Iron vs. Steel

[Malik]

I'm not going to get too deep into this--it's probably going to be a blog post eventually--but I was splitting stumps today. We brought down a maple that had died last year, and now that it's chainsawed into rounds, it's time for the fun to begin.

Seriously; I took a day off work just to do this. I love splitting stumps. Anyway, I digress.

This morning, I bought a new axe, a Fiskars splitting axe with a steel head. I've talked a bit about edge geometry in the Ask Me About Swords thread, and this sucker is a design marvel. It's two-thirds the weight of my 6-lb. splitting maul and carves off huge chunks of wood with one hit.

Against bigger stumps, you have to use a splitting wedge. This is a roughly teardrop-shaped jobbie with a sharp point, and you put it into a crack (or indentation) in a stump and then drive it down with the back of an axe or maul until the stump breaks apart.

This is important, because I bought a new splitting wedge today at the same time that I bought the axe.

The wedge is iron.

The axe is steel.

They are both blued to near-black. They looked exactly the same when I bought them.

We'd talked about the relative hardness of iron vs. steel in other threads?

After three hours, the respective tools looked like this:

The hardened-steel axe head smashed the ever-living snot out of the wrought-iron wedge, and was barely scratched. The bluing only came off the steel on bad hits that concentrated the force onto a corner of the head (or once, as you can see, into the composite handle).

Steel weapons don't slice through iron armor, but man, they can sure do a number on it.

Just something to think about.

 

[skip.knox]

Well, I'm stumped.

 

[ThinkerX]

did a bit of wood splitting in my younger days. anymore, the mere thought sends warning twinges down my back.

 

[Ban]

But what would happen if you used an iron axe on steel? I know about nihil when it comes to metal, but could the iron wedge simply take more damage because it is not the item exerting force and due to being (presumable) locked in place having nowhere else to go, unlike the axe which is free moving?

 

[Malik]

Pretty sure an iron edge against steel would fold up and blunt on the first hit.

 

[Ban]

But will you know for sure until you try? Give in to the distraction Malik.

 

[pmmg]

I notice the stump is not bleeding...I'm sayin the iron did its job.

 

[CupofJoe]

There had to be a reason that people went on to develop steel once iron was available. I think Malik has a visual reason why that was. It isn't that iron was bad but there was something better that could be made from the same basic ingredients. There must have been some interesting mid steps as good/better iron became steel. The myths and magic that must have grown up, like quenching in the urine of virgin boys [or is that apocryphal?]

 

[A. E. Lowan]

That is awesome. The steel axe just chiseled pieces right off the wedge. Can you imagine if that was an iron helmet? Brutal. I love it!

 

[Malik]

It didn't so much chisel them off as mash them in. I was driving the wedge with the back of the axe head. Pretty sure the edge would take a hunk out, though. I did destructive testing of steel weapons vs. scrap iron a long time ago and the effect of a steel blade on iron was remarkable. Not lightsaber-y, but startling.

We see this overlooked in a lot of current sword-vs.-armor testing on YouTube and so on; steel swords/arrows/axes driven against steel armor, and the tester reaching the conclusion that armor was invulnerable.

Iron armor was still excellent protection, but the effect isn't what many authors seem to think it is.