Talk:Wrought iron

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Old door from Isfahan

Wrought iron has been nominated for Selected article, at the Architecture Portal. For more information, visit WikiProject:Architecture
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Wrought iron was a Natural sciences good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: April 12, 2008

Contents

[edit] Etymology

It appears that most major dictionaries say that "wrought" is the archaic past tense of "work", not "wreak".

Yes, check out this definition of "wrought". And the entry for "wreak" even specifically says that its p.p. is "wreaked, not wrought"!--BillFlis 22:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Teached"?

The same can be applied to the word “Taught” which is slowly transforming into the less irregular “Teached.”

Is this a regional/national feature? I'm British, and except amongst young children have never heard "teached" used. Loganberry (Talk) 14:56, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard this in the United States either, again except amongst young children. --Delirium 22:46, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I was just thinking the same thing. I have never heard anyone say "teached". What nonsense.
I edited out the stupidity. Antman 16:23, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spam in External sites

Is there someting special about wrought iron that gathers advertisers? Removed these spam links from article.

-- Petri Krohn 01:32, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Corrosion resistance

Wrought iron does not rust, e.g. the old warship HMS Warrior 1860 is still sailing. 195.70.32.136 12:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. It won't rust if it's coated properly. I suspect the HMS Warrior is simply painted or something similar. —Ben FrantzDale 14:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
What about the massive 1600 year old iron pillar of hindu King Ashoka in Delhi? That is bare wrought iron and stands like new. 195.70.32.136 15:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Interesting point. Perhaps the oxide is forming a passivation layer? I am not a metalurgist, I just know I see rusty ironwork all the time and if wrought iron is essentially pure Fe, then it should have essentially the same rusting characteristics as mild steel. I'll leave it to an expert to try to answer this better. —Ben FrantzDale 15:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
The rust resistance of large wrought iron objects is an issue that has been under dsicussion in recent years. It appears that they absorb enough heat from the sun to enable them to dry themsleves. Two Chinese iron statutes were placed under cover for their protection and proceeded to rust! The 'conservation' measure proved to be counter-productive. The case cited of the guns on HMS Warrior is not quite in point, as cannon are made of cast iron. Painting would not help as the guns get hot when fired. The surface of an iron object is black, because it quickly acquires a later of iron oxide. This helps protect it against rust. Peterkingiron 22:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How wrought iron is made

It would be much better if the section 'How wrought iron is made' were removed and its content moved to the article on puddling furnace. If wikified, this would be a good contribution, enabling 'that' article to be expanded. Unfortunately, its appearance here disturbs tbe balance of the article. Peterkingiron 22:11, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I withdraw the above comment. In the meantime more has been added. I have therefore restructured trhe earlier part of the article. Perhaps, the existing section on puddling should be amalgamated with 'How wrought iron is produced ...' (as I have now amendded the title). Peterkingiron 23:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rust-resistance?

I visited a blacksmith this weekend. He told me that, while he uses mild steel for all his ornamental work, wrought iron is still used in modern navy ships for anchor chain because it is more resistant to corrosion than steel. I could believe that the sites of the carbon atoms on the surface could be more chemically active, much like dislocations can lead to corrosion. But it still is a bit surprising. Is this marine application accurate? This seems related to the iron pillar at Qutb which has stood the test of time. —Ben FrantzDale 18:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Rust resistant rather non-rusting. I suspect your information about ships anchor chains is out of date, as I think that hardly any one is still making wrought iron. The exceptions may be a couple of firms of blacksmiths who are producing ironwork to assist in the conservation of historic wrought iron artefacts. If I am wrong, please add links to the producers websites to the article. Peterkingiron 23:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Modern uses/availability of wrought iron

The part of this entry regarding modern uses and availability of wrought iron is badly out-of-date. I'm a hobby blacksmith, and to my knowledge there is no commercial source of new wrought iron (by which I mean real wrought iron as described in this Wiki entry, not just bent work) anywhere in the industrialized world. Nor is there any domestic source of commercial quantities of recycled wrought iron. Naturally, that also means that it's no longer used for any major commercial purpose, including the anchor chains of Navy ships. I have looked -- hard -- for real wrought iron, and so have many other smiths I know. All end up either reusing antique wrought iron (except for the hardcore few who smelt and work their own from ore, which is labor intensive but not otherwise as difficult as you might imagine). There is one company in England that recycles old wrought iron into bars, etc., for resale, but they serve a niche market, their output is limited, and their product isn't really "new."

A few citations for the preceding claims:

http://www.realwroughtiron.com/ http://www.ornamentaliron.net/mueller/wrought.html http://www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk/clapper.htm

The Navy stopped using wrought iron anchor chains in the 1920s Source: http://www.nvo.com/baldtus/historyoftheanchor/ (Baldt is currently one of two suppliers of anchor chain to the U.S. Navy, so they should darned well know something about the subject.)

I think the underlying problem with this article is that it relies solely on Alex Bealer's book, The Art of Blacksmithing. Bealer's book is very interesting, but it isn't reliable enough to be used as a sole source of information; Bealer was just plain wrong about some things, and the book was last edited more than thirty years ago. Anything taken from Bealer needs to be cross-checked with independent and preferably more recent sources.


--Matt22191 13:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)Matt Bower

[edit] Merge? No

No--SpectrumAnalyser 21:46, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

No. No point in bloating the wrought iron article, or including it in the furniture article for that matter.--kop 04:37, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

No. This article is about wrought iron as a commodity, rather than about its applications. Much of the article is in fact about the production of what was commerically known as bar iron, a term whcih I have used in a number of other articles, linking them here. If the merge went ahead, it might be necessary to split the present article and change all those links. The furniture article might be merged with a putative ornamental ironwork article, but that is currnetly an inappropriate redirect to Ironworker. Such an article should cover wrought iron in furniture, gates, and fences, (all the art of the blacksmith) but also the use of cast iron for similar purposes. Peterkingiron 22:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

As above. Tag removed. Meggar 21:14, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Refinement Process Misleading?

The article currently says: "Pig iron is melted and a strong current of air is directed over it. It is being well agitated or stirred when the current of air is passing over. It is thus thoroughly oxidized. It is then cast into moulds. It is cooled suddenly so as to make it brittle."

If the iron were fully oxidised no refinement would be taking place; iron ore is primarily iron oxide; I presume what was intended was to say that the impurities are oxidised.

Secondly, I doubt that sudden cooling is to make the metal brittle: isn't it a side effect? I suspect the rapid (which might be better than "suddenly", which suggests that it happens not quickly but without warning) cooling is to quench accumulations of impurities in place, so that they don't diffuse back into the refined iron matrix?

But I'm not a metallurgist either, so I'll raise the question and leave it at that (though if it is amended, the readability might be improved by a few conjunctions and revision of tenses...) Julian I Do Stuff 11:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I think your criticism is justified and have reworded the paragraph slightly. The process described is puddling, which is also discussed a few paragrpash earlier. I am not sure that there is merit in the repetition, but have left it. Peterkingiron 22:50, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self promotion

I just removed a section added by User:Jjhmccarty which referenced a book written by her and as yet to be published. An examination of this user's edit history shows that all edits relate to this book. Pjbflynn (talk) 04:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] rot/rod iron

I take "rot iron" to be a misspelling of "wrought". It might be appropriate for this to be a redirect to here, but I doubt it needs to be mentioned. "Rod iron" is something different. Bar iron when finished in a finery forge is "bar iron". In order for it to be made into nails (an important end-use), it had to be cut into rods in a slitting mill. The product was "rod iron". I consider it unsatisfactory that bar iron is a redirect to this article, but have as yet done nothing about that. In the usuage of the British customs, wrought iron was manufactured iron, having been wrought by a blacksmith. As such it was liable to a higher rate of duty than bar iron, which was imported to Great Britain in substantial quantities from Sweden and Russia in the 18th century. Chemically and mechanically bar, rod, and wrought iron were the same commodity, but due to having undergone further processing, they had different prices. Unless any one objects, I propose to amend the article to take account of this. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I like the new terminology section...but one question about this bullet:
"Rod rod - cut from flat bar iron in a slitting mill to provide the raw material for nails."
Is that supposed to be rod rod? --Wizard191 (talk) 02:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
It should be "rod iron". Peterkingiron (talk) 21:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] casting wrought iron

I have no doubt that wrought iron "can" be melted. However, I doubt this was often attempted in the period when wrought iron was a common commodity. This is because of the difficulty in achieiving a sufficiently high temperature. What its properties might be when cast, I cannot guess. However, it would not be quite like cast iron, where (I presume) the carbon occupies interstices in the crystal lattice, and may affect its properties. Some of what has been added to the article recently seems to be at the level of discussing curiosities, which might have a place in a textbook on iron, but probably not in an encylopedia article. Peterkingiron (talk) 21:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Did you read the sources on the casting wrought iron information? There are links to the info. According to two sources it was attempted for what seems to be curiosities sake. I'm including it because there was an erroneous statement saying that it couldn't be cast, however I found otherwise. As for the state, I didn't say it was like cast iron. My source says that it is has similar strength properties to cast iron. Also, one of my sources is from ~1890, when wrought iron was still heavily used (but don't trust me...read it for yourself).
"Some of what has been added to the article recently seems to be at the level of discussing curiosities, which might have a place in a textbook on iron, but probably not in an encylopedia article." What are you referring to here? --Wizard191 (talk) 22:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I was referring (at least in part) to casting wrought iron. This is perhaps something that might be better in a more chemical article on iron. If you want to add it and have sources, I do not propose to interfere. You are dealing with events of a period about which I know little. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:06, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Commercially pure?

I dont think we can apply the term commercially pure to wrought iron. It is full of all sorts of stuff besides the iron. Pure iron is an entirely different material. Thoughts?--=Motorhead (talk) 22:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A few comments regarding Good Article Nomination

  • I made various punctuation fixes and deleted some extraneous words and phrases.
  • "horse shoe bars" was changed to "horseshoes". There weren't many Google hits for "horse shoe bar" or "horseshoe bar", and none with any relevant meaning, that I could find. I hope the writer meant "horseshoes", some of which were originally made out of iron, according to the WP article.
  • I'm fine with "hand forged" without a hyphen, since a Google search indicates that that predominates, even though there's an argument that a hyphen would be better. Hyphen rules are in flux, and judgment calls on hyphens may be overly fussy for WP:GAN.
  • I replaced some single quotes, see WP:MOSQUOTE.
  • See WP:MOSNUM for when to link dates.

- Dan Dank55 (talk) 00:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm finished with the language review; it was well-written. I made a few changes; feel free to revert if there are any you disagree with, and I'll check back later. This isn't my field, and I'm not qualified to review anything except the language. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 00:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I take that back, I do have one recommendation. The lead paragraph should have two or three more sentences telling the reader what to expect in the rest of the article; see WP:LEAD. I decided not to make the change myself, because I'm not sure which features the editors consider the most important.
The other "well-written" criteria look good. I can see someone complaining that there is too much "jargon", but I would completely disagree. The point of the "jargon" requirement is that the article should be written in an accessible way, given the nature of the material, not to forbid people from writing technical or detailed articles. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 01:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA review

Well done on producing an interesting article. I've reviewed it according to the good article criteria and I have a few comments:

  • The referencing is generally good, but there are some sections without any citations at all, the Terminology section for instance. As a general rule, at least one inline citation is expected per paragraph.
  • The article seems to rely quite heavily on one book, Bealers's The Art of Blacksmithing. Nothing wrong with that, but instead of just giving a page range of 28-45 in the reference it would be clearer to use some form of Harvard referencing, to show what material is supported by which page(s) in that book.
No doubt I could find other reference books. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Malleus Fatuarum didn't ask for new sources, just to flesh out the current ones in the Harvard format (which IMO looks much better). Wizard191 (talk) 16:20, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Lists are deprecated in good articles, so the Form, Origin, Quality and Defective quality sections should be converted to prose. As it is, it's not clear whether reference #2 supports the whole of the Form subsection or just the last element in the list.
I was responsible for a good deal of this list. I do not think reference 2 does support the whole list. This was to some extetn an original compilation, trying to collect together a series of differnet terms that I have come across. I am not sure that I will be able to find a published definition for all of them. I think that this ought to be a list, and will be much less satsfactory as prose. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
You're ringing an original research alarm bell for me now. Would these terms be commonly understood by anyone reasonably familiar with the field? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 18:01, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • There is quite a bit of over wikilinking in the article. Items should be linked only their first occurrence, not on every occurrence. Germany, for instance, is linked in both the Overview and Finery process sections, and there are lots of other examples. Common words like "nail" also don't need to be linked.
    • I went through and cleaned up a lot of the commonly linked words. Although I'm sure I've missed some of them, it should be better. Wizard191 (talk) 16:20, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • There are lots of years and centuries wikilinked. They should only be linked in cases where they add content to the article, which I don't think is the case here.
Practice on this seems to have changed in recent months. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "They were in turn replaced from the late 18th century by puddling, with certain variants such as the Swedish Lancashire Process." What is the "Swedish Lancashire Process"?
The (Swedish) "Lancashire Process" was a method of making wrought iron with charcoal in a closed furnace. This needs an article, but I do not understand the process well enough to write it. I do not want to write an article on "potting and stamping" until I have put my views into print; otherwise I will be guilty of WP:ORg
So is that its proper title, the (Swedish) Lancashire Process? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 18:01, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • You should put the headings for Tables 1 and 2 at the head of the tables themselves.
    • I'm not sure what you mean by this as the titles are at the head of the tables. Note the code: |+'''Table 1: Chemical composition comparison of pig iron, plain carbon steel, and wrought iron'''<ref name="msts"/>. If you have something else in mind please elaborate. Wizard191 (talk) 12:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
      • I mean that the headings would be better in the tables; I've edited Table 1 to show what I mean. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 15:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • "Generally, consumers asking for wrought iron are looking for hand forged items or items with the appearance of wrought iron." I'm not sure that this is entirely appropriate to include in the lead.
    • I removed this sentence as it is essentially a repetition of the previous sentence. Wizard191 (talk) 12:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The article states several times that wrought iron is no longer commercially produced, yet it also says that "True wrought iron is occasionally required for the authentic conservation of historic structures". Where do those conserving historic structures get their wrought iron from in that case? Do they make it themselves?
    • At one point the article listed that it was still commercially produced and there was a weblink to a website that recycled wrought iron. It was disputed though, because it was a business link and its advertising doesn't count as verifiable source. So then it current sentence was added with a verifiable source stating when commercial production ended. But I think the real confusion is that the current source is referring to commercial production on a large scale (i.e. producing at a foundry), while small companies still exist, like this one that was originally linked, that recycle old wrought iron for re-use. I think its just been a little hard to explain that in the article with good sources. Wizard191 (talk) 12:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I do not see what we can do apart from restoring the link to the company website. I do not know of any academic discussion of the matter. As I understand it, the company is recycling, producing good useable wrought iron from scrap. As far as i know no one is producing it even on a small commercial scale from pig iron. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

And that's about it. I'm putting this article on hold to allow time for these issues to be addressed.

--Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 01:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Summary

I think it's appropriate for me to summarise where I think we are with this GA review:

  • The referencing must be improved, along the lines already suggested.
  • The Terminology section must be converted to prose, or tables if appropriate, and it should be moved further down the article, at least after the History section.

As the article stands, I am not prepared to list it as a GA. So if nothing is done to address my concerns then I will reluctantly have to fail this nomination. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 01:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA failed

There is much to like about this article, but with remaining issues unaddressed I cannot in all honesty list it as a GA, so I'm going to have to fail it now that the hold period has expired. If you disagree with my decision then please feel free to raise the issue at WP:GAR. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 19:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

I have made some changes to the standard survey, now it reads:

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article? If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do? Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia? At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 15:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)