Warranted Wrought

My silly mistake. Warranted Wrought refers to iron not steel. Thanks for pointing it out. I will leave that for an expert to explain if they wish.

Not necessarily. There are two general uses for the word "wrought," and they both apply to us.

The material, wrought iron, is a form of iron made (wrought) by hammering hot pig iron (cast iron) to drive out much of the carbon. The hammering process introduces the characteristic grainy texture to wrought iron.

The second use of "wrought" is as the past tense of the verb "wreak" or "work." It generally implies that something was formed with tools and effort.

The term "WARRANTED WROUGHT" implies that the cuffs were forged, not cast. Apparently, those "cast iron" cuffs so commonly mis-described on eBay may have once existed. I suspect they all broke.

The term "HARD" indicates that the cuffs were wrought from steel, not wrought iron, as steel can be hardened and iron cannot. It also implies that they were somewhat expensive, as steel was quite an expensive material before the Bessemer Process brought us cheap steel in the years following 1855, and good steel was still expensive up through WW-II. Really good steels, still are.

WELL DONE

My silly mistake. Warranted Wrought refers to iron not steel. Thanks for pointing it out. I will leave that for an expert to explain if they wish.

Not necessarily. There are two general uses for the word "wrought," and they both apply to us.

The material, wrought iron, is a form of iron made (wrought) by hammering hot pig iron (cast iron) to drive out much of the carbon. The hammering process introduces the characteristic grainy texture to wrought iron.

The second use of "wrought" is as the past tense of the verb "wreak" or "work." It generally implies that something was formed with tools and effort.

The term "WARRANTED WROUGHT" implies that the cuffs were forged, not cast. Apparently, those "cast iron" cuffs so commonly mis-described on eBay may have once existed. I suspect they all broke.

The term "HARD" indicates that the cuffs were wrought from steel, not wrought iron, as steel can be hardened and iron cannot. It also implies that they were somewhat expensive, as steel was quite an expensive material before the Bessemer Process brought us cheap steel in the years following 1855, and good steel was still expensive up through WW-II. Really good steels, still are.

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Dunno if any of the early makers experimented with doing cast iron but I figure they already knew how brittle cast iron can be. After all, you don't want a prisoner striking it on on stone or other metal and shattering the cuff. I still think the cuffs were cast as I have seen inside the surface of the metal showing casting marks. Since I have never seen any pictures of the cuffs being made prior to the mass production steel age makes it hard to document this. I know later versions of Hiatts was cast steel. It would be nice to see if the people in the old Hiatts building has pictures or see if any of the old equipment for making the older cuffs is still around. To do such precise forging as on the older cuffs would have required a metal form to forge the shape. To better understand the various metal alloys, one needs to know what the alloys are. Cast iron is basically iron and carbon with what is considered high amounts of carbon and other things. For more info, gotohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_iron. Wrought iron has very little carbon and impurities called slag which make it easier to work the metal. For more info, gotohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron. Your steels can be quite simple or quite complex depending on the alloying. Your regular mild steels are your iron and carbon but it is the precise control of the percentage of carbon. As my metallurgy instructor told us, it wasn't the ability of getting all the carbon out of the iron, but the precise control of carbon in a very narrow range. The control range is less than 1% for your common steels. I will give some examples of the narrow range of carbon content. A common mild steel is what we call 1020, what this means is that there is 20% of one percent carbon in the steel, .002%. A moderate steel is 1030, 30% of one percent, .003% and a harder steel 1040, 40% of one percent, .004%. Getting even harder and also getting more brittle is 1060, 60% of one percent, .006%. Then you get into adding things like Nickle, Chromium, Molybdenum, Sulfur, etc. to give the metal certain characteristics. As you can see, this gets quite complicated in a hurry. What terms may mean today, meant something different 150 years ago. Working metal is both a science and an art... History and meaning of the terms in those time periods are very necessary in understanding what went on.