King Tut's dagger--a blade of meteroritic iron

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Still, based upon my own experience in working with meteoritic material, which is not inconsiderable, I do find it very difficult to believe it can successfully cold forged --- but I suppose it does depend upon the meteorite.

For it to work, the meteorite needs the right range of chemical composition, and not too many defects/inclusions (which means corrosion can be a problem). Plenty of meteorites that will shatter if you try to hot-forge them, too.

Similar problems with cold-forging telluric iron. There are huge pieces of telluric iron in Greenland that weren't used for forging (useful as anvils, though), since high carbon content (they're basically cast iron in composition) makes the iron impossible to work (at least cold).

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Just a thought Timo:- are we talking about cold forging, or cold work?

I've just a done quick scan of the material you have supplied links to, and although I have picked up "cold work", I have not yet seen "cold forge". Cold forging means that you work the material at a black heat, in other words you bring it to a red heat, let the material lose its heat until it is black, then you work it with a hammer until it is cold. This technique is sometimes used to pack the edge of a blade.

Buchwald uses "forge" to mean hot-forging, "cold-work" to include cold-forging, and "cold hammering" to mean cold-forging.

The Greenland iron is worked at room temperature, without being heated. In the modern experiments reported by Buchwald and Mosdal (pg 18), the temperature never exceeded 50C (the piece being heated by the working). Room temperature, anvil and hammer.

Especially for small pieces of meteorite (and telluric iron), the forging was often a simple flattening to as thin a piece as feasible, with the cutting edge then sharpened by grinding. The telluric iron blades were usually still very small after flattening, and would be mounted along a support to produce a saw-like knife.