Progress report and another image; 20X Nitrol etched
Steel above and below, with iron in between.
From Adam:
The globular shape of some of the inclusions looks like molten (cast) material, but with our better prep technique and some EDX work the inclusions appear to be mixture of silicates, oxides, and carbon (not just graphite). This is more indicative of wrought iron (or what we call wrought iron today). The chemical analysis we measured also had 0.01 weight percent C and I would expect to see something closer to at least 1.5 weight percent if it were truly cast iron (by today's standards). I suspect they used whatever was at hand that they called iron (wrought or scrap perhaps). I wonder if perhaps they used the terms "steel" to denote an alloy with controls on the individual elements and "iron" to indicate whatever else that was iron based.
I'm meeting with Adam again Weds.
