[Sca-cooks] Steel- OT- was Re: WOK this way , etc

[marilyn traber 011221]

I said:

> >Huh. Mild steel shouldn't be brittle- it can't be- has no carbon (or 
minimal)
> >to harden it up (given proper temperature treatment).
> 
> So is "mild steel" iron?  You said in a previous e-mail

Yes, it's iron with carbon alloyed into it. The exact definition varies from 
person to person, and company to company, but if you're talking mild steel, 
you're talking steel with very little carbon in it, say 1001 to 1030 or so, 
meaning between 1 and 30 hundredths of a percent. Generally, what's available 
will be between 1010 to 1020. Adamantius, for example, got me some mild steel 
shim stock, and it was rated as 1010, I think.

> >Iron and steel go through an interesting set of name changes. Iron is iron
> >when it has no carbon in it at all, then becomes steel when it has 1 0r
> >2/100th of a percent carbon in it- it's then rated as 10xx, the xx being 
the
> >numbers (from 00 to 99) that indicate how many hundredths of a percent of
> >carbon is in it, for simple steels, meaning they contain only carbon and 
iron.
> 
> Or is it something else?  I've got stainless steel and cast iron,
>  and wonder what this mild steel is.
> 
> Sandra

Stainless steel is a whole 'nother ball game. nIt was originally alloyed with 
chromium, which is what gave it its hardness and stain resistance (when 
properly treated), although nowadays, they are many, many "stainless steel" 
alloys, some of which have no chromium at all, and very little iron.

Cast iron, as I said, has a very high carbon content, far beyond anything in 
the mild to tool steels. Rather than being an absolute definition, the 
definitions of steel, as to "mild" or "tool" or whatever are rather like the 
informal temperature continuum- ranging from cold, cool, lukewarm, warm, and 
hot. When you want to be accurate, when describing simple steel, you get 
specific- "This steel is a 1025" just as you might say "The temperature is 25 
degrees fahrenheir".

There's more than the 10 scale for determining steel content as well. 
Specific alloys will have different number prefixes than 10, depending on 
what else is alloyed with them. Manganese, for example would be 13xx, Nickle 
alloys are 2xxx, etc. I could write you up a sheet, but that would probably 
be a waste of time. If you'd like a good explanation, the most accessible 
resource in Jim Hrisoulas' book, "The Master Bladesmith", where he devotes a 
chapter to explanations. There are plenty of other sources for the 
information of course- I think he has it in his other books as well, but that 
one happened to be right next to the computer.

And, in addition, just to screw you up royally, once you think you've got 
things figured out, not only will various manufacturers attach proprietary 
names to specific alloys, such as W-2, O-6, or L-1. And, to top it off, 
advertisers add their own names to things, so if you see something advertised 
as a "surgical steel" blade, you're going to think you're getting a high 
quality, specific type of steel. Unfortunately, there are quite a number of 
alloys used for surgical purposes, and some of tyhem are better, others 
worse, for specific applications.

Are you sufficiently confused yet?

;-)

Phlip