Page 34 - Best of STIL 2018 English

The newfound mobility, from the railways and mighty steel constructions, drove steel production – as evidenced by the railway station in Liverpool around 1910
a hammer on the anvil to remove all impurities. Many knew and closely guarded the secret of
steel production: They had learned that a sword is harder and more stable if it is re-heated and then cooled in water or oil shortly afterwards. But they were unaware of why this happened – because steel gains strength through carburization and quench- ing. Smithing is therefore more of an art form than a craft. People believed in supernatural forces – and in the myths that went along with them.
One such story which features in several Nordic myths surrounds Wayland the Smith. He creat-
ed the sword “Mimung” which was forged three times. Wayland destroyed the blade twice and mixed the iron filings into the feed for his geese. He then smelted the material from the geese drop- pings for the sword’s second and third forging until Mimung was so hard and sharp that it cut a clump of wool which drifted against its blade in a stream. Though seemingly strange, this process sounds plausible based on our current knowledge: The nitrogen from the goose droppings had hardened the steel.
Wayland didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but he was doing the right thing. For centu-
ries, steel production remained an intuitive and planned, while not entirely understood, process. Improved equipment, e.g. having the hammer
and bellows powered by water wheels, did little to improve this understanding. Around the mid-
14th century methods evolved to remove carbon, phosphorus and sulfur from pig iron to make it forgeable. The high sulfur content was attributable to the hard coal which was being increasingly used to fire furnaces instead of charcoal. Help came from the beer brewers who invented coke because charcoal left a terrible taste if used to dry the malt. This carbon-rich fuel which produces less soot and smoke than coal is still used today to fire blast furnaces and as a reducing agent.
In other words, steel was being produced with- out the process being genuinely understood or mastered - something which stood in strange
The long and winding road to producing high-quality steel
contrast to the versatility, spread and ever growing importance of the material for civilizational de- velopment. Finally, in the late-18th century, it was recognized that the hardness and quality of steel depended on its carbon content. But this knowl- edge alone was of little use as long as the produc- tion processes could not be controlled accordingly.
This issue became increasingly pressing as indus- trialization began to sweep the globe. Steel steam engines caused economic production to skyrocket, while railways were a huge step forward for mobil- ity and transport infrastructure. Yet the first rails laid by railway builders had to be replaced after
34 ESXTETERLA DIGITAL
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