Important: Safety Warning
This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Meteoric Steel
Steel resembling the famed Damascus steel is made by melting in a plumbago crucible, well covered with charcoal, silver 4, nickel 16, zinc 80, and pouring the alloy into water, which renders it friable. It may then be readily crushed to powder, and added to steel as follows: Blister-steel, 28 pounds; chromate of iron, 8 ounces; quicklime, 2 ounces; porcelain clay, 3 ounces; meteor-powder, 10 ounces; melted in the regular way, cast into an ingot, drawn into bars, and in every respect treated like any other cast steel.
If the surface is washed with dilute nitric acid (acid 1, water 19), the wavy surface common to Damascus steel will be more pronounced. See STEEL; DAMASCUS STEEL.