Bell in "Manufacuter of Iron & Steel" 1884 - gives Swedish pig iron as having:
Pig -------------------- malleable iron
4% Carbon -------------------- 0.2% Carbon
1/2% Silicon -------------------- 0.1% Silicon
0.3% Sulphur -------------------- 0.025% Sulphur
.15% Phosphorus-------------------- 0.1% Phosphorus
1.8% Manganese -------------------- 0.05% Manganese
----------------------------- 0% Arsenic
Which gives something near 7% inpurities or foreign matter for pig iron and 0.475% max for Swedish malleable iron. With your mention of "Chromium, molynedum, vanadium" being in the unobtainiums category, did you work on one of the Apollo projects or with Wernher Von Braun, Edward Teller or Robert Oppenheimer?
Kind Regards,
Raimey
rse
Raimey's quote from a Brit about Swedish steel merits some additional informations. From one mine, Dannemora, and adjacent mines with ore having same origin and very similar chemical composition, nearly all processed "mallable iron" (stångjärn) from select smelters/processers (Vallonska järnbruk) went to Sheffield in England for making steel used in watch springs, surgical instruments, and other highly value added insturments. Reason was basically very low content of slag. Given huge amount of effort to convert "mallable iron" to suitable steel and then to final product, having really low slag content in starting raw material was excellent way to reduce number of parts that failed final testing or had to be discarded along way because of minute slag inclusions.
This high quality "mallable iron" was much higher quality raw material than any other for about 200 years and Sheffield paid premium price for it. By no means was all Swedish stångjärn of similarly high purity. One of natural advantages of Dannemora iron ore was its low content of S and P, thanks to specifics of its geological origin. In addition, use of tree charcoal, instead of koke from coal, resulted in no S being added during processing of ore to iron/steel. Equally high quality iron from other sources had to await Bessemer technology, with its ability to "burn out" S and P, etc. impurities. Even so, technologies to reduce slag impurites and "other" granular impurities would remain an evolving and improving technology for decades.
Should anyone wish referenes, I can provide them, but, all are in Swedish,
Niklas
