And don't forget the red headed boy... preferably of an age less than 14.Steelmakers went by recipes - so much of this and so much of that -
jtk
Contributor
And don't forget the red headed boy... preferably of an age less than 14.Steelmakers went by recipes - so much of this and so much of that -
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Contributor
Maybe the 'wonder steel' of yesteryear was called that because they all wondered what the heck made that batch so good.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Member
+1 that the standard quantitative measures often don't capture the nuances of material properties. And that's even before the question of whether people are often led more by their perceptions than what's actually happening in front of them.
Nothing whatsoever to do with irons and sharpening, but abrasion/wear resistance is a peculiar business. I spent a lot of time years ago playing with materials for off road motorcycle chain tensioner rollers and suspension bushings - stuff that had to survive in dirty and abrasive conditions. The lessons (we didn't even do enough experimentation to properly understand what was going on) was that outcomes were often very unpredictable and highly counter intuitive.
Hardness very often does not confer wear resistance - soft bronze bushing would for example often wear less than a hardened steel sleeve they were running on, while softer polymers often did better than harder ones.
I'm guessing that cohesive strength counts for a lot. That's where if there are harder particles that they are very strongly held in the surrounding matrix. Maybe also the degree of flexibility - where stuff can deflect and bend out of the way rather than be stiff and get broken off. Then there's issues of lubricity and galling. Austenitic stainless/high alloy steels are for example notorious for picking up (galling) - they don't make good bearings. I don't know if this carries over into high alloy tool steels etc, but it could easily matter quite a lot how easily a given material slides on or picks up on wood…
Or how a given steel behaves in contact with a given abrasive, and vice versa....
I suspect that in the end there's lots of parameters that could be used to define/ characterise the sort of performance we are interested in, but that the work hasn't been done to define them, or the words invented to express them - let alone to test a wide range of materials in respect of them.
There's still i think a surpising amount about crafts that resides in this sort of territory, that only somebody else who has been doing 'it' for a very long time will recognise. Which (while we often overdo the reverence for tradition - at the expense of ignoring reality) is why it may sometimes pay not to underestimate the sophistication of some of the older and more traditional ways of doing things….
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I don't think anyone here has said old steel is "superior" to new steel as a blanket statement. There is, however, better quality crucible steel than some of the steel we get regularly now, but that steel was the best of the best steel made when you had more time to clean out the steel than modern process provides - especially with bessemer process, which affords the ability to get cheap and quick steel that is somewhat clean (and consistent from batch to batch), but not clean compared to the plainest/best selected of the crucible steels.
But none of it matters much until you get into the rarefied air that the highest quality white steel is pushed to, and that doesn't occur in most practical situations. There has not been for quite some time any issue with blade steels, the blade steels made 200 years ago were as good as the blade steels are now when it comes to cutting (as opposed to hitting a blade with a sledge hammer, etc, or making steel cheap - something modern steel does well).
The japanese have made very good blade steels, simple very clean high carbon steels with high carbon content that can be driven up to very high hardness and do what woodworking tools are supposed to do. On the western side of things, we haven't done any such things - but instead we've pretty much adapted steels that were perfected for industrial processes. that's what warren says.
The same thing is occurring in the billy-big-rigger market of 1/4" thick spine knives. Lots of computer commandos are buying $150 and up knives very plain knives and then showing videos of themselves cutting fruit with them, where a simpler cutting steel knife would work far better, despite the fact that it's "old technology" with "poor quality" steel.
I think it's important also to realize that the rash of recent "improvements" were made for the amateur market, and that for the last 100 years, the market of professional users ignored the tungsten high speed steels, and then the cheaper HSS that used alloying elements we're more used to seeing now. It has only been very recently that diemaking steels and now some powder metals are popular in woodworking tools, and I'd suspect that's a market driven by white collar dollars and professional dollars. IIRC, karl holtey was the first person to use A2 extensively in planes (at least he says so), and he's not been making planes in numbers that long.
I think, personally, it's misleading to believe that we've got some really innovative woodworking tool market compared to what existed 150 years ago. We have a market driven to sell things to white collar amateurs, and one that cannot make moderately priced tools that match the quality of the commodity tools from 125 years ago. Simply compare a stanley chisel to a narex chisel. They probably both hold their their edges similarly, but the narex chisels are thick and chunky and have rubbery steel whereas even the common stanley, buck, pexto (you name it) chisels had a nice dry steel that didn't cling to a wire edge to the outer reaches of micron space.
Certainly none of the modern spec sheet tools allow anyone to do any better work than they were capable of before, and the one precisely made example of forged tools, carving tools, is lacking in finish compared to tools made 200 years ago. Whether or not the modern tools are nicer to use in the context of actual work (even if they don't allow you to actually do anything better, more of a subjective "but it feels nicer") is subjective. I thought they were when I was a beginner, but I definitely don't now.
Contributor
You can't compare crucible steel to Bessemer steel - they're totally different animals.Originally Posted by David Weaver
But the steel used in the best tools was crucible steel. Huntsman developed the process in the mid 1700's but it took a while for it to take off. Certainly by about 1800, crucible steel was used in the best tools and was marked "Best Cast Steel". But crucible steel was hit or miss, for the same reasons. The understanding of what steel actually was chemically did not come until the late 1800's. They knew that if they put cast iron (high carbon) in a crucible with wrought iron (low carbon), and if they put it in the proper ratio, the final product would be homogeneous (because it had been melted - and that's the real "invention" of crucible steel) but the chemical makeup could be almost anything because they couldn't control the input (they had no idea what impurities were in the cast iron and wrought iron). You use the word "clean" in your statement but I have no idea what you mean by that. Since they couldn't analyze the steel, they couldn't add things to remove unwanted materials in the melt.
The thing crucible steel brought to the world was that the steel was homogeneous. Prior to that, the best steel was known as shear steel, where strips of wrought iron were put into a sealed chest with high carbon material and heated for perhaps a week. The carbon diffused into the iron but the surface had a lot more carbon than the center. The strips were then hammered together and folded to make shear steel. This steel was not homogeneous, and that's the problem crucible steel solved.
But crucible steel does not automatically equal good steel. It depended on what you started with, all the way back to the ore, and that's why ore from Sweden was so prized. They didn't know it at the time, but it was a low sulfur ore and that produced better steel.
In no way can we say that crucible steel is better that modern steel produced for demanding applications. The modern steel will be much better controlled and it will contain alloys in the percentages that were specified for the steel. Back then, no one had a clue what was in the steel. The only way they knew if it was good or not was after the fact, when they tested the finished product. If they were lucky, they got a good batch. If they were unlucky, they got a bad batch but they had no idea why.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Contributor
Sometimes technology improves what is available for expensive military or highly specialized uses while the quality of what is available for workmen decreases. T-1 steel was available in 1900. Then taken off the market because the tungsten was
needed for WW2. Stayed unavailable for years. Available now but has very small part of the market. One reason is the higher rpm of newer machines. Try using the common semi HSS in an old lower speed machine,...makes a good wood chipper!
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The best crucible steel is, to me, a better quality steel for a blade steel than modern steel. It's pretty easy to say. We have the benefit now of being able to sample a few irons or chisels to get just what we want. We don't have that luxury when producing new.
Even then steel that is described as cast steel is better from 115 years ago for razors (I have no idea what process made that steel). I'm sure it was monstrously harder to make a razor from, but modern "carbon steel" razors are lacking compared to the best razors made in solingen germany and new york around the turn of the century. All it takes is to hone one and use it.
I would imagine that we could take white #2 and make an excellent razor with it, but who will have the skill to do that these days? It's used in kamisori, but it would be hard for anyone to mass produce something like that. The process of making a razor is fairly simple - fine grain steel that is forged in a die, heat treated and then finish ground. Yet we can't do it as well with the modern steels as it was done when the competition to make razors was stiff.
The level that tools were made to 125 years ago was intentional, and the level that wooden tools were made to 175 years ago was intentional. We really haven't done anything to improve them, and the only way you can call a thicker iron that takes much longer to grind is to put it in the hands of an amateur and tell them to use a smoothing plane for two hours and see which one smooths the longest. They don't have the judgement to know which is better, because they're not using the plane in context.
It's great that the steel these days is cheaper, but aside from being more wear resistant in some cases, I'm not buying that the irons are significantly superior in any material way vs. irons that were probably bessemer process irons 100+ years ago. Those irons were sold to professionals in a very competitive market. If they got a dud, I'd bet their dealer would square them up on it - we still see duds from time to time today, and the dealers, as should be expected, square folks up on the duds. To suggest that a handful of amateurs have improved something that millions of professionals demanded is a great sales pitch, but it's really improved for inexperienced users. The experience for the rest is pretty much the same, but some things (like grinding 1/4 inch irons in some specialty planes) are not remotely close to being an improvement.
Last edited by David Weaver; 08-11-2014 at 5:00 PM.
Contributor
The competition may have done more to improve quality than the steel used.Yet we can't do it as well with the modern steels as it was done when the competition to make razors was stiff.
With a multitude of makers and workers the knowledge was intact. Over time, two world wars and changes in technology some of the old arts were lost or abandoned. Some of these were "in house secrets" closely guarded and kept from the competition.
Safety razors followed by electric razors likely were the end of the straight razor industry.
Today, most makers never used a straight razor and do not know the ins and outs of making quality that feels right on the face.
In today's industry steel can be made uniform from batch to batch. That was not the case a century or more in the past.
Yes, there was some great iron made in the past with qualities we enjoy. The same metallurgy could be used today. Most likely it isn't as practical as making what is made today.
One sad consideration is much of today's market thinks all things are equal with price the only determining factor.
The only other explanation would be you have fortunately found some magical mystery steel whose composition was lost in time, never to be made again.
jtk
Last edited by Jim Koepke; 08-11-2014 at 5:22 PM.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
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I think that the old steels in the razors were a bit plainer, and the makers very competitive. The known cutler's marks (ERN, Kobar, Carl Monkhouse, ...) produced very straight razors of a nice steel composition, I would imagine partly out of pride and partly out of reputation. There are off marks from those days (that just say made in germany), or some other marks that just didn't seem to consistently make straight razors (torrey) that didn't do quite as well, but did get to use some of the same fine grained steel.
The last two remaining large razor makers are in france and germany, and the resurgence in straight razor shaving has backlogged them a ton, but I think they are wise enough to not just double production at their cost given that they were recently working in a dying industry. What I can tell of the modern german razors is that they are closer to what we call modern tool steel, it's more alloyed. They are still good and still usable, but not the same experience as using a laser straight carl monkhouse made razor that just seems to get sharp on anything it touches. And their ability to grind and finish a razor isn't as good as it used to be, which is probably a matter of cost. The crispness, thinness of the hollow and straightness of the razor is not comparable to a 100 year old razor, but we shouldn't expect it to be. They have been competing for a small segment of the market that is going to buy no matter what, and it's unlikely that they want to deal with the plainest of steels, which from my understanding are harder to get straight due to warp.
Gillette, as the story goes, was wise enough to get the old early safety blade razors in GI kits. When people came from doing things of skill and technique, the early conveniences must've looked like they were dropped from heaven.
Contributor
Bessemer steel was never used for cutting tools. Bessemer steel was used for railroad rails and other similar things. Bessemer steel was a quantity product and used where a large quantity of steel was needed.
High quality cutting tools were made with crucible steel.
However, to claim that crucible steel is superior to modern steel is a stretch. Our ancestors did not have knowledge of chemistry - in the early days, they didn't even know that carbon was what caused iron to become steel. They weren't aware that sulfur was what was making their steel hot short. They worked with primitive kilns with little control of temperature and almost no control of their inputs. We have documentation of buyers complaining about the quality of the steel and the lack of consistency from batch to batch.
Every now and then, the planets aligned and they got a good batch of steel. But in no way could they produce it consistently.
It's also possible that only the best of that steel survived to today. That the inferior steel was discarded as unusable. The problem with that theory is that the best steel should have been worn out from use.
If you're going to argue that crucible steel produced in the middle 1800's was consistently better than modern steel, you need to provide some theory about how our ancestors, with the technological limitations they had, managed to out perform modern steelmakers.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
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That's extrapolation. It's not what I said, and the comment that the stars had to align only has actual history to work against. What I said was that the best crucible steel, as in the best batches were at least as good as modern process steel, and probably more plain. It appears that nobody wishes to deal with water hardening steels these days because it's a bit more difficult to work and requires skill. Nobody except for the japanese, who make what is the closest to the best file steel from over a century ago. And a couple of companys from sweden and austria may make a very high carbon blade steel without requiring the process to be powder metal - I don't know if bohler does, I don't need to know much about blade steel other than to find hitachi white.
At any rate, it's naive to believe that 150 years ago, the "stars had to align", or even 200 years ago, to get a good batch of steel. I'm sure the vast majority of irons that were made were very good, and a good iron is or isn't, it requires knowledge of the process to create it but not knowledge of its chemistry for it to be good. That is the basis of craft skill, to find something that is good and perform it skillfully.
To believe that you could come up with a crack theory (all good tools would have been used up) is also naive, and suggests that there is some full information mechanism that pulls tools out of a deceased workman's shop with certainty and provides them to someone else who will feverishly exhaust them. It's not the case. I've gotten two NOS planes that someone set aside that are absolutely top shelf. I couldn't speculate why they were set aside, but if I have two, clearly there are many others.
I stand by my statement that an experienced user, one who wasn't theorizing but instead actually using, would probably come to prefer the vintage irons to the new ones in heavy use. There are few that I know of who use their tools to make a living, but warren is one, and as I'm a convert from the school of thick hard grinding irons to what professionals chose and preferred (when the market was professionals - surely if the market wanted harder irons that were 1/4" thick, stanley would've made them or purchased the company that did) when professionals used the tools. There's really not much to argue with in terms of actual proof. high alloy steels were cast aside by professionals in favor of simple steels and less thick irons, and despite the fact that silicon carbide stones became common, the irons did not get harder. Nor did the chisels.
For anyone who comes across modern replacement irons and decides they are better than full length sweetheart and older irons, I'll be glad to give my mailing address. I take donations. I don't, however, have any interest in receiving any modern replacement irons. And not because I'm a backwards costume wearing role player. Simply because heavy use has pointed me toward a preference. I no longer have any new razors, either - the difference in the quality of the steel for actual use for its intended purpose (to get sharp, to shave, to stay sharp via a strop and linen) is easy to see and feel.
Member
Mike, you clearly have pretty extensive knowledge about steel, and I don't think any of us is going to convince the other. But I would make a couple points.
First, I would argue that the steel in many (but by no means all) cutting tools from the 2nd half of the 19th c. is better in some ways than a lot of modern steel.
It's better in the sense that it takes a great edge, lasts a reasonable amount of time, and most of all sharpens quickly and easily. Meaning that when you move to your finest stone, the wire edge almost dissolves, and very little flipping back and forth or stropping is needed.
This is a matter of priorities. If you view sharpening as a chore, and make a big production out of it, you're likely to prefer something like A2, where you sharpen once and maybe not again for the rest of the day. If you'd rather sharpen quickly and often, then vintage steels can be really nice.
Second, I'd reject the idea that a process has to be understood, in scientific terms, to be effective. I think most woodworkers would acknowledge that japanese irons are among the best there is. Did the japanese smiths a century ago (or even today) understand all the chemistry? Did they know that charcoal forges are ideal because they limit carbon loss from the surface? I doubt it, and I doubt it would make any difference if they did. Same thing for mid 19th c. western steel: foundries and smiths did what worked, and probably didn't care that much about why.
Third, I think you assume that technological progress is always aimed at making the product better. It isn't, especially for an insignificant sliver of the market like woodworking. It's often aimed at making the product cheaper and more easily massed produced. Take A2 for example. It's designed to be more abrasion resistant, it doesn't need quenching in fluid, and it has minimal distortion. That makes it more easily mass produced, but not necessarily better. Any supposed advantages (and I would question whether there are any) for woodworking are purely coincidental.
Edit: er, sorry for responding to the exact same quote as David…I guess we were writing at the same time.
Last edited by Steve Voigt; 08-11-2014 at 8:33 PM.
Contributor
If that old steel was so wonderful and better than anything we can produce today, people would be collecting it to use it in modern mission critical applications. The fact that those mission critical applications use modern steel should tell you something.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Member
My friend George Alteneder used to make drawing instruments. His great grandfather started the business around 1850 making brass instruments, but for 100 years they used a nickel silver alloy. Here is a protractor they made in 1952 when George was a young man. It has a vernier scale that reads angles to one minute (1/60 of a degree). The protractors were $60-85 at a time when minimum wage was $.75
alteneder-1952-p15.jpgGeorge told me that in the 1970's they had only one supplier left who could make the kind of nickel silver they used and then that supplier started to have problems with bad batches. Finally they gave up trying to make the stuff altogether and George could only offer stainless steel instruments. The know-how had gradually been lost. This stuff is not like rocket science where you can just call in an engineer and solve problems. It is much more complicated.
The best chisel I have was made 180 years ago. Like the special nickel silver, I don't think just knowing the hardness and the steel's composition would enable one to duplicate the chisel. I don't know if anyone is seriously trying to duplicate the quality. I think it would be quite an undertaking.
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Are we talking about blade steels intended to cut, or are we making a completely irrelevant comparison?
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