Welcome to the Rise of Steel part II. We previously looked at the early stages of industrialization of iron and steelmaking, between roughly 1200 and 1850. To briefly recap, making steel was an involved, multistep process. Iron would first be smelted from iron ore in a blast furnace, resulting in high-carbon pig iron. This pig iron was then placed in a special furnace (initially a finery furnace, later a puddling furnace) to remove the carbon and other impurities, resulting in wrought iron. Wrought iron bars would then be placed into clay chests next to sources of carbon and heated for a period of several days, allowing the iron to gradually reabsorb carbon, producing “blister steel.” The methods varied in their specifics across time and place, but this was the general process in western Europe.
The Rise of Steel Part II
Welcome to the Rise of Steel part II. We previously looked at the early stages of industrialization of iron and steelmaking, between roughly 1200 and 1850. To briefly recap, making steel was an involved, multistep process. Iron would first be smelted from iron ore in a blast furnace, resulting in high-carbon pig iron. This pig iron was then placed in a special furnace (initially a finery furnace, later a puddling furnace) to remove the carbon and other impurities, resulting in wrought iron. Wrought iron bars would then be placed into clay chests next to sources of carbon and heated for a period of several days, allowing the iron to gradually reabsorb carbon, producing “blister steel.” The methods varied in their specifics across time and place, but this was the general process in western Europe.