Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c24.26

c24.26

23. There is hardly one of the above tests, which good native iron of Southern India will not bear, and some iron which was produced in my own furnaces, has stood drawing out under the hammer into a fine nail rod not th inch thick, without splitting, and when kneed backwards and forwards, only broke after six or seven times. When twisted like a hank of whipcord until some of the plies began to draw out, no fracture occurred in any part, and a half inch bar ¼ inch in thickness bore doubling together *cold*, and the angle hammered down close with very little signs of separation between the fibres. As I have shown that native Indian iron contains steel, the quality can be easily tested by a very simple method, which is merely to bring the middle part of the bar to a red heat, and then immersing it in water, by which all the steely portions will be rendered brittle, without the fibrous portions being affected. An inch bar of good iron thus treated will bear a dozen blows of a heavy sledge hammer before it will break.