BBBBflt] «BlJIUrIrlr - Clpdigital.org

s Fbrging-Stamping - Heat Treating
T h e R o m a n c e o f
*
S t e e l
A Review of the Manufacture of Iron and Steel for Forging and
the Methods of Forging from the Primitive Hammer to
A study of the history of iron and steel manufacture
and methods of forging carries one
through a series of interesting developments
which trace the march of the world's progress from
the dawn of civilization until the present time. Relics
in our museums tell us the story of a romantic past
filled with strange beliefs and weird rites rivalling the
most vivid of fairy tales.
Hours could be consumed in the unfolding of this
remarkable tale, but as we are particularly interested
in forging, we will confine ourselves to the outstanding
features of greatest interest to the forging industry.
FIG. 1—Early form of belly helve hammer, from Agricola's
"De Re Metallica." The water was not only used for
power, but also for heat treating purposes.
No attempt will be made to cover the various
stages of tool steel development, heat treating or
pyrometry as these branches offer such a wealth of
material in themselves that justice could not be done
them in this article. This article, therefore, will embrace
the manufacture of iron and steel for forgings
and the various methods of shaping these forging
from the primitive hammer to the present day steam
hammer and press.
In the early ages the ability to make iron forgings
imeant power, and the history of those times shows
the Present Day Steam Hammer and Press
By W. R. KLINKICHTf
•Paper presented at a meeting of the American Drop
Forging Institute held at Pittsburgh, October 2 and 3, 1924.
tEngineer of Tests, Pollak Steel Company, Cincinnati, O.
January, 1925
clearly that axles, knives, etc., were used for arming
men in their battles for existence, against nature and
each other. The Babylonian name for iron meant
t'stone from heaven," which is good proof that the
origin of the first known iron was meteoric.
Meteoric iron is characterized by the absence of
Combined carbon and usually contains considerable
(quantities of nickel and smaller amounts of cobalt.
Nearly all of it is malleable and the examination of its
structure reveals the Widmanstatten lines. It is nowhere
sufficiently abundant to form a basis for a true
Iron Age civilization and, in fact, Archaeologists are
agreed that the mere knowledge of native iron should
not be considered as sufficient to designate using it as
the Iron Age of Civilization, but rather the knowledge
of producing metal from the ores by an understood
process is the criterion by which a nation or tribe is
considered as having passed from the Stone Age into
the Iron Age of Civilization. It was a wonderful discovery,
however, when some low-brow cliff dweller
pn the earth detected the property of malleability
which distinguished native metals from "stones."
It is believed that the three oldest pieces of
wrought iron in existence are a sickle blade found by
Belzoni under the base of a sphinx near Thebes; a
blade probably 5,000 years old found by Col. Vyse in
one of the pyramids and a wedge-shaped piece in the
British museum which is supposed to date back to
3233 B. C.
In Asia Minor, inland from Troy and the Aegean
world, there lived from before the time of Hammurapi,
2000 B. C, a group of white people called the
Hittites who built up a powerful empire. These people
began working iron ore deposits along the Black
Sea before the thirteenth century B. C. and became
the earliest distributors of iron at the time that iron
began to displace bronze in the Mediterranean world
and the east. It was through contact with the
Hittites that iron was introduced into Assyria and the
Assyrian forces were the first large armies equipped
with weapons of iron. A single arsenal in the palace
of Sargon II, who raised Assyria to the height of her
grandeur in 750 B. C, contained 200 tons of iron implements.
Comparatively little is known of the early smiths
or their methods. However an old Egyptian wall
print gives as reliable an idea as can be found. A fire
was built in a depressed place in the ground, a forced
draft being given the flame by an attendant on either
side who worked bellows by standing on them, alternately
throwing their weight from one foot to the
other and pulling up the bellows with ropes as the
weight was shifted, thus permitting the instruments'
to be emptied and filled alternately. It is interesting
to note the method of forcing a fire by means of bellows
was used probably 4,000 years ago.
The ancient smith was held in high esteem by his
fellow-man as his skill was indispensable to their wel-