I've switched from phone to PC so I can look at the rest of the Haworth catalogue, and judging from the other references on the plane irons page, I think German Steel is right, though I agree it's odd to see it offered so late.
I couldn't remember if it was a meaningful term or a bit of advertising fluff like you get on a saw blade ("Best London" etc) so I have been looking in "Sheffield Steel" by KC Barraclough. (I'm pretty sure this was recommended by CheshireChappie. Nabs, if you've not got a copy, get one; I'm sure you'd enjoy it.)
In there, German Steel is described as an early version of steel, developed in Germany in the seventeenth century, in which a small amount of cast iron is added to molten wrought iron and the mixture held at high temperature. This gives a higher carbon content to the steel. Same as referred to in your RSA Journal.
So, in the 1884 Howarth catalogue, was it a very old fashioned option, or an old name applied to a more modern product? According to Barraclough, Cast Steel (Crucible Steel) took off at the beginning of the nineteenth century and by 1873 100,000 tons a year were being made in the Sheffield region, a tenfold increase in just over thirty years.
It's probably worth adding at this point that production of crucible steel continued, with its expensive, labour and fuel intensive batch production, long after the Bessemer and Open Hearth methods were developed, right up to the middle of the twentieth century. Was it just innate conservatism of the craftsmen who bought the tools, or was it really the ideal compromise between hardness, durability, sharpenability and consistency?
I couldn't remember if it was a meaningful term or a bit of advertising fluff like you get on a saw blade ("Best London" etc) so I have been looking in "Sheffield Steel" by KC Barraclough. (I'm pretty sure this was recommended by CheshireChappie. Nabs, if you've not got a copy, get one; I'm sure you'd enjoy it.)
In there, German Steel is described as an early version of steel, developed in Germany in the seventeenth century, in which a small amount of cast iron is added to molten wrought iron and the mixture held at high temperature. This gives a higher carbon content to the steel. Same as referred to in your RSA Journal.
So, in the 1884 Howarth catalogue, was it a very old fashioned option, or an old name applied to a more modern product? According to Barraclough, Cast Steel (Crucible Steel) took off at the beginning of the nineteenth century and by 1873 100,000 tons a year were being made in the Sheffield region, a tenfold increase in just over thirty years.
It's probably worth adding at this point that production of crucible steel continued, with its expensive, labour and fuel intensive batch production, long after the Bessemer and Open Hearth methods were developed, right up to the middle of the twentieth century. Was it just innate conservatism of the craftsmen who bought the tools, or was it really the ideal compromise between hardness, durability, sharpenability and consistency?
