The Miracle Of Steel Heat Treatment

At a glance..

The objectives of this article are to give the reader a greater appreciation for carbon steel and what it can do, to give a rudimentary explanation for how heat treatment works and to give some examples.

The details..

'The Miracle of Steel Heat Treatment' by Dick Baugh is an informative read that delves deep into the world of metallurgy. The author explains in detail how adding carbon to iron, heating it up, and cooling it quickly through quenching can create a material that is orders of magnitude harder than its original form. This process has been one of our great labor-saving inventions as it allowed us to cut, saw or chop our way through wood, meat or even other metals quickly and precisely freeing up huge amounts of time for our ancient ancestors.

Baugh's explanation on how this miracle happens when you add from 0.3 to 0.95 percent carbon to the iron and then heat treat it makes for fascinating reading. He also discusses what happens next - simply cool the carbon steel fast enough (quenching) so that the carbon atoms remain locked in place creating a material that is orders of magnitude harder than before.

In addition to explaining why adding certain elements like manganese improves 'hardenability', he also talks about dimensional change which occurs when crowding those added atoms into locations where they normally wouldn't fit causing expansion resulting in curved blades such as Japanese samurai swords.

Overall, 'The Miracle Of Steel Heat Treatment' provides readers with an appreciation for what plain old-fashioned metalworking can do while exploring some underappreciated technologies upon which modern civilization is based.