21 Facts About Crucible steel

Crucible steel is steel made by melting pig iron, iron, and sometimes steel, often along with sand, glass, ashes, and other fluxes, in a crucible.

The Crucible steel was usually worked very little and at relatively low temperatures to avoid any decarburization, hot short crumbling, or excess diffusion of carbon; just enough hammering to form the shape of a sword.

The higher-carbon Crucible steel provided a very hard edge, but the lower-carbon Crucible steel helped to increase the toughness, helping to decrease the chance of chipping, cracking, or breaking.

In Europe, crucible steel was developed by Benjamin Huntsman in England in the 18th century.

Crucible steel is generally attributed to production centres in India and Sri Lanka where it was produced using the so-called "wootz" process, and it is assumed that its appearance in other locations was due to long-distance trade.

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India's iron ore had trace vanadium and other alloying elements leading to increased hardenability in Indian crucible steel which was famous throughout the middle east for its ability to retain an edge.

European accounts from the 17th century onwards have referred to the repute and manufacture of "wootz", a traditional crucible steel made specially in parts of southern India in the former provinces of Golconda, Mysore and Salem.

Wootz Crucible steel was widely exported and traded throughout ancient Europe, China, the Arab world, and became particularly famous in the Middle East, where it became known as Damascus Crucible steel.

The Sri Lankan system of crucible steel making was partially independent of the various Indian and Middle Eastern systems.

The earliest confirmed crucible steel site is located in the knuckles range in the northern area of the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka dated to 6th–10th centuries CE.

Central Asia has a rich history of crucible steel production, beginning during the late 1st millennium CE.

Evidence of the production of crucible steel have been found in Merv, Turkmenistan, a major city on the 'Silk Road'.

Production of crucible steel began in China around the first century BC, or possibly earlier.

Around this time, the Chinese began producing crucible steel to convert excess quantities of cast iron and wrought iron into steel suitable for swords and weapons.

Crucible steel was the first of these scientists to publish his results and, incidentally, the first to use the word "wootz" in print.

The Crucible steel, originally intended for making clock springs, was later used in other applications such as scissors, axes and swords.

However, the more the Crucible steel was heated and worked, the more it tended to decarburize, and this outward diffusion occurs much faster than the inward diffusion between layers.

Therefore, Crucible steel intended for use in such items, especially tools, was still being made primarily by the slow and arduous bloomery process in very small amounts and at high cost, which, albeit better, had to be manually separated from the wrought iron and was still impossible to fully homogenize in the solid state.

Crucible steel's process was later used by many others, such as Robert Hadfield and Robert Forester Mushet, to produce the first alloy steels like mangalloy, high-speed steel, and stainless steel.

Some uses of tool Crucible steel were displaced, first by high-speed Crucible steel and later by materials such as tungsten carbide.

Crucible steel's technique relied less on the heating and cooling, and more on the quenching process of rapidly cooling the molten steel when the right crystal structure had formed within.