"mike" wrote in message ...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"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



Can you recommend a couple of titles or authors that might be found at
the library?
Every time I looked into the subject, I got lost in the science and
didn't learn anything practical.
Thanks, mike

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It's been a while since I've read one, but other people have told me that
_Metallurgy Fundamentals_ by Brandt and Warner is a very good
technology-level book. You can get a look at the inside on Amazon to see if
it's what you're looking for. At $43, you'll want to be sure, but there is a
paperback edition, I think.

Another one that I refer to often doesn't sound like a metallurgy book, but
it does cover steel at a practical level. It's called _Tool Steel
Simplified_. It's been in print for many decades but I don't know if it
still is. However, it's a book that your local library probably could find
at some local or community college and could get for you on an interlibrary
loan. That's how I get a lot of expensive books.

In the case of _Metallurgy Fundamentals_, you may want to just select the
subjects that interest you. In the case of _Tool Steel Simplified_, it's
worth going through the whole book. You'll come away with a very good
practical understanding of steel. But I'll bet you would from reading the
steel sections of _Metallurgy Fundamentals_, too.

Good luck. Metallurgy is a lot more interesting than it sounds. g

Ed Huntress