Talk:Ferrous metallurgy

Source
This article is the result of merging sections that appeared in articles on iron and steel. It incorporates adverse comments made in respect of the prehistoric sections and the referecnes that they cited. However, in doing this, I have written about matters beyond my expertise, which relates (at most) to the medieval period onwards. It is possible (for example) that the sources cited do not support statements apparently reliant on them. This part of the article urgently requires the attention of some one who does know the sources.

The following query was a comment in the discussion page of iron, and relates to the the early paragraphs of the 'Bloomery Iron in the Middle East' section. Peterkingiron 00:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Query
Second paragraph, end of paragraph: I do not think it could be properly said that any particular place was where iron was "invented".

Fourth paragraph, also end of paragraph: Abram and Lot came from Ur of the Chaldeans, not to. Also, can it be said with any certainty that there were two different Urs, or which one was which? Darentig 16:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You are correct about 'from'. However the interpretation of Ur of the Chaldeans is essentially an issue of Biblical interpreation and should not be relevant to this article.  Peterkingiron 16:40, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Needham
Some one has added a series of reference to Europe from Needham. I am likely to remove or amend these shortly. Needham's work was primarily on China, not Europe, and it is now 40 years old. It thus does not take account of more recent discoveries. We know rather more of ancient metallurgy than we did in his time! Peterkingiron 16:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Meteoric Iron and Legendary Weapons
I was always curious why men would attribute supernatural properties to the weapons of certain heroes. A little studying here on Wikipedia has allowed me to come up with a satisfying hypothesis.

Mythic weapons such as Lugh's spear and Nuada's Claiomh Solais might have been made of meteoric iron. Various accounts claim that the Tuatha De Danaan had knowledge of occult magics that allowed them to create these mighty weapons -- access to meteoric iron and the know-how to forge it into weaponry would be a sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic to other cultures and the common man. In fact, wasn't Damascus steel thought to be magically derived, since it was unparalleled for strength and sharpness in its time?

And at least one such mythic weapon, Mjollnir, WAS said to have been "a fallen star."

Most of the magical abilities of these mythic weapons might have their explainations in the superior luster of iron to stone or bronze, the superior strength of meteoric iron to bronze, and the overall divine air that a weapon made from a fallen star would have. "A gift from the gods." The strength and skill of the champions who wielded these iron weapons would also add to the majesty associated with them. And from that start, human storytelling began weaving tall tales, as it tends to do. I need only point out the legends of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan for the kinds of over-the-top fiction mankind can come up with using a kernel of truth. --Sunder the Gold

Hittite trade in Meteoric Iron?
If this section is referring to the Old Assyrian trading network most famous from the finds at Kanesh, can we properly call these people Hittites? They were the ancestors to the Hittites, yes, but I'm not sure the name is justified in that use. Any ideas as to a better term?

Bloomery and blast furnace
Some one (unlogged-in) added the view that there was no difference in principle between a bloomery and a blast furance (except size), togeterh with unhelful comparisons with modern steelmaking. I believe that the contributir was trying to be helpful, but failed to be. I have accordingly reverted from these: the additions are too simplistic. If they should be added at all, the correct place is probably in the article bloomery. Peterkingiron 21:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Orphaned references in History of ferrous metallurgy
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of History of ferrous metallurgy's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Hill2": From Trip hammer: Donald Routledge Hill, "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", Scientific American, May 1991, pp. 64-69 (cf. Donald Routledge Hill, Mechanical Engineering) From Watermill: Donald Routledge Hill, "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", Scientific American, May 1991, p. 64-69. (cf. Donald Routledge Hill, Mechanical Engineering) From Muslim Agricultural Revolution: Donald Routledge Hill, "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", Scientific American, May 1991, pp. 64–9. (cf. Donald Routledge Hill, Mechanical Engineering) From Al-Jazari: Donald Routledge Hill, "Mechanical Engineering in the Medieval Near East", Scientific American, May 1991, pp. 64-9 (cf. Donald Routledge Hill, Mechanical Engineering) 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 03:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Islamic world
Whoever added material on milling in the medieval Islamic world has been trying to exaggerate their contribution: A lot of this type of stuff gets "cut and pasted" all over Wikipedia getting more garbled with each move.
 * 1) A lot of material has been added about milling in general, bit this has little or nothing to do with metallurgy, let alone ferrous metallurgy.
 * 2) Some of the material apparently on metallurgy was cited from Lucas, 'Industrial Milling', Technoloigy and Culture 46 (2005), 10 or his Wind Water Work, p.65. Both cover much the same material and refer to a variety of industries, but not to iron or steel.  Accordingly the material is cited from a false reference.  This leads me to think that the statements are wrong.
 * 3) They referred to finery forge, but that was involved in processes for converting pig iron to wrought iron: the article did not allege the production of pig iron, so that at best this is a misuse of the term; at worst it is WP:OR. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:02, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * During the Islamic Golden Age and Muslim Agricultural Revolution, Muslim chemists, inventors and engineers were making significant advances in metallurgy. Muslim engineers invented the first stamp mills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia. The first geared gristmills were invented by Muslim engineers for many industrial uses, such as crushing metallic ores before extraction. In order to adapt water wheels for gristmilling purposes, cams were used for raising and releasing trip hammers to fall on a material.

This section is not supported by the sources cited.J8079s (talk) 20:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I feared as much, but did not delete it when I pruned the section in March, because it was at least faintly related to iron, whereas what I deleted was about Islamic technology generally. Some of it may be Muslim acheivements, but other portions may be derived from the Roman world but lost to the West.  Peterkingiron (talk) 21:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Identifying iron ore in antiquity
I was wondering if there is any information regarding the methods used by the ancients, and even those in the middle ages, to identify a particular rock as being iron ore. I didn't see anything in this article about it. What methods were used? Do historians even know what they did to identify a certain rock as being iron ore? Thanks. The  Seeker 4   Talk  15:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Responses here copied from WP:REFDESK here


 * Thats a good question, but I've no good answer. All I can tell is that iron made tools from 2000BC were found in what was once Mesopotamia and that iron carburizing was known process in the Middle East at about 1200BC (this could be a byproduct discovery of iron production process). I guess that they just identified minerals rich with iron ore by sight. But I will look for additional information on the web to answer this.--Gilisa (talk) 17:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I found this book. Seems like it should include an answer.--Gilisa (talk) 17:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The simplest way would be "look for rust". Seriously, iron ore readily oxidizes to form iron oxide (rust), so there will be the characteristic reddish color of rust wherever you have iron ore. StuRat (talk) 02:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That sounds reasonable. I was curious but noticed the relevant articles lacking in any indication of how iron ore was identified before modern geological techniques. Thanks. The   Seeker 4   Talk  15:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)


 * De Re Metallica written by Georgius Agricola in 1556 has a lot of information on the identification of ore sources prior to modern prospecting techniques such as the us of vegetation associated with certain ores, soil types, color, and smell amongst others. While the book may not refer to "ancient" techniques per say, I highly recommend reading it for information on pre-industrial ore prospecting methods. --Lboscher (talk) 23:29, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Origins of iron smelting
Clarification: The article claims "smelting of iron in bloomeries began in the 12th century BC," yet mention is made of a dagger of smelted iron dating to 2500 BC. It's implied that the dagger is of smelted, non-meteoritic, iron, and what I've read elsewhere seems to bear this out... does anyone have any idea how this dagger was produced? 75.145.136.37 (talk) 20:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Material for other articles
The following part of a quote fromWill Durant, The Story of Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage was removed, since it does not pertain specifically to iron metallurgy or repeats what had already been said. Perhaps it can be used in some otehr article. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 07:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

" when India was looked to, even by Imperial Rome, as the most skilled of the nations in such chemical industries as dyeing, tanning, soap-making, glass and cement... By the sixth century the Hindus were far ahead of Europe in industrial chemistry; they were masters of calcinations, distillation, sublimation, steaming, fixation, the production of light without heat, the mixing of anesthetic and soporific powders, and the preparation of metallic salts, compounds and alloys. The tempering of steel was brought in ancient India to a perfection unknown in Europe till our own times;...

Quranic Wisdom
In quran Surah (chapter) 57 name is Hadid means Iron. Verse 25 has very interesting for this topic. English traslation is

"We sent aforetime our messengers with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance(of Right and Wrong), that men may stand forth in justice; and We sent down Iron, in which is (material for) mighty war, as well as many benefits for mankind, that Allah may test who it is that will help, Unseen, Him and His messengers: For Allah is Full of Strength, Exalted in Might (and able to enforce His Will)."

if you see arabic text "anzalna" means "we sent down. Human doesnt know this truth 1400 years ago. and about this verse because of that point there was many questions from unbelievers past time. But now it is very Clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.99.188.180 (talk) 13:14, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * So what? The Quran is a religious text for Muslims, written 14 centuries ago.  It cannot contain useful historical information on earlier eras.  This may contrast with the Hebrew Bible where it is dealing with historical events in its historical books.  Peterkingiron (talk) 19:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Merge Ferrous metallurgy in Africa
Lets have a holistic view of iron working in Africa as a whole.I think we should merge Iron working in North eastern Africa with the rest of Africa instead of taking it to Near East.We can for instance have it shown by regions e.g East Africa,West Africa,South Africa and North Africa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwenemucii (talk • contribs) 08:54, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Object -- Africa is a big place. Sub-Saharan Africa is an appropriate unit to deal with.  The Near East and Middle East have only weak linkages with it, because there is a vast desert between.  The question is what happened, not how we would like to classify it.  When this article was created By merging several others, I asked an expert to check (and amend) the article.  The editor who actually did so is a professor at the Institute of Archaeology.  Peterkingiron (talk) 19:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

What about the Japanese?
Why are is there no mention of Japanese metallurgy in this article when their tradecraft was extremely advanced and their understanding of the varying carbon contents of steel was virtually unsurpassed? The production of a traditional Katana blade, for example uses multiple types of steel for the core, sides, and cutting edge to take maximum advantage of high and low carbon steel. The edge was high carbon steel, hard but brittle, and capable of taking and retaining a razors edge. The core was a softer but more durable low carbon steel to stand up to the stress of tremendous impacts. The sides and back fell somewhere in between. All three types were forge welded together to create a weapon of unsurpassed complexity and deadliness. The technology was by no means limited to weapons of war either. Items such as woodworking tools were frequently laminated from hard and soft steel to create chisels and handplane blades that were far ahead of their contemporaries in the west. I know most of these developments took place at a later date - 900AD to 1500AD and that there is a Japanese Sword section already, I just thought it might be worth a mention, or at least a cross link to another article.

AutumnWoods (talk) 04:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed move to "Ironmaking" or otherwise

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved to Ferrous metallurgy. By cutting the words "History of" the title becomes less cumbersome, addressing one of the nominators points, but "Ironmaking" as an option did not gather support. DrKiernan (talk) 18:12, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

History of ferrous metallurgy → Ironmaking – Request made 27 August 2012 by user:Morgan Riley using template:movenotice on the article page and a request without a template on the talk page Reason given "IMHO, the present title is rather cumbersome, and I realized that the subject of the article is perhaps essentially the English word "ironmaking" (with some elements of steelmaking thrown in for context), with an emphasis on the overall history. ..." -- PBS (talk) 17:21, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

IMHO, the present title is rather cumbersome, and I realized that the subject of the article is perhaps essentially the English word "ironmaking" (with some elements of steelmaking thrown in for context), with an emphasis on the overall history. The article is functionally analogous to a similarly titled page, steelmaking, of which some of the material might be better suited in focus, rather than include the whole of both iron and steelmaking, without an appropriate umbrella page. (Alternatively, though ferrous metallurgy redirects here, why is it not the simpler title of the same?)- as history is a usual component for most pages, why is in the article title, rather than a section or focus. I propose moving the page then to ironmaking or the likes, and if need be, spinning of elements, or splitting as need be. Thoughts? Morgan Riley (talk) 02:00, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that the title is cumbersome. However, it is intended to be an overview article, covering all aspects of iron and steel: bar iron (~0% C), steel (0.5-2% C) and pig iron (4-5% C).  This should lead the reader on to more detailed articels on particular aspects.  I think I established its present structure, but then had to ask an expert to deal with the prehistoric aspects.  Renaming to Ferrous metallurgy would certainly he an option, but would that not lead to the article being swamped by recent stuff?  On the other hand, perhaps we need more on recent developments anyway.  The move to Ferrous metallurgy would involve overwriting the redirect, which requires the involvemetn of an admin, via a nomination at WP:RM.  Peterkingiron (talk) 15:55, 29 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Can ironmaking be one word or is it two? -- PBS (talk) 17:24, 7 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Isn't it traditionally called ironmongery and blacksmithing ? -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 20:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Nono, the article on ironmongery is a far more specific term, and blacksmithin is shaping iron that has already been refined. This article is about the history of refining iron ore into iron (and steel), not what is done with the iron.Morgan Riley (talk) 20:36, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Prefer ferrous metallurgy; or this could be a subarticle the way it is to ferrous metallurgy, should we add modern information to it. -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 20:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I could live with Ferrous metallurgy, but the lead may need to be changed to make it clear that this is a primarily a historical article, preferably with a link to an article concerned with metalurgy as a scientifiic subject. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:56, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * keepat history of ferrous metallurgy."Ironmaking" is far too narrow. If we did rename to ironmaking, I'd expect that to be rapidly followed up by one of the pointier-haired deletomins blanking any coverage of Bessemer, as "it wasn't ironmaking". Andy Dingley (talk) 15:11, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Case-hardened steel
There is no mention of case-hardened steel, an early method. Also the article could benefit from the separation of iron production - wrought and cast - from that of steel. Incidentally, Anglo-Saxon knives have been excavated with surgical-steel like properties. Urselius (talk) 18:34, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The article is intneded to be mainly about the production of iron and steel, rather than about the fabrication of artefacts, which is probably best left for a more specific article. We have a terminological issue in splitting out steel.  Why should we have bar iron (0%C) and pig iron (4-5%C) in one article and steel (0.5-2%C) in another: it does not make sense.  I created this article some years ago, trying to sort out a muddle that previously existed, to provide a general overview of the subject, with sub-articles on particualrly topics.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:52, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Rename to History of ferrous metallurgy

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. Cúchullain t/ c 13:30, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Ferrous metallurgy → History of ferrous metallurgy –

Restore to previous title.

This article's content is about the history of ferrous metallurgy. Ferrous metallurgy is a huge topic and we require (to WP:VA level) an article on precisely that. Perhaps we already have one - iron is heading that way, yet it would essentially require coverage across both iron and steel. Still we also need a historical article, as ferrous metallurgy didn't emerge fully formed.

The worst case would be for this article to stay under the new title, then to be pruned progressively to be simply the current understanding of metallurgy, and we lose the historical aspect that's already written. That would be a sizable loss. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose I don't get it. You want this to be a spinoff of an article that doesn't exist? It doesn't matter how much pruning occurs; we'll always have the article in its current state in the history. Show me a bunch of "History of Foo" articles without a corresponding "Foo" and my mind could be changed. --BDD (talk) 04:18, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The point is less about what we have now and more about where we want to end up. The topic is major enough that we have a strong need for both Ferrous metallurgy and History of ferrous metallurgy, as both have distinct needs from their separate readerships. The article content we have here is on the history (as that's what it was written as), but it's a poorly structured article if read as a summary of present metallurgy, and it would be a shame to damage that good historical article in the efforts to turn it into something else. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:29, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Support; it's not the usual RM but I think Andy Dingley's argument is persuasive. The current content is primarily about the history; moving it to an appropriate title will serve readers better, and make room to build a much-needed general article. bobrayner (talk) 13:36, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:SS: without having notable significant non-historic content at, there's no need for a spinout to . It looks as if what's needed is some content adding about the subject in general. The history stuff can all be moved to its own section, and then split to (maybe after placing Split section). The remaining content would form a stub on the subject of ferrous metallurgy. -- Trevj (talk) 13:46, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

How much iron makes it ferrous metallurgy?
I think the article should start off with a statement of what ferrous metallurgy is, rather than immediately jumping into history. The sensible decision was made not to move it to "History of ferrous metallurgy" since a statement of what ferrous metallurgy is needs to be made before talking about its history, but I don't see that this has been done. My guess is it ceases to be a question ferrous metallurgy when the iron component of an alloy drops below some threshhold? Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:50, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Call it 50%. "Ferrous alloys" have far more than this. Alloys with less, where iron still has any significance (see zinc pest), are much less. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:33, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Whatever the largest % portion. If it's 40% iron, 30% copper and 30% nickel, it would still be a ferrous alloy. MartinezMD (talk) 12:09, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * But are there any such alloys? Andy Dingley (talk) 12:38, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I just used a hypothetical example. You can see that there are many. MartinezMD (talk) 15:05, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Those are ferrous alloys. Iron is the majority in all of them. I can think offhand of no alloys that aren't either >50% iron, or only a small proportion of iron. I can think of no equivalent to brass or solder and the comparable proportions of zinc/copper or tin/lead found in those alloys.
 * There probably is such an alloy, and at a guess it would be one of the high temperature nickel alloys. Yet even these (Inconel is 70% nickel and more chrome than iron) are usually termed nickel alloys, even though they contain a high iron content. They're obscure alloys though and my point remains – when iron is used in an alloy it's either the majority, or a very small component, not something in-between. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:54, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ferrocerium MartinezMD (talk) 16:15, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Commons link
This is getting ridiculous, let's discuss. Why exactly do we need commons links in the middle of an article, in direct contradiction to MOS guidelines saying external links belong in their own section? —  Reatlas  (talk)  03:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)


 * This is not a link for or, but to one narrow aspect of this: .  In general, we have links related to the overall topic of an article and so we link the overall article. MOS states that we should generally do this at the end of at article, which no-one disagrees with. However in this case, a section-specific link belongs with that section. This is clearer for readers. It doesn't even contradict MOS, as MOS recognises that it is only stating the one simple and general case.
 * Also please note that MOS states that the links belong in the last section, not necessarily External links, as this is for CSS box float reasons, not for content placement. MOS is also quite clear that such a section should not be created to hold such a link in its own section.
 * So far you have demonstrated that you think everyone must observe MOS slavishly, yet 3RR is optional. You are also prioritising a simplistic interpretation of MOS over readability. Neither of these are constructive. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You know, maybe it would've helped if you had explained your reasoning rather than just reverting again and again. If the external link is only relevant to a specific section and would not be accepted at the end, then it doesn't belong in the article. We could just as well copy in all the external links from Meteoric iron, Smelting, Iron Age, etc. and have an EL subsection for every section. This is why I don't approve of throwing a commons link in the middle of the article. I have absolutely no problem ignoring the MOS or any other rule that would get in the way of improving the encyclopedia, but that isn't the issue here. —  Reatlas  (talk)  10:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

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