FYI The production of crucible Damascus steel

[Ann Feuerbach]

Thanks Tom for the info on cast steel. All this terminology can be such a problem. What would you call ancient Chinese cast iron which has been decarborized while liquid to make it steel, and then it is cast? Is this not cast steel too? (hence my working definition). We really should go back to the term in the original language in which these processes were undertaken so we are certain what is meant. Steel production and nomenclature is such a grey area, where does one stop and the other begin?

[tom hyle]

Yeah, I agree; the problem is that W European overculture industry, as is its way, made its own efficient working definition of a phrase that has a seperable, and perhaps even older/foreign traditional or simply linguistic/logical meaning. Thus "cast steel" (you could quote it, "per se" it, "caststeel" or "cast-steel" or "acero fino", which I was questioning my friend is it fine grained or fine quality and she said you can't tell because "fino" exactly equals "fine".....) is a type of cast steel, if you will. Doubled shear steel (or any double/doubled steel) is steel that has been doubled; ie folded; triple steel AFAIK has no tightly defineable meaning, though it may imply many foldings or folding together of three different bars to form a billet; speculating. I think my brother has etched marked shear steel to a wootz-like crystally pattern. I also think he may have a spring-tempered wootz kard, though I don't remember that for sure. (If you think I'm fascinated with spring temper you don't know my brother! ) I'll attempt to question him or get him to read this.
There came to be something in the legalistic/industrial definition of "cast-steel" that included the crucible had to be below a certain size, and the ingredients were famously balanced by intuitive art as much as by any precise or scientific analysis, which was levelled as a criticism by the early large-batch full-melt industrial steel proponants, of course.