Mohave County miner., 1884-05-18
Steel.

fine metal, as Shakespeare says:
 % God of battles STEEL my soldiers
 hearts,"
 The earliest discovery or invention
 of steel was in the remote past, but
 the nature of the change In the iron
 was not understood. It was pre-.
 pared by fusion, and not by cemen- tation as in later days. Ordinary steel contains from 0.5 to Is per cent of carbon. Its hardness and fusi.ility increases with the amount of carbon, and when this element IS in excess it becomes cast iron. When the proportion is small, the metal is termed mild, or low steel, An expert defines steel as an alloy of iron, which IS cast while in a fluid state into a malleable ingot Steel has been pro- duced as an experiment. by heating the iron to be converted in contact with diamond.
 Steel was imported from the coun- try nf Chaly bes, into Greece about 500 B. c. end the name Chalybes signifies steel. The description of steel making by Aristotle shows that the process wes repetitlve, and that dross was eliminated. Heating sev eral times in contact with charcoal was supposed to purify 1t. It was only lately that steel was understood to be carburet of iron.
 4 crude steel is obtained by the inery process; namely, by removing the impurities of cast-iron by jets of air blown into the bath of molten metal which is covered by layer of charcoal. The varieties of steel in modern use are very numerous, many of them having peculiar adap- tation to a certain specific purpose in the arts.
 The natural steel of Germany is made directly from the ore, and sometimes from pig iron in the Cata Ian forge. Tbe ore IS smelted, as for iron, in blast furnaces, but the blast is weaker. and is directed, not upon the metal, but in a horizontal dlrec tion above 1t. The metal is kept covered with slag, or vitrified cinders, and is not disturbed by stirring When the iron is judged to be suffi- clently refined it is taken out and forged.
 The steel in India is made by melt ing the crude, native iron. in cruel bles, in which pieces of wood or leaves are introduced. It is called India steel, or wootz, and IS valued as the material of edge tools. The name is often appropriated by En- lgtish manufacturers for their own
 f oducts, which are proBaHl pndin,
 cast steel of good ee process of procuring primitive and laborious. bdgs the Hindoo manages 10 obtain most excellent steel.
 In England, the Swedish is used for making the best steel, it Is re ceived in bars three inches wide and tive-e1ghts of an inch thick, and about twelve feet long. The process IS elaborate and while useful for some purposes is not considered to be best adapted for making tools for working wood or metal
 Cast steel was invented in 1840 by BeHjamIn Huntsman, near Sheffield. His process was to place small frag ments of blistered steel In a crucible of fine clay, place broken green glass above it, and lute the cover; that is use composition of clay for stop ping the juncture of vessels so close ly as to prevent the escape or en- trance of air, and then place the crucible in a furnance. When melt ed 1t was withdrawn and poured into an iron mould And thls is essen italy the process still followed in producing me cast steel suitable for cutlery and tools for working wood or metal.
 Various efforts have been made to produce cheap steel on a large scale Of these the Bessemer method was the most successful.
 The Damascus steel is made from the natural ore by the same process as the woofz.
 Tungsten steel is remarkable for its magnetic capacity. Yung is from the Swede and Danish, meaning heavy, and sten or stein Is stone, It is a metal of greyish white color, and of considerable luster, brittle, and nearly as hard as steel, 80 that some difficulty IS experienced in obtaining