The Four Horsemen

On 19/11/13 22:51, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 20:20:24 -0800 (PST), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On Monday, November 18, 2013 10:28:16 PM UTC-5, David Scheidt wrote:

Indeed, until the late 19th century most axes were made of iron, with a
relatively small steel edge welded to it. As you note, tools weren't
cheap, and makinf something out of steel, when it could be made of
iron was a good way to make it cost ten times as much.

Kind of like making a bike out of titanium when one could make it out of steel.

(Thought I'd throw in a little bike content!)


I wonder if anyone has experience with a titanium bike. My only
experience with titanium was on aircraft and the alloys they used
there were very similar to some sort of non-hardening stainless. Not
anything like a material that would seem to be ideal for a bicycle.

There doesn't seem to be much wrong with it - except the price.

--
JS

John B. writes:

On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:08:54 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 19:14:53 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 11:05:26 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:14:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

David Scheidt writes:

John B. wrote:
:On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

:
:Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
:better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
:possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
:much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
:ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
:hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
:treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
:of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.
:

:Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
:mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
:joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
:and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
:building site to make the pins.

A barn is not a boat. And the pin used in a cross bored mortise and
tenon joint isn't the same as a treenail tused to fasten planks in
place.

:And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
:Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
:they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
:big one.

What's a spar got to do with a treenail? Other than 'wood, on ships'?

he
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/att...0.16.27-am.png

Taht's a picture from Essex. Maybe Massachusetts did things
differently than Maine, but I wouldn't bet on it. Clearly, square
heads.

Nice picture. Here's a link that connects to some discussion:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/woo...s-37071-3.html


Well here is a site that shows exactly what I've been talking about,
in some detail.
http://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pbh...ng-wooden-ship


Interesting site. They show treenails being rounded by pounding them
through a hole in a thick steel plate (like a large dowel plate).
Although this has certainly been done, it's a modern innovation. Thick
steel plates were not available back in the days of the Constitution.

Why ever not?

The plate that they show is about 1/3rd the diameter of the treenail
in thickness. If the treenail is 1 inch in diameter than the metal
plate is about 1/3rd inch thick and certainly that is well within the
capability of early American blacksmiths to make.

It might also be noted that by 1776 the "Colonies" were producing
1/7th of the world's iron and steel.

Possible, sure. Cost effective, no way.

I'm not sure what you are saying.

The first Iron furnace, i.e., converting iron ore into iron or steel,
seems to have been at Falling Creek VA in 1620. The first ship built
in America was in 1607-08/ By the time of the Revolutionary War the
boat building and iron/steel making was a century and a half old. Do
you really think that they didn't know what they were doing?

Before the Bessemer process (demonstrated 1856) steel was an expensive,
niche product, used for edged tools and springs. The plates, rods and
sheets of steel that we have available today are very much a modern
thing. The steel age starts about 1870 or so, when steel plates for
ships, and steel tubes for penny farthing bicycles appear.


Wherever did you get that information. Steel usage dates back to
before the current era and your implication that because it wasn't
produced in massive quantities it wasn't used is ridiculous . The
earliest known production of steel is a piece of ironware excavated
from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehoyuk) and is about
4,000 years old.

Dude, read a book, or Wikipedia, or anything. Aluminum in visible
quantities was produced in 1845, but that doesn't mean it was available
for disposable cans and foil. Napoleon III had some aluminum
dinnerware, for when the gold wasn't impressive enough.

Homer, in the Odyssey refers to quenching an axe which implies the use
of steel. the Japanese sword makers were making swords comprised of
both iron and steel before the current era. Wootz steel, a steel
developed in India around 300 BC, is the basis of the Damascus steel
myth.

Consider that the Eiffel tower (1889) is built of wrought iron, not mild
steel as we would do today.

Wrought iron is far more resistant to corrosion than mild steel.
http://www.blacksmiths3.com/wrought.htm

And yet buildings are no longer made of it, I wonder why that is?
If an architect today wanted to duplicate the Eiffel tower, do you
suppose he could source all that wrought iron? I have my doubts.

Think of all the crazy proto-bicycles from the nineteenth century,
built mostly of wood. Do you think it was just lack of imagination
that prevented an "all steel" bicycle before the twentieth century?

And, "cost effective" is a relative term and depends largely on the
ratio between cost of materials and labor and sales prices.

Of course, and, as I said, steel was bloody expensive until fairly
modern times, hence craftsmen didn't use great plates of it for mere
convenience.

Great plates of steel certainly wouldn't have been available but
certainly steel tools were available, and had been for hundreds if not
thousands of years. Do you think that the axes and adzes used
extensively in shipyard work were made of soft iron? When how to make
steel was apparently well known?

Steel was plainly the material of choice for edged tools, but it was too
expensive to spare a large plate for rounding dowels. Today we are
surrounded by disposable steel items - tin cans, baling wire, paper
clips, *mart BSOs ... This situation did not obtain for ancient
Anatolians, nor Homeric Greeks, nor colonial Americans, nor anyone until
the twentieth century.

After all, tools weren't cheap, As late as 1797 a skilled craftsman's
tool chest cost about a years wages for a skilled craftsman.

--

On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 13:46:32 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 11/19/2013 5:51 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 20:20:24 -0800 (PST), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On Monday, November 18, 2013 10:28:16 PM UTC-5, David Scheidt wrote:

Indeed, until the late 19th century most axes were made of iron, with a
relatively small steel edge welded to it. As you note, tools weren't
cheap, and makinf something out of steel, when it could be made of
iron was a good way to make it cost ten times as much.

Kind of like making a bike out of titanium when one could make it out of steel.

(Thought I'd throw in a little bike content!)

- Frank Krygowski

I wonder if anyone has experience with a titanium bike. My only
experience with titanium was on aircraft and the alloys they used
there were very similar to some sort of non-hardening stainless. Not
anything like a material that would seem to be ideal for a bicycle.


Dramatic example:
http://www.yellowjersey.org/photosfr...st/PARDOOX.JPG

details he
http://www.yellowjersey.org/fail.html

The galvanic series for "low oxygen content seawater" shows titanium
as 6th from the top, just under gold and silver, while aluminum is 6th
from the bottom.

The source further explains that: " When two metals are submerged in
an electrolyte, while electrically connected, the less noble (base)
will experience galvanic corrosion. The rate of corrosion is
determined by the electrolyte and the difference in nobility."
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:31:11 +1100, James
wrote:

On 19/11/13 22:51, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 20:20:24 -0800 (PST), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On Monday, November 18, 2013 10:28:16 PM UTC-5, David Scheidt wrote:

Indeed, until the late 19th century most axes were made of iron, with a
relatively small steel edge welded to it. As you note, tools weren't
cheap, and makinf something out of steel, when it could be made of
iron was a good way to make it cost ten times as much.

Kind of like making a bike out of titanium when one could make it out of steel.

(Thought I'd throw in a little bike content!)


I wonder if anyone has experience with a titanium bike. My only
experience with titanium was on aircraft and the alloys they used
there were very similar to some sort of non-hardening stainless. Not
anything like a material that would seem to be ideal for a bicycle.

There doesn't seem to be much wrong with it - except the price.

and its a bit tricky to machine and weld :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 16:41:04 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:08:54 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 19:14:53 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 11:05:26 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 21:14:49 -0500, Radey Shouman
wrote:

David Scheidt writes:

John B. wrote:
:On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:36:12 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

:
:Before about 1820, no treenails were round. They were square, the
:better grade hexaganal ("eight square"). The engine lathe made it
:possible to make round treenails, which are markedly inferior. (So
:much so that using round treenails increased the cost of insuring a
:ship, or made it impossible to do so.) The advantage of a square or
:hex treenail is that it will go into a hole rather smaller than the
:treenail, which greatly increases the holding force it exerts. None
:of these were expanded with wedges, which is a slip shod technique.
:

:Well, as I previously said, my grandfather's barn was built with
:mortise-tenon joints holding the post and beams together and the
:joints were pinned with treenails. and they were essentially round,
:and I doubt that barn builders in the 1700's had a lathe set up at the
:building site to make the pins.

A barn is not a boat. And the pin used in a cross bored mortise and
tenon joint isn't the same as a treenail tused to fasten planks in
place.

:And I might add, that I've certainly seen masts and spars on the USS
:Constitution (built in 1794) that were round. Long skinny round things
:they were. If a lathe was necessary to make them it must have been a
:big one.

What's a spar got to do with a treenail? Other than 'wood, on ships'?

he
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/att...0.16.27-am.png

Taht's a picture from Essex. Maybe Massachusetts did things
differently than Maine, but I wouldn't bet on it. Clearly, square
heads.

Nice picture. Here's a link that connects to some discussion:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/woo...s-37071-3.html


Well here is a site that shows exactly what I've been talking about,
in some detail.
http://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pbh...ng-wooden-ship


Interesting site. They show treenails being rounded by pounding them
through a hole in a thick steel plate (like a large dowel plate).
Although this has certainly been done, it's a modern innovation. Thick
steel plates were not available back in the days of the Constitution.

Why ever not?

The plate that they show is about 1/3rd the diameter of the treenail
in thickness. If the treenail is 1 inch in diameter than the metal
plate is about 1/3rd inch thick and certainly that is well within the
capability of early American blacksmiths to make.

It might also be noted that by 1776 the "Colonies" were producing
1/7th of the world's iron and steel.

Possible, sure. Cost effective, no way.

I'm not sure what you are saying.

The first Iron furnace, i.e., converting iron ore into iron or steel,
seems to have been at Falling Creek VA in 1620. The first ship built
in America was in 1607-08/ By the time of the Revolutionary War the
boat building and iron/steel making was a century and a half old. Do
you really think that they didn't know what they were doing?

Before the Bessemer process (demonstrated 1856) steel was an expensive,
niche product, used for edged tools and springs. The plates, rods and
sheets of steel that we have available today are very much a modern
thing. The steel age starts about 1870 or so, when steel plates for
ships, and steel tubes for penny farthing bicycles appear.


Wherever did you get that information. Steel usage dates back to
before the current era and your implication that because it wasn't
produced in massive quantities it wasn't used is ridiculous . The
earliest known production of steel is a piece of ironware excavated
from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehoyuk) and is about
4,000 years old.

Dude, read a book, or Wikipedia, or anything. Aluminum in visible
quantities was produced in 1845, but that doesn't mean it was available
for disposable cans and foil. Napoleon III had some aluminum
dinnerware, for when the gold wasn't impressive enough.


And this has what to do with the fact that iron/steel have been used
by mankind for ages and ages?

Homer, in the Odyssey refers to quenching an axe which implies the use
of steel. the Japanese sword makers were making swords comprised of
both iron and steel before the current era. Wootz steel, a steel
developed in India around 300 BC, is the basis of the Damascus steel
myth.

Consider that the Eiffel tower (1889) is built of wrought iron, not mild
steel as we would do today.

Wrought iron is far more resistant to corrosion than mild steel.
http://www.blacksmiths3.com/wrought.htm

And yet buildings are no longer made of it, I wonder why that is?
If an architect today wanted to duplicate the Eiffel tower, do you
suppose he could source all that wrought iron? I have my doubts.

No, wrought iron is no longer commercially made as more modern methods
of steel making preclude it. Which has nothing to do with the fact
that wrought iron is more corrosion resistant than modern mild steel.

Think of all the crazy proto-bicycles from the nineteenth century,
built mostly of wood. Do you think it was just lack of imagination
that prevented an "all steel" bicycle before the twentieth century?

And, "cost effective" is a relative term and depends largely on the
ratio between cost of materials and labor and sales prices.

Of course, and, as I said, steel was bloody expensive until fairly
modern times, hence craftsmen didn't use great plates of it for mere
convenience.

Great plates of steel certainly wouldn't have been available but
certainly steel tools were available, and had been for hundreds if not
thousands of years. Do you think that the axes and adzes used
extensively in shipyard work were made of soft iron? When how to make
steel was apparently well known?

Steel was plainly the material of choice for edged tools, but it was too
expensive to spare a large plate for rounding dowels. Today we are
surrounded by disposable steel items - tin cans, baling wire, paper
clips, *mart BSOs ... This situation did not obtain for ancient
Anatolians, nor Homeric Greeks, nor colonial Americans, nor anyone until
the twentieth century.

You keep harping on "large plate" but the example I mentioned
certainly does not show a large plate... In fact the drawing only
shows two edges of the "plate" and the label states "steel plate with
suitable drilled hole". I've certainly seen early American blacksmith
made hardware of sufficient size that one could have made a treenail
die out of it.

And why do you denigrate a tool to make treenails? After all, given
that thousands of them would have been used to build a ship it would
seem like a fairly important tool for the shipwright's tool box.

As for iron/steel use in the "old days", the Vikings, in the 8th - 9th
century, used as much as a 1,500 lbs of iron nails to build a "long
ship".
--
Cheers,

John B.

John B. wrote:

:You keep harping on "large plate" but the example I mentioned
:certainly does not show a large plate... In fact the drawing only
:shows two edges of the "plate" and the label states "steel plate with
:suitable drilled hole". I've certainly seen early American blacksmith
:made hardware of sufficient size that one could have made a treenail
:die out of it.

of steel?

:And why do you denigrate a tool to make treenails? After all, given
:that thousands of them would have been used to build a ship it would
:seem like a fairly important tool for the shipwright's tool box.

:As for iron/steel use in the "old days", the Vikings, in the 8th - 9th
:century, used as much as a 1,500 lbs of iron nails to build a "long
:ship".

Iron is not steel. Those nails were not steel.

--
sig 46

On Wednesday, November 20, 2013 10:09:42 PM UTC-5, David Scheidt wrote:
John B. wrote:

:You keep harping on "large plate" but the example I mentioned
:certainly does not show a large plate... In fact the drawing only
:shows two edges of the "plate" and the label states "steel plate with
:suitable drilled hole". I've certainly seen early American blacksmith
:made hardware of sufficient size that one could have made a treenail
:die out of it.

of steel?

Would it need to be steel? You're talking about quickly stripping a piece of (probably) square wood into something round, with no very precise tolerances. Might wrought iron not work perfectly well?

And if not, how about a small, sharp steel ring forge-welded into a wrought iron plate? They had axes that would cut down huge trees. Certainly they could find enough metal good enough to strip out dowels by the hundreds.

- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 03:09:42 +0000 (UTC), David Scheidt
wrote:

John B. wrote:

:You keep harping on "large plate" but the example I mentioned
:certainly does not show a large plate... In fact the drawing only
:shows two edges of the "plate" and the label states "steel plate with
:suitable drilled hole". I've certainly seen early American blacksmith
:made hardware of sufficient size that one could have made a treenail
:die out of it.

of steel?

Certainly. "Case Hardening" has been known nearly as long as man has
forged iron... and case hardening converts a portion of the iron to
steel, and would serve perfectly well for the purpose of a treenail
die.

:And why do you denigrate a tool to make treenails? After all, given
:that thousands of them would have been used to build a ship it would
:seem like a fairly important tool for the shipwright's tool box.

:As for iron/steel use in the "old days", the Vikings, in the 8th - 9th
:century, used as much as a 1,500 lbs of iron nails to build a "long
:ship".

Iron is not steel. Those nails were not steel.

Petty. But so what. I was demonstrating that iron or steel was used
very early on.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:31:52 -0800 (PST), Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On Wednesday, November 20, 2013 10:09:42 PM UTC-5, David Scheidt wrote:
John B. wrote:

:You keep harping on "large plate" but the example I mentioned
:certainly does not show a large plate... In fact the drawing only
:shows two edges of the "plate" and the label states "steel plate with
:suitable drilled hole". I've certainly seen early American blacksmith
:made hardware of sufficient size that one could have made a treenail
:die out of it.

of steel?

Would it need to be steel? You're talking about quickly stripping a piece of (probably) square wood into something round, with no very precise tolerances. Might wrought iron not work perfectly well?

His argument is based on the fact that commercial production of steel
sheet or plate didn't exist in the period we were discussing (early
American ship building) and therefore that a die to sheer treenails
from octagon feed stock is unlikely. Which I contend is silly as both
iron and steel were used for thousands of years before the invention
of modern steel making was introduced.

"In 2005, metallurgical analysis by Hideo Akanuma of iron fragments
found at Kaman-Kaleh in 1994 and dating to c. 1800 BCE revealed that
some of these fragments were in fact composed of carbon steel; these
currently form the world's earliest known evidence for steel
manufacture."

Given, for example, the level of work that went into the making of a
full suit of armor, or making of coin dies, or any of the other
intricate iron/steel work that went on long before the advent of the
Bessemer process it seem obvious that there was steel and it was used
to make tools.

And if not, how about a small, sharp steel ring forge-welded into a wrought iron plate? They had axes that would cut down huge trees. Certainly they could find enough metal good enough to strip out dowels by the hundreds.

- Frank Krygowski

--
Cheers,

John B.

Frank Krygowski writes:

On Wednesday, November 20, 2013 10:09:42 PM UTC-5, David Scheidt wrote:
John B. wrote:

:You keep harping on "large plate" but the example I mentioned
:certainly does not show a large plate... In fact the drawing only
:shows two edges of the "plate" and the label states "steel plate with
:suitable drilled hole". I've certainly seen early American blacksmith
:made hardware of sufficient size that one could have made a treenail
:die out of it.

of steel?

Would it need to be steel? You're talking about quickly stripping a
piece of (probably) square wood into something round, with no very
precise tolerances. Might wrought iron not work perfectly well?

Yes. Treenails were made of the hardest conveniently available wood,
black locust being favored. Wrought iron is not suitable for cutting
wood.

And if not, how about a small, sharp steel ring forge-welded into a
wrought iron plate? They had axes that would cut down huge trees.
Certainly they could find enough metal good enough to strip out dowels
by the hundreds.

It's possible, I just haven't seen any evidence that it happened.

--