STEEL.
Kang-tieh, . . . CIIIN. Malela, Kaluli, . MALAY. Staab . . . DAN., DUT. Aco, PORT.
Acier, FR. Stai, . • . RUS., SiV.
Stahl, GER. Acero, SP Foulad, . PERS. Egu, TAM Acciajo, . . . . IT. Wukku, . . . . TEL. Baja, Wv.ja, Lela, MALAY. Chelik, . . . . TURK.
Steel is iron combined with a small quantity of carbon. It is hard, brittle, resists the file, cuts glass, affords sparks when struck on flint, and retains the magnetic virtue for any length of time. It loses its hardness by being heated and cooled very slowly. Steel is used for many small imple ments and important engineering and other works.
Konasamoondrum steel is made at several villages in the Circar of Elgundel, at Ibrahim patnam, and at Konapur in the Karaolla pargana, and at Atmacore and Chintulpet in the Vellurla Taluka. Formerly it was prepared at several other places. Teepoor, the iron, is manufactured at Maytpilly, a village 12 miles south of the Godavery, from a ferruginous sand procured from gneiss by roasting, pounding, and washing.
The steel wire of Chinnapatam, in Mysore, has long been known. The ore from which wootz, an Indian steel, is made, is a magnetic oxide com bined with quartz, generally in proportion of 48 parts of quartz to 52 of oxide of iron. It is made in many parts of the south of India, but Salem is the chief seat of the manufacture, and there the ore is prepared by stamping and separating the quartz either by wa.hing or winnowing. The furnace is from three to five feet high from the surface of the ground, and the ground is hollowed out beneath it to the depth of eight inches or a foot. It is somewhat pear-shaped. being about two feet diameter at the ground, and tapering to about one foot diameter at tbe top ; it is built entirely of clay. Two men can finish one in a few hours ; it is fit for use the next day. The blast is furnished by a pair of bellows each being a goat skin with a bamboo nozzle ; a semicircular open ing, about a foot and a half high and a foot in diameter at the bottom, is left in the furnace, and before each smelting it is stopped up with clay. The furnace is then filled up with charcoal, and kindled, a small quantity of ore, previously mois tened, is laid on the top of the fuel, and charcoal is thrown over it to fill up the furnace ; in this manner ore and fuel are added and the bellows plied for four hours or thereabouts, when the pro cess is stopped, and the temporary wall in front of the furnace having been broken down, the bloom is removed by a pair of tongs frorn the bottom of the furnace, and is then beaten with a wooden mallet to separate as much of the vitrified oxide as possible ; and, while still red-hot, it is cut half through with a hatchet, and in this state sold to the blacksmiths, who perform all the subsequent operations of forging it into bars, and making it into steel. The process of forging into bars 16
performed by sinking the blooms in a small char coal furnace, and repeated heatings and hammer ngs to free it as much as possible from the vitrified and unreduced oxide of iron ; it is thus formed into bars about a foot long, an inch and a half broad, and about half an inch thick. In this state it is full of cracks and exceedingly red short. These bars are cut into small pieces to enable them to pack in a crucible. A quantity amounting to a pound and a half to two pounds is put into a crucible along with a tenth part by weight of dried wood of the Cassia auriculata chopped small ; these are covered with one or two green leaves of the Calotropis gigantea, the mudar plant, and the mouth of the crucible filled up with a handful of tempered clay, which is ranimed so as to exclude the air perfectly. As soon as the cla.y is dry, twenty to twenty-four of the crucibles are built up in the form of an arch with their bottoms inwards, in a small furnace urged by two goat-skin bellows, charcoal is heaped up over them, and the blast kept up without intermission for about two hours and a half, wheu it is stopped, and the process is considered coniplete. The crucibles are removed from the furnace and allowed to cool ; they are then broken, and the steel, which has been left to solidify, taken out in a cake, having the form of the bottom of the crucible. When the fusion has been perfect, the top of the cake is covered with strim, radiating from the centre, but without any holes or rough projections on it ; when the fusion has been less perfect, the surface of the cake has a honeycombed appearance, caused probably by par ticles of scorize and unreduced oxide in the bar iron, and often contains projecting Inmps of iron still in the malleable state. The nativesprepare these cakes of steel for being drawn into bars by annealing them for several hours in a charcoal fire actuated by bellows, the current of air from which is made to play upon the cakes whilst turned over before it at a heat just short of that sufficient to melt them ; by this means the excess of carbon is detached. The process of smelting -iron differs according to circumstances in different parts. In some the ore is collected in the form of sand from the beds of rivers or ironstone is collected either from the surface or from mines.