[TheForge] Re: Rust-resistance: Iron Pillar of Delhi

[Mike Spencer]

> Still as I type this I really think it is most likely that this
> pillar is in fact "cast" iron rather than "wrought" iron.  They two
> forms are often confused in many article on the history of iron and
> steel that I have seen.

I gather from the article that there are slag inclusions
characteristic of wrought but the author, (a materials sci prof who is
unlikely to be confused) doesn't say explicitly that they know how it
was made.  I reckon you'd have to whack off a nice big piece for
metallographic study to say for sure.  That they welded something of
that size in the 5th c. seems to me even more improbable than that
they found a way to make and forge up (a la Saugus and indirect
process) a single big piece.

Question in my mind is, why did they make such a thing?  Just to prove
that Kumera Gupta was rich enough, powerful enough and smart enough to
do it?  Huh.


- Mike

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Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer@tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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