Subject: Re: Smelting and Meteorite Iron

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 01:14:29 -0500

Re: Smelting and Metorite Iron
I guess that I combined the two subjects when telling Bill Hochella of the
problems that I also had trying to get a small meteorite to stick together
when attempting to beat some elongation into the grains. We had the same
exact problem when we smelted and tried to forge a bloom of bog iron, ie, it
fell apart. A small amount of Manganese and Silicon would have kept it from
being "red short" (the term iron makers use for our problem), but we were
trying to be purists and that would have been cheating. Besides, early iron
makers did it for centuries without alloying of any kind. Guess they knew
some SECRETS.
Okay, Bill's question on Meteorite Iron led me do dig up some facts obtained
some time back from a metallurgist at NASA.  He told me that most meteoroids
(called this before they reach our atmosphere) come from the asteroid belt
which lies between Mars and Jupiter and were most likely formed at the same
time as the planets.  And get this, about five to six hundred pounds of
meteorites actually reach the Earths surface every day!  In addition to the
meteorites, about 20/25,000 lbs. of space dust also reachs the Earths surface
every day (called micrometeorites).
So, about 70% of the Earth is covered by water, and only about 10% of the
meteorites are of the iron/nickel variety (the rest are rocky/iron/crap).
 Let's see thats time 365 days a year times 100,000 years since Neandertals
started using tools times the 10% of the meteorites that are fe/ni (so about
50/60#/day) times the 30% of Earth that is dry land equals about 5,500 to
6,500# per year or 5-1/2 to 6-1/2 billion pounds of available nickel-iron
meteorites just there to be picked up.  Now what in the heck are we doing
wasting our time on the internet when we could be out there picking up nearly
pure iron for the taking. Why I'm surprised that we're not tripping over this
stuff.  How about you Ralph, is the ground in Sweden litered with meteorites?
 Send me a couple golf ball sized if you would.  Thank you in advance,
Mike Schermerhorn
The Blacksmiths Shop
Star Ship Enterprise

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From: Ralph Snel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 12:53:35 MET

>                           Why I'm surprised that we're not tripping over this

Well, actually I have a colleague (I'm PhD student in astronomy) who went
to such a place. Somewhere in Chile a _big_ meteorite broke up in the
atmosphere and spread junk over an area of several square kilometers. It's
been quite looted by meteorite hunters, but since this is a desert and
nobody comes there, a lot was still left. He finally found the right spot
and picked up hundreds of kilos of meteorite, ranging from large chunks
weighing many kgs, to bags full of dust.
Pity that iron rusts...
BTW: What makes you think that all those meteorites fell in Sweden? :)

Ralph Snel
[email-masked]
Sweden