"Bill Swears" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
However, here's a good article that should serve the purpose. It's
layman-friendly, but gives enough info for a serious writer who wants
some
background. Hint: Manganese is the big player. But for old alloys,
nickel
might be the alloying ingredient that you'd want to put in play in a
historical story:

http://www.key-to-steel.com/Articles/Art136.htm

Happy writing.


Thanks, glad you dropped by. I've gotten some very good leads, almost
all directing me to key-to-steel. I think I've got it now. My hardest
problem became finding a mix for a good basic steel, so I could
determine what the changes were.

Bill

I forget the period you're writing about, but I seem to recall it was
something from perhaps a century ago. Alloys were simpler in those days.
Most steels were plain-carbon (as they are today, actually), and the
multi-component alloys were just getting started. Stainless steel hadn't
been discovered yet.

There probably is some historical account available somewhere that tells us
*when* it was recognized that adding nickel, and then manganese, made steel
more resistant to brittle fracture at low temperatures. But as a non-fiction
writer myself, my feeling is that anyone who might know about that, when
most of the fairly knowledgeable ones here don't, is a reader so rare that
you really don't have to worry about him. g

Good luck in your quest.

Ed Huntress