How Did The Romans Make Sheet Steel

Metals and metal working had been known to the people of modern italy since the bronze age by 53 bc rome had expanded to control an immense expanse of the mediterranean.

How did the romans make sheet steel.

By the end of the emperor trajan s reign the roman empire had grown further to encompass parts of britain egypt all of modern. The steel industry has grown from ancient times when a few men may have operated periodically a small furnace producing 10 kilograms to the modern integrated iron and steelworks with annual steel production of about 1 million tons. Landels puts forward the suggestion that roman furnace design made production of sufficient heat unattainable yet he goes on to point out the 1150 c maximum could easily be extended to 1300 c using available technology 26. The largest commercial steelmaking enterprise nippon steel in japan was responsible for producing 26 million tons in 1987 and 11.

This included italy and its islands spain macedonia africa asia minor syria and greece. The first uses. Steel steel history. To explain why romans did not adopt or develop the wootz steel manufacturing process and damascus forging methods must be speculative.

The romans could import small quantities of crucible steel wootz steel from damascus whose traders actually got it from india though to protect their sources they did their best to let their customers believe it came from china. The above is purely incorrect. The romans used noric steel which was of very high quality. The fuel was charcoal and an air blast was introduced by bellows operated tuyères.

It seems that there exists a widespread assertion or misunderstanding that the romans use only iron not steel a much harder iron carbon alloy to make weapons. The direct bloomery process was used to extract the metal from its ores using slag tapping and slag pit furnaces. This leads to some people arguing that the roman army actually had very poor quality weaponry at their disposal in battle. No they used bronze and iron.