I hear it forges great but machines not so good. Try find a blacksmith and see if ou can swap it for something that machines better.

I think the problem is that it is of varying quality, and if you melt it down you have a metal soup of unknown ingredients, so it is only useful if it is used for more decorative metalwork.

If you want decent metal, you must know exactly what your quantities and ingredients are, just like good soup

I find wrought iron difficult to work, the stuff made for machinery use rather than structural seems better. I've just tried cutting up an old cart axle ,seems like wrought, the two ends are turned for the bearings and seem a bit different. Note -"seems" – cutting with angle grinder and quite hard work. Genuine w iron is not made now and scrap can be worth something.

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Gordon,

May I please refer you back to this thread ?

MichaelG.

They still do demonstrations of puddling and make small quantities at the Ironbridge Museum, as far as I know.

They took all the railings from Barry and Cardiff as well. Lots of lead-filled stubs still to be found on front garden walls.

Neil

Wrought iron (the old tough grainy kind) is great for forging agricultural or gardening tools, or tongs/pliers and other hand tools for the workshop, or fireplace tools. Brackets and fence/gate parts too. Very valuable for those sorts of jobs. Not very nice to machine for model parts, though. JD

For anyone interested, there is an excellent explanation of how wrought iron was made in the puddlers hearth in the Tubal cain book, "Hardening, tempering and heat treatment" As the Real Wrought iron Company say, it is simply cast iron, with as much as possible of the carbon and slag removed by reacting the molten iron with oxide in the hearth, then repeated heating and power hammering, cutting, binding, reheating and repeat! Apart from its resistance to corrosion, it has no advantages over modern materials and because of the veins of slag running through it, it will be difficult to machine. neither will it hold an edge.as it is mainly pure iron.

There are different types of wrought iron and different qualities. Most stuff you find, particularly old railings, is probably puddled iron.

Some wrought can forge nicely, other examples will fall apart – cracking along seams. As an engineering material, mild steel probably has it beat for just about everything, except maybe corrosion resistance?

As an artistic material, it holds its place very well. I pick up rusty bits when I find it.

Here are some small hammers made with wrought I got from a rotten ship (the faces are 52100 and have been forge welded on). The pattern is revealed by etching in ferric chloride:

The end grain on that right hand hammer is spectacular. However, it doesn't always work out so well. I just spent a day making tiny draw pulls in wrought iron hoping they would look cool after and etch. This is all I got,

Here are a couple of bits I squashed last week at orange heat. You proabably want it screaming hot before forging this stuff. The big one is off the ship, the small one is a railing I found while walking the dog.

This was going to be my coolest axe ever. A wrought iron (railing) wrap with a carbon steel edge. So close, but it fell apart in the heat treat

Edited By jaCK Hobson on 01/01/2016 15:11:37

Edited By jaCK Hobson on 01/01/2016 15:21:22

Edited By jaCK Hobson on 01/01/2016 15:26:11

My blacksmithing tutor back in the seventies reckoned you could identify wrought iron by the smell – because it's all so old. It was originally available in different grades depending how many times it had been worked (or wrought) to force the slag inclusions out. He told me (and I've never checked to see if it is true) that Wrightons (spelling?) had three grades: best, best-best, and best-best-best.

I have a beautiful engineer's level made by my grandfather in the early twentieth century, and the slag inclusions in the steel are quite plain to see.

George

The axe pic was private. It should have looked like this. Sorry.

Lovely forge-work Jack.