Meteor Steel.—The patentees of this manufacture (Messrs. J. Martineau, jun. and W. H. Smith,) specify their object to be the preparation of an alloy of steel, having that peculiar wavy appearance exhibited in the Damascus sword blades, and likewise for producing their toughness and elasticity of temper. The process of preparing the alloy is thus described : zinc 80 parts, purified nickel 16 parts, silver 4 parts = 100 parts. These are put into a black lead crucible, and covered with charcoal ; the lid is then luted down to prevent evaporation, and exposed to the heat of an ordinary steel furnace, until the metals are fused, when the alloy is poured out into cold water, to suddenly cool it, which renders it so brittle, that it is easily reduced afterwards, by a pestle and mortar, to powder, which the patentees call meteor powder, and is incorporated with the steel, together with other mixtures, in the manner following: 281bs. of common blistered steel, 10 oz. of meteor powder, 7 oz. of powdered chromate of iron, 1 oz. of charcoal, 2 oz. of quick-lime, and 3 oz. of porcelain clay, are put together in a crucible, and fused in a cast-steel furnace. After casting, this alloy is to be drawn out, under a hammer, into bars, when it will be found to exhibit the damask wavy appearance on its surface. To bring out the damask more fully upon any article made of this alloy, the surface is to be polished, and then washed over with nitric acid, diluted with nineteen times its weight of water. It could hardly have been supposed by the patentees that such a variety of substances was necessary to producing the damask pattern upon steel ; the nickel and the chromium were probably introduced by them with the view of imitating those natural phenomona called meteoric stones, in which it is said one or both of these metals are constantly found : and as two or three of the other ingredients of this patent steel mixture may be regarded as fluxes, it is not quite so whimsical a compound as it might at first appear, especially as it was introduced at a time when the public taste for steel-extraordinary was so much excited.
Wootz.—This celebrated steel is made in India, at little furnaces supplied with air by several pairs of small bellows, worked assiduously by men and boys; and thus is produced the raw material of the famed Damascus sword blades, the various patterns upon which have been imitated in our linen manu facture, and hence called damask. To ascertain the cause of this beautiful appearance has given rise to a good deal of investigation, and several of our chemists, as well as others on the continent, have entered upon the inquiry. The wootz imported from Bombay is in form of a round cake about 2 lbs. weight. Dr. Pearson, in an essay published many years ago in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XVII., gave it as his opinion that it is made direct from the ore, and, consequently, that it has never been in the state of wrought iron. " ior the cake, ' he says, " is evidently a mass which has been fused ; and the grain of the fracture is what I have never seen in cement steel before it is hammered or melted." This opinion consists with the composition of wools ; for it is obvious that a small portion of oxide of iron might escape metal lization, and be melted with the rest of the matter. The cakes appear to have been cut almost through, while white hot, at the place where wootz is manu factured; and as it is not probable that it is then plunged in cold water, the great hardness of the pieces imported above that of our steel must be imputed to its containing oxide, and, consequently, oxygen. The particular uses to which wootz may be applied may be inferred from the preceding account of its properties and composition. A very general opinion is, that the waved appear ance is produced by an intermixture of steel and iron forged together, an opinion that is in some degree founded upon experiment, as very close resem blances have been made by that process. Many sword blades, in no respect inferior to the Eastern originals, have been fabricated in the dominions of Austria and Prussia, by a process invented by Professor Crevilli, who had given detailed, instructions for their manufacture in a small treatise published at Milan, and entitled, Memoria sell' Arte di fabbricare Is Sciabole di Demarco.
An epitome of Crevilli's treatise was published in the illlyentaine Miter Zeitung, the following translation of which was given in a recent number of the United Service Journal. long flat piece of malleable steel, of about one inch and a half in breadth, and one-eighth in thickness, is to be first bound with iron wire, at intervals of one-third of an inch. The iron and steel are to be then incorporated by welding, and repeated additions (10 or 20) of iron wire made to the first portion, with which they must be firmly amalgamated. This compound material is then to be stretched and divided into shorter lengths, to which, by the usual process of welding, grinding, and tempering, any wished for form may be given. By filing semicircular grooves into both sides of the blade, and again subjecting it to the hammer, a beautiful roset-shaped Damascus is obtained : the material can be made to assume any other form. The solution by:which the figures are made visible, is the usual one of aquafortis and vinegar. The success of this method, and the excellence of the blades which have been constructed according to these directions, have, by various trials, been placed beyond all doubt. Professor Crevilli has had several sabre blades prepared under his own instruction at Milan ; similar experiments have, by the Emperor's commands, been made at the Polytechnical Institution at Vienna ; and finally, the War Office has empowered Daniel Fischar, manufacturer of small arms in that capital, to proceed with the manufacture on a large scale. These blades, which, when made in large quantities, are but little dearer than those in common use, have been submitted to the severest tests. .. An idea of their extra ordinary tenacity may be formed from the fact, that out of 210 blades that were examined by a military commission, and each of which was required to bear three cuts against iron, and two against a flat wooden table, not a single one snapped, or had its edge indented. In Prussia this method of preparing sword blades is stated to have been in practice several years, and to have been attended with equal success." M. Breant, examiner-general of assays at the Royal Mint of Paris, investigated the nature and composition of wootz very pkilosophically. In an interesting memoir which he published on this subject, he observes, that if in the preparation of ordinary steel sufficient carbon has not entered, the steel formed will only be in proportion to the quantity of combined carbon, the rest will be iron, only mixed. The cooling then takes place slowly, the more fusible particles of steel will tend to unite together and separate themselves from the portion of iron. This alloy will therefore be capable of developing a damask, but this damask will be white, and slightly marked, and the metal will not be susceptible of great hardness, because it will be mixed with iron. If the proportion of charcoal be exactly such as it ought to be in order to convert the whole of the iron into steel, there will be only one sort of combination ; but if the carbon is a little in excess, the whole of the iron will in the first place be converted into steel, afterwards the carbon remaining in the crucible will combine in a new proportion with the part of the steel already formed. There will in this case be two distinct compounds, namely pure steel, and carburetted steel, or cast-iron. These two compounds, at first mixed con fusedly, will tend to separate when the liquid matter remains at rest. A crystallization will then form, in which the particles of the two compounds will arrange themselves according to their respective affinity or specific gravity. If a blade made of this steel be put into acidulated water, a very apparent damask will be developed, in which the pure steel parts will be black, and those of carburetted steel will remain white. The carbon irregularly dispersed in the metal, and forming two distinct combinations, is, then, that which occasions the damask; and it is obvious that the slower the cooling, the larger the veins of the damask should be.