CHROME STEEL.
An alloy of chromium with carbon steel has been before the public for many years, and greater claims have been made for it than experience seems to justify. Chrome steel is fine-grained and very hard in the hardened state, and it will do a large amount of work at the first dressing; upon redressing it deteriorates much more rapidly than carbon steel and becomes inferior; it is believed that this is due to a rapid oxidation of the chromium.
It is claimed for it that it will endure much higher heats without injury than carbon steels of the same temper. Intending purchasers will do well to satisfy themselves upon these points before investing too heavily.
SILICON STEEL.
Steel containing two to three per cent of silicon was put upon the markets, and great claims were made for it.
It is exceedingly fine-grained and hardens very hard; it is brittle, much more liable to crack in hardening than ordinary steel, and it is not nearly so strong as carbon steel.
It is made cheaply enough as far as melting goes, but it may not be melted dead, and therefore sound, because long-continued high heat will destroy it; therefore the ingots are more honeycombed than well-melted carbon steel ingots. The steel will not bear what is known as a welding-heat in steel-working; it is hot-short; for this reason the bars are more seamy than is usual in carbon steel. Added to this the hot-shortness makes it so difficult to work that the labor cost is high. Altogether, then, silicon steel is expensive, and it presents no extra good qualities in compensation.
MANGANESE STEEL.
The glassy hardness, brittleness, and friability of ferro-manganese and of spiegel-eisen are well known; these are products of the blast-furnace, and the manganese ranges all the way from say 10% up to 80%.
Steel containing from 1% to 3% of manganese is about as brittle and almost as unworkable as spiegel-eisen, and a fair deduction would be that manganese above very small limits will not form any useful alloy with iron. Many a general law of nature has been based upon much more meagre data and has been announced with a great flourish of trumpets; such discoveries are usually heard of no more after the first blare has died away.