Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Exhibition of Chased and Embossed Steel and Iron Work of European Origin, 1900
Shape by the hammer. This is the time-honored way, dear to the imagination, used by St. Dunstan, and also by every village smith to-day. Modern mechanical science has added nothing, except that machinery is brought to bear, to give force to the blow. Results of this heroic method are not comprised in the present exhibition, which is limited to objects produced by processes into which heat enters relatively little, except for annealing and soldering purposes. Almost every specimen catalogued in these pages-has been fashioned by carving, filing and chasing from the solid, or piercing and embossing the Sheet metal, while cold. Most of them present the natural grey colour of the metal, but pressed and polished until it has assumed the lustrous sheen so familiarly associated with steel. In some the metal has been browned, to give value to the gold and Silver with which the surface is inlaid or encrusted, and in others blued, to enhance the lustre of adjacent parts in'relief. These colours are natural to the metal, and obtained by heating or tempering.
In all, it will be observed, the metallic surface is exposedwithout any Stain or coating of paint. A few are gilt all over, and some few of the objects are made up of several metals, of which iron or.steel is but one. No attempt is made in these descriptions to discriminate between objects of iron and those of steel; Since the two metals, though differing so widely in their properties, are in every respect identical intrinsically, except that in Steel a small but definite percentage of carbon has been added during the process of manufacture, the quantity added varying from I per cent. Down to one - fifth of I per cent. Of its weight, according as to whether the quality required is steely or mild. In what precise way these seemingly inadequate amounts of alloy effect such remarkable changes in the tenacity, hardness, or weight-carrying power of the metal is still a mystery.
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