Wrought iron

Wrought iron is a very pure form of commercial iron, having a very small carbon content. It is tough, malleable, ductile and can be easily welded. However, it is too soft to make blades from; steel, with a carbon content between wrought and the high-carbon brittle cast iron, is used for that. Wrought iron has been used for thousands of years, and represents the "iron" that is referred to throughout history.

Wrought iron was originally produced by a variety of methods today known as a bloomery. Bloomeries used charcoal-heated smelters, typically in the form of small pots or ladles, into which the ore was poured and then covered with a thin layer of charcoal. Air was blown onto the charcoal after lighting it on fire, the heat produced would melt the ore. As the ore melted it would give up its oxygen (ore is iron oxide, or rust), mixing with the charcoal to release carbon dioxide. This way little carbon entered the iron directly.

In a bloomery, the fire does not get hot enough to melt the iron completely, so you are left with a spongy mass containing iron and silicates from the ore -- this is iron bloom from which the technique gets its name. The bloom was then mechanically worked to break off the masses of slag and impurities. This process gives rise to the name "wrought", as the iron was pounded and twisted.

The introduction of the blast furnace by Abraham Darby in 1709 changed ironmaking by replacing charcoal with the much less expensive coke. Not only was the fuel much cheaper, but it also could be burned in a "lump" instead of a thin sheet, allowing the furnaces to be much larger. Soon iron prices were dropping rapidly as production shot up.

However the product of a blast furnace, pig iron, had a very high carbon content and was very brittle. In order to use it in ironmongery, it had to first be converted to a form similar to what the bloom/wrought process produced. This process took time to develop, but by the 1750s a number of oxides had been identified that would react with the excess carbon to produce carbon dioxide, which then bubbles out.

Historically, this would be followed by pig iron