" may imply low impurities in the alloy, or tighter alloy %'s, or closer tolerances on maintaining grade/size specifications---or is just marketing bs.  

[Bob Roller]

I make steel wool by accident when facing off a bar of 1144 "Stresspruf".
It occurs also after the major diameter of a lock tumbler is finished and when
backing off of it,steel wool also occurs.
My limited experience with iron was about 28 years ago when making
polishing balls for internal lens radii after they were roughed in on a
very fast small Bridgeport V mill.It's a dusty,dirty material and turns to
mud when drilled or milled using coolants.

Bob Roller

[JCKelly]

"Iron" and "steel" are very, very old words and do not mean the same today as they did in the 19th century.

Strictly speaking Iron is an element, like copper, gold, neon and oxygen.

The nearest READILY AVAILABLE thing to elemental iron is a common nail. Not a concrete nail, not something meant to be driven by some powered machine, just a plain ol' 10 penny nail.

Steel in olden times was iron with up to about 1.7% carbon added. Like wrought iron (which has maybe 3% by volume of slag in it) that has been deeply casehardened.

Alloy steel? Yeah, I suppose it might give different results in a stain. Just use nails or wash the oil off of your steel wool. Then wash off whatever you used to get rid of the oil.

Cast Iron is the element iron with maybe 4% by weight of carbon, present as graphite, and a couple % of silicon.

If you use some scrap item then you simply will not know what you have & no Dark of the Moon witchcraft will help.

Spark test? If you spark test for a living you can be astonishingly accurate, even distinguish one grade of stainless from another. If you don't make money doing it regularly, you may be just as remarkably wrong.

That is true of this P.I.T.A. metallurgist also (though I once found to my surprise that I could tell 321 stainless from 35%nickel 19%chromium alloy. That titanium in 321 makes a $#*! of a spark)

[WadePatton]

Cast metal from old wood-burning stoves sparks quite a bit differently than anything else i've ever touched to the wheel.  And i did touch some forged steel to the grinder-which sparks just like all the other steels I tried.

I now have enough cast stove material for two or three life-times of stock staining.

When I refill my cylinders (O/A) I'll melt some with the torch.   That's another test that means nothing to metallurgists, but can be performed by the metal head at home.  Where iron melts at a lower color/heat.  As i have torch-welded steel many times, I'll be pretty comfortable with this useless and unnecessary testing as well.  

Well it will be useful to reduced the size of the pieces for stuffing into jars.

[Chuck Burrows]

Where iron melts at a lower color/heat.

Good iron melts at a higher temp than steel - been welding high carbon bits into hawks for 45+ years and one of the most difficult parts when using wrought iron for the main body is getting the welding heat right since the WI needs a much higher temp than the steel bit.

As for steel or iron or alloys when making AF or Vinegar Black - I've been making both for 50 years and have never notice any major difference in using either when it comes to color - the wood itself and it's tannin content has more to do with the color in my experience. Heck just out of pure contrariness I've made vinegar black using unwashed steel wool and found not problems when making or using.....

[WadePatton]

Dang i repeated nonsense again.   forgive.  i'll report what the torch does when i do it. np