[TheForge] now pure iron -- cost

Mon Mar 24 18:48:58 EST 2008

Andy, I 100 percent agree -- for some reason most smiths have trouble 
dealing with total cost, including their time, shop overhead, marketing 
cost, last and often least their material cost.  I often hear about that 
"damn A36" but they will not even try to get 1020 instead.  Even for those 
for whom blacksmithing is just a hobby, material cost are low compared to 
the real cost of their time.

I wish I had bought more pure iron when it was out there.  I still have 
some, saved for special items.  One of the things I have the most fun with 
is having a student in a heat treating class at John C. Campbell Folk School 
try to get pure iron "hard" using super quench.  "Damn what did I do wrong?" 
Nothing, God did not intend for carbon free iron to harden, no matter how 
fast the quench.

I have not looked for it for some time but at one point you could buy rounds 
of 1006 or 1008 in sizes up to about 2 inches.  If you still can, it comes 
close to the performance of pure iron.

Dave
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Vida" <osan at netlabs.net>
To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 6:53 PM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Re: File Making, sniffing up wrought iron

>
>
> David E. Smucker wrote:
>> If there was a market it would be made.  We all (blacksmiths) like 
>> working with things like pure iron and wrought iron -- but we don't want 
>> to pay for it.  Pure Iron is the perfict example.
>
> I fully agree.  Furthermore, the "failure" of Pure Iron in the market was 
> an indication more of the lack of a business clue than any fault of the 
> material.  People saw cost as high.  I disagreed and attempted to explain 
> to them the idea of cost effectiveness, but apparently those people were 
> either not bright enough to get it, closed minded to the notion, or I 
> simply was too stupid to explain it properly.  I'll go with the latter.
>
> By and large, I have found most blacksmiths to be highly clue-challenged 
> where issues of basic business management are concerned. I've never hidden 
> my opinion on this.  A material such as Pure Iron, if properly marketed, 
> could be sold at a premium (offsetting the additional material cost, which 
> in the grander scheme of things is almost trivial in any event) and its 
> superior workability would save the smith in terms of labor cost. 
> Apparently none of this ever sank in and Mike's endeavor went toe-up.  I 
> thought it was a shame, but the market spoke and that was that.  I don't 
> know whether Mike & company engaged in sufficiently effective marketing, 
> so some fault may lie there as well, but I have learned to never 
> underestimate the boorishness of a market.
>
>
> > Everyone seems to
>> bitch about A36, but most were not ready to pay 5 or 6 times the cost of 
>> A36 for Pure Iron. We get what we pay for.
>
> A36 is generally pretty lousy IMO, particularly when compared with PI. The 
> only disadvantage of PI that I ever noticed was that it was next to 
> useless for normally proportioned structural members such as a gate post. 
> So for that you use steel and maybe design the post such that when the 
> metal rots away it can be readily replaced without having to do surgery on 
> the gate itself.  That, or you make the structural part of PI with about 3 
> or 4 times the mass to gain the needed rigidity.
>>
>> Stainless steel, gets paid for because of life cycle cost.  For many 
>> industrial uses it really pays.  In a number of applications we could do 
>> the numbers and it said that if mild steel lasted 7 years it was a better 
>> deal than stainless -- but it was really hard to put a price on downtime 
>> for replacement of the mild steel -- in the end we went with stainless 
>> which we guessed had a service live of at least 20 years -- 
>> still working fine and that has been 19 years now.
>
> For some apps it is certainly worthwhile, but stainless is a PITA to work. 
> Even the ferritic grades, which do not even work harden to any appreciable 
> extent are slow to move under the hammer.  If you have to have the 
> stainless properties, then you go with it, but AFAIK a PI gate would have 
> lasted a very long time when compared with mild steel and it can be worked 
> more rapidly and with fewer heats.  There is something to be said for 
> that... probably a lot in some cases.
>
> Businesses most often fail to consider the hidden costs of the decisions 
> they make.  One reason for this is that they are not expert in identifying 
> them, which is something I have done professionally for my clients for 
> many years.  Even so, they will often make what I consider to be poor 
> decisions even knowing the problems that will come down the pike, but 
> those happen after the decision makers have taken their bonuses, 
> promotions, retirements and have moved on to let their replacements do the 
> suffering.
>
> As for wrought iron, I see no future for it at all.  Market is far too 
> small - most people either don't have the patience to learn it and to work 
> it, or the economics just don't add up.  Using a cool material won't cut 
> the mustard if you are going to lose your shirt on it in the process.
>
>> Dave
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Vida" <osan at netlabs.net>
>> To: "Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
>> Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:09 PM
>> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Re: File Making, sniffing up wrought iron
>>
>>
>>> From my perspective it is a shame that nobody is making it anymore.  It 
>>> has some very good qualities and I would imagine it would be a lot less 
>>> costly than stainless.  I guess some of the troublesome working 
>>> characteristics made it unworthy of further consideration.
>>>
>>> ries wrote:
>>>> As I understand it, this type of pipe was the last product made of real 
>>>> wrought iron, and was made at least into the early 70's.
>>>> I have heard the last mill making it was in Sweden.
>>>> It had certain chemical plant uses that kept in production until 
>>>> various alloys of stainless and newer metals finally did it in in the 
>>>> mid 70's.
>>>>
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>>
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>
> -- 
>
> -Andy V.
>
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