"Ed Huntress"

Ken
So my question
is how/why does drawing harden steel? And for that matter how/why does
something work harden?

Ed
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.

I wish those texts didn't make a distinction between technology and science.
So much for books.

When I learned basic blacksmithing, I was taught that once you changed the
iron's(steel's) shape the grain (molecular) structure got stressed, so to
relieve this the iron is heated and allowed to cool (aneal), even for mild
steel.
So in the changing of shape in drawing, there's a similar stress (hardening)
added to the steel?
FM