284 
Steel. 
suff red to cool in the air, without being plunged in water. - 
This greatly improves the appearance of the grain, which 
before it has undergone the tilt hammer, has a large grain- 
ed fracture more like brittle iron than steel. This is 
common steel, used for files, saws, scissars, knives, &c. 
It fetches from 30 to 32 shillings the cwt. The ends of 
each bar, where the steel is usually not of so good qua- 
lity as the rest, are cut off, and these are forged together 
into bars and made up in bundles or faggots under the 
denomination of sojt steel, which answers for plough- 
irons, the edges of spades, &c. and common blacksmiths* 
work. 
To make (or rather to imitate) German steel, they take 
a truss of ten or a dozen bars of blistered steel, they heat 
them together, covering them with dry clay in powder, 
which seems to concentrate the heat, and prevent the ac- 
tion of the air ; the bars are then taken out, and well 
worked together under the hammer, and then drawn out 
into bars of a convenient size. This produces a perfect 
imitation of the real German steel in appearance and qua- 
lity, and is in fact the same process as is used for the best 
steel in Styria. The heat is given by coke ; but it would 
perhaps be better with charcoal ; indeed some manufac- 
turers take the blistered steel, heat it as above with char- 
coal, draw it out into German steel, then cement it over 
again with charcoal dust as is done to iron in tlje first in- 
stance ; they then again draw it out into bars. 
Other manufacturers, take pieces of old files, and re- 
fuse steel of all kinds, and melt them in a crucible with a 
Sux, of which they make a secret.” Thus far Jars’s account 
(To be continued J 
