Wrought iron

Wrought iron is a tough, malleable iron with very little carbon and fibrous slag inclusions. Traditionally, it was made by refining iron and mechanically working it.

Puddling process: A nineteenth-century process that decarburized molten pig iron by stirring it in an oxidizing furnace. Puddling made wrought iron at industrial scale by refining pig iron into a workable mass.
Iron–carbon phase diagram: A map of the phases present in iron–carbon alloys at different temperatures and carbon concentrations. It places wrought iron in the low-carbon region of the iron–carbon system.
Ironworking: The extraction, shaping, and processing of iron into useful materials and objects. Wrought iron belongs to a long tradition of refining and shaping iron by heat and force.
Eiffel Tower: A wrought-iron lattice tower in Paris completed for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The tower demonstrates how wrought iron’s strength and forgeability enabled monumental lattice construction.
Cast iron: An iron–carbon alloy with enough carbon to melt readily and be poured into molds. Cast iron is more brittle and castable, unlike wrought iron’s toughness and capacity for forging.
Bloomery: A furnace that reduces iron ore to a spongy mass of metallic iron mixed with slag. Bloomery iron became wrought iron through repeated heating and hammering that expelled much of its slag.
Ferrite: A body-centered cubic form of iron that dissolves only small amounts of carbon. Ferrite forms most of wrought iron’s metallic matrix and contributes to its softness and ductility.
Bloomery ironmaking: A method of producing iron by reducing ore in a bloomery furnace and consolidating the resulting bloom. This ancient route produced wrought iron directly, before blast furnaces and puddling became widespread.
Brooklyn Bridge: A suspension bridge spanning the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn, opened in 1883. Its wire cables and wrought-iron components show the material’s role in nineteenth-century bridge engineering.
Carbon steel: Steel whose principal alloying element is carbon, with properties shaped by its carbon content and heat treatment. Carbon steel generally offers greater strength and consistency than traditional wrought iron.

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