"Ken Vale" wrote in message
ogers.com...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Because drawing hardens the steel without coarsening the grain, and
because
some of the tensile strength comes from the grain alignment resulting
from
successive draws through wire-drawing dies, the properties of the thinner
grades can't be duplicated by heat-treating it. The delivered condition,
as-is, is as good as it's going to get.

I sort of understand how heat-treating hardens steel. So my question
is how/why does drawing harden steel? And for that matter how/why does
something work harden?
Ken


That's a good question. The answer is that drawing, like most forms of
hardening (including much of heat-treating) adds strength by creating strain
between the grains. I won't try to elaborate on this here because it's worth
a chapter or two of a book. You can find a better explanation in any
introductory metallurgy book, even the non-mathematical, practical ones that
are used for teaching it as technology, rather than as science.

Ed Huntress