h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Crucible Steelmaking - A2826461
Author: Pinniped - U183682


I thought I'd try one (blade) straight.

Pin

Yay! All Entries local to my hometown receive automatic brownie points (although I don't actually have any to give)!

I know the statues well, and the theatre. And my Dad was employed by the Steel Industry.

Will have to take time to read it through properly but 'Well Done' in advance, Pin!

Wow!

This is wonderful.

I'm sure that after Gnomon does his usual spell-check it will be completely ready to go.

(personally, I think your writing has been improved by staying within the guidelines. Generally I find it to be the case in any artform that working within restrictions improves the product. )

Thanks Jules+anhaga

And you're right about working with restrictions, of course, anhaga.

Improved? Really? I can't tell, I guess. I thought of loads of possibilities here for tangential telling, and denied myself all of them. Now, if I'm honest, I can't help but see their unfulfilled potential.

It's certainly less self-indulgent than usual, though. That might conceivably be an improvement

I did a quick look back over some of your edited entries before I made the "improved" comment. I find the present piece to be more focused, which is, I suspect, what you would really want as you are celebrating someone else's achievement. Some of your other pieces are, as you put it, a little self-indulgent, which shifts the focus away from the subject. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it is better to shine the spotlight on the stage rather than on the spotlight itself.

I've been trying to find a picture of a local mall statue that is much like the one you link too. Ours is of three men on the "kellyboard" of an oil drilling rig. (Petroleum production is one of the foundations of our local economy) The composition is very reminiscent of the steelmaking sculpture.

A good read, especially to a metallurgist and North Lincolnshire boy such as myself.

Hunstman or Huntsman? You've spelled it both ways.

B

damndamndamn(danm?)damndamndamn

I was so not going to let you lot mock the spelling.

Now you're here, though, would you mind checking the local angle on birthplace? Few sources name one; two say Barton, but another one says Epworth. As (probably only) we know, they're definitely not the same place...

(I left out pretty well all the proper metallurgy, as you'll certainly have noticed. I got about two paragaphs into a layman's explanation of silicon-killed steel, and sensed an audience losing the will to live)

Well, I'd have enjoyed it. But I may have been the only one.

And, just to throw some confusion on the matter, the sources I have on the man say he was born in Appleby. I guess he got about a bit.

B

I've had a quick read - brilliant! I'll be back tomorrow for a proper Peer

I was in Sheffield at Uni for five years and recognise so many of the places. That was in the early 80s, when there was still the runt of a steel industry there


Fb

Blimey Pinn, you swallowed a thesaurus? It gets a bit flowry in parts. I read this from beginning to end and was thoroughly riveted

tannoy - Tannoy is a trade name which may or may not need to be capitalised. Depends on whether it's reached the same level of usage as 'hoover', which may itself need to be capitalised when used as a verb... not 100% sure about that. Either way, there are plenty of people around the world, and even in the UK who know not what Tannoy means. They may be more familiar with something like 'PA'.


Scout

Thanks, guys.
Maybe I'd just better put 'North Lincolnshire' for a birthplace?
Certainly I'll put PA.

Hello Pinniped

It's a great entry although I got a bit lost a couple of times in the technicalities of it and had to read stuff twice

What's >recarburisation<? Is it the same as recarbonisation? I never heard of it before

And what's >coke breeze<?

When did they stop using crucibles for steel making in Sheffield? Or anywhere else, come to that? It's amazing that the crucibles only lasted a day at most. I never realised that before

Well done

Fb

Hi Frenchbean

Thanks for the kind words.

'Recarburisation' and 'coke breeze' probably merit footnotes. Carburisation is the deliberate combination of iron with carbon in a diffusion process. De- means less carbon, making more ductile and softer steel, Re- means more (again), making stronger, more brittle steel.
Breeze is coke in small flakes, coarser than 'fines' (which are dust).

Crucible steelmaking died out because of volume inefficiency. High-tonnage commercial steels were produced in converters after Bessemer (from about 1865), but crucible steelmaking survived that because it could achieve high purity. It was really supplanted by electric steelmaking, and had more or less disappeared as a commercial process by around 1930, only to reappear, briefly, to support the war effort. This was because many holes and cellars still existed in steelworks by then using electric furnaces - they'd simply covered them over, and they could be brought back into production quickly.

Another Entry would be possible about the alloy steelmakers of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, Mushet, Hadfield and others. The whole story really needs the product development as well as the process development to be told.

The last crucible steel made in Sheffield (apart from occasional ongoing demonstrations, like the recent Time Team one) was produced as recently as 1968.

Hi Pinniped,

Have returned for another look at this.

Re the paragraph which begins
'But at the same time extremely poor for a clockspring, for which consistency and repeatability of through-thickness mechanical properties are vital.'

...I can see why you've started it like that but maybe because of the new paragraph and the oft-debated rule about starting a sentence with 'but', you could consider something like:

'At the same time, however, this substance would be extremely poor for a clockspring....'

Also - Handsworth - should there be a phrase about it being an area of Sheffield, e.g. 'bought a house in Handsworth, on the outskirts of Sheffield'

Finally - are we allowed to quote the details, ie ISBN numbers of useful books or is that too much like marketing/advertising?

Hope you don't mind all this belated stuff. It's only 'cos I care!

Jules

Hi Jules

Thanks for the suggestions, the first two of which I've included. As for quoting ISBNs, I don't think that's advertising, so I left it as-was. Someone in the know will put us straight, I guess, if it's not OK.

Thanks for the bump too. That always helps!

Pin

Hi, me again.

Do you think this paragraph:

'Although the theatre is incongruously famous for snooker, the origins of the name will now be clear. Play-lovers might have suspected Miller’s witches, but the explanation is close to home.'

should actually mention the name of the theatre you're talking about (for Researchers less local than us?!) - I can't see it anywhere in the text, unless I'm being a tad dense tonight?

Jules

Good point! (Now corrected)
Believe it or not, this Entry was once even longer. The name was there before, but got lost in paring the verbiage back a little.

Ooh, you're swift with the editing!

Jules

Are you going to link to the Sheffield Entry (A673472)?