Intriguing questions 🤔
- Thread starter briantrumpet
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First Aspect
Active Member
What actually WAS Zippy?
Seevio
Guru
- Location
- South Glos
Live pig is harder to keep on the plate.
rjsterry
Active Member
- Location
- South London
Because the heating goes off st 11.
rjsterry
Active Member
- Location
- South London
Have done a bit more research and yes, some of the old ones do have copper tips set into steel or iron handles. Not sure how they isolated the copper from the ferrous metal. Suspect the etymology is maybe more of a borrowing from other tools called irons.
classic33
Leg End Member
They're made in three separate parts.
The insulated handle, wood.
Main shaft, usually steel.
The head, shaped copper.
Mine have the shafts split where the head is, with a steel rivet holding the head in place.
rjsterry
Active Member
- Location
- South London
Was more thinking that usually when you rivet copper and steel together, the steel corrodes very quickly.
I'm pretty sure I've seen some that have a steel tip used for soldering stained glass cames (?) but all the photos I can find now have copper tips as you describe.
On the etymology, there are quite a few tools referred to as 'irons' that aren't necessarily made of iron.
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Plus, not all steels contain iron.
matticus
Guru
randomgooglehit disagrees with you: https://www.thyssenkrupp-materials.co.uk/technical-knowledge-hub/iron-vs-steel
Tell me why thyssenkrupp are wrong! Now!!
VinSumRox
Well-Known Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders
Errrr I don't think so! Iron is the base constituent of all steels
Reynard
Guru
- Location
- Cambridgeshire, UK
Basically, steel is iron with carbon atoms introduced into the metal's crystalline structure by smelting in a blast furnace together with a high-grade form of coal called coke. The percentage of carbon that's incorporated into the molten iron will depend on the what the resultant steel is to be used for.
What the carbon does, is add toughness and "workability" to the metal, simply by acting as a handbrake in the crystalline structure and stopping the iron atoms sliding over each other too easily. Pure iron is very soft and malleable in its wrought form, and brittle when cast.
First Aspect
Active Member
I agree with you. Apart from the bit that says not all steels contain iron.
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
Depending on exactly what is meant by the terms...
What is normally referred to as "Iron" - "cast iron" or "pig iron" as straight from a blast furnace, and brittle, is high carbon.
Steelmaking *reduces* the iron content:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking
I don't know about the properties of *pure* iron if cast.
