Sometimes the risk of publicizing the patent and losing the trademark secret to competitors was too great. There’s still plenty of space to patent these methods if rediscovered even if referencing prior art
Much of the steel making knowledge in the US has been lost forever. They used to make the best steel in the World. It's not so easy to just rediscover these things, some of it was luck and now that knowledge is gone.
@@_droid The fact that it happened like that is a disservice and a shame upon humanity. Probably have less collapsing buildings with the good steel if People weren't obsessed with greed and their personal hoards of wealth.
My grandfather worked at stelco his entire career. He is named as the inventor on one of their patents for an improved type of rock bolt. The main innovation was that it was hollow, which allowed for the bolts to be grouted in after they were already set and to detect movement in the rock away from the face
Grandfather worked at Stelco Hamilton for 32 years. Not entirely sure what he did but he had dozens of “LECO” boxes with computer wire, this wire, that wire.. Didn’t know how much Stelco has their hands into back in the day. Doing a siding job maybe 8 years ago now, pulling off the old metal siding and on the back of every piece is stamped Stelco. Had no idea they made siding back then. Now I sit on my break down the road at NSC working with trains, something we both had a vast love for. Been 3 years since he left, 2 months after becoming a great grandfather. Had a birthday party planned the weekend after his birthday where he was going to meet his great grandson for the first time. Didn’t even get to Tuesday, or his birthday. RIP Craig. ❤❤
@@JohnSmith-gp2xq I’m sure they already have. I’ve gotten a good amount of his model trains after he passed, and I just recently finished building a train table for my boys. I’ll come home after work to find trains on the floor, off the track etc. I can only imagine what goes on while I’m at work, playing with trains.
Living in the Hammer for 55 years now. Still remember when we had over 25K employees at Stelco. Did alot of contract work there. I'm pretty sure just about everybody knows someone who's worked there. To bad it and Dofasco are pretty much gone now. Alot of jobs for alot of people would have been nice.
My grandfather worked at stelco his entire career. He is named as the inventor on one of their patents for an improved type of rock bolt. The main innovation was that it was hollow, which allowed for the bolts to be grouted in after they were already set and to detect movement in the rock away from the face
I’ve worked at stelco nanticoke and the amount of steel they produce is insane. I’ve worked inside of the blast furnaces, hot strip mill, I’ve worked inside of the finishers, down coilers, and roughers. Nothing but amazed at the engineering that goes into these places. Dark dirty spot but it’s a good place to work
@@unknownsoul1206 It's not like the old days. A lot of the process is automated now. But it depends on where you end up. I work as a millwright in the hot strip mill, and it's certainly one of the more clean spots. I would imagine the coke ovens would be a pretty crap spot to be. But in general it's decent money and you'll still be able to run around when you're older.
@@mikehill6099 Oh ok lol. I was concerned thinking we had a big ass steel mill down the road and I never even heard of it lol. Canada makes more sense. 🇺🇸❤️🇨🇦
On a related note, i used to work for an engine builder back in highschool. He had one room in his shop that was extremely well insulated and sealed with excellent heat and cooling. He always kept it at a very exact temperature. Before assembly, he would put all the parts, tools, assembly grease, etc in there. Everything needed to build he would have in there for a few days so that everything would be a specific known temperature. When he assembled it, the tolerances would all be exact tolerances he measured because everything was all the same temperature and expansion. Except him, but there wasn't much he could do about that, heh.
If he was a serious engine builder he would have slept in the room with the parts for a few days as well! Jk, that's some serious attention to detail and impressive. 👍🏻
Passion for perfection used to drive our trades, but we've sucked all the respect out of working for a living. You can't have quality without respecting the craftsman.
the temp was 68F.. that is the temp where metal dimensions are constant, i worked in a gauge making shop that made carbide ring and plug gauges and the "final homing" room was kept at a constant 68F and we had heat sinks to put the carbide plugs on to remove the heat from after diamond paste lapping them to size.
I lost my mentor 10 years ago, please ask all the questions you can of yours. Tomorrow is never promised, especially with these knowledgeable oldtimers. It's scary to think of the knowledge they were not able to pass on...
or just study metallurgy, there are no secrets in metal science. My granfather was a blacksmith for 60 years, i was teaching him alot once i finished my degree.
What happened to America's toolmakers, expert machinists? Their works were pieces of art comparable to the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism. They passed away. No one wanted the apprenticeships. Manual machining and grinding can be a dirty, hazardous brains-on business requiring skills today's CNC computers have not yet equaled the old-timers' artistic quality and precision. To many metallurgists with limited understanding of their metals and alloys. No experience in the shop. ☆ Trump 2024 ☆ Americans have not passed down their expertise because manufacturing left high-taxes and extortionary regulations of the Democraps and Rinos. Who knows the smell of proper gringing speeds or sees the color to temperature relationships? Few, and those that can are sometimes unable to acquire the fine dexterity necessary to produce properly "polished" pieces. China uses slave blacksmiths and CNC computers to crank out the inferior crap we have now.
@@clairpahlavi wow, that was a story. none of it true but saw the trump thing so im guessing im dealing with the poorly educated. tools, metals all that shit is far superior today than it has ever been. From your lack of knowledge you probably didnt need to tell me you voted trump. We could all tell.
I currently work in stelco Hamilton works as a 3rd party. Most of the mills were demolished or used as a warehouse. They demolished E furnace recently, putting the last nail in stelco Hamilton works coffin on making steel. They still make amazing steel.
US industry gutted by/from Chinese / foreign manufacturing and our own government selling out... sad but true. They did the same thing to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana (companies like PGI, Cityworks, Citgo) all sold / owned by foreigners for tariffs and percentages that only go to the government goons... all the money and labor goes out / leaves the country... that money was supposed to be for you and your children... now all the materials, money and modality are all gone, you got sold out by corrupt child r@pists while you were working your ass off in order to keep up with their inflation.
Living in the Hammer for 55 years now. Still remember when we had over 25K employees at Stelco. Did alot of contract work there. I'm pretty sure just about everybody knows someone who's worked there. To bad it and Dofasco are pretty much gone now. Alot of jobs for alot of people would have been nice.
@furerorban9324 They we a force to be reckoned with back in their hay day. Dofasco is definitely not as large as they once were. But they still produce a lot of steel. I've worked in their mills for a few years now. It's always a treat to hear the stories from the old timers.
I actually working in a plate finishing mill and a plate mill at BHP Port Kembla here in Australia nearly 40 years ago. Hot slabs would be sent down our rolling mill and would eventually be rolled down to the desired thickness before going across a cooling bed, would go through a leveller before going down a guillotine or rotary line where they would be cut to with and length. We also processed floor or checker plate and our finishing mill also processed both magnetic and non magnetic stainless steel. Have always found the whole process very interesting and videos like this really shows you how steel in processed elsewhere in the world. Thanks so much for sharing. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Grandfather worked at Stelco Hamilton for 32 years. Not entirely sure what he did but he had dozens of “LECO” boxes with computer wire, this wire, that wire.. Didn’t know how much Stelco has their hands into back in the day. Doing a siding job maybe 8 years ago now, pulling off the old metal siding and on the back of every piece is stamped Stelco. Had no idea they made siding back then. Now I sit on my break down the road at NSC working with trains, something we both had a vast love for.
One of my college instructiors worked at the Sydney Steel Mill in Nova Scotia in the 1980s-90s. He said they used the 'cold rolled' method for at least some of their steel. Not sure what company they produced for, but I remember him telling me one of the 'automated process controller' representatives from the 'head office' of whichever process controller they used (want to say it was AB, Allen-Bradley, but I dont really recall now) began his work life as a literal janitor, but picked things up along the way, and became an expert in his field. I think he also said that that particular career path is all but closed off now. Gotta get those certs first now..
Yup, sadly there are very few of the guys(and gals) who were grandfathered in. The true irony? They typically know thier trade FAR better then folks coming in with expensive certs and degrees. Why? Because you knew your shit or you sought life elsewhere
@@philippickles693 Unfortunatley, after the plant closed, it left a lasting 'gift' to the folks in the surrounding area, known locally as the 'Tar Ponds'. It's suspected of causing a massive spike in cancer cases in the area. Back around 2000, a former worker from the plant, named Don Deleskie took it upon himself to start the 'unofficial' clean up of the site. He literally donned rubber boots, waded into it with a shovel and a bucket and got going at it. It helped bring national attention to what was referred to as 'one of' the dirtiest industrial waste sites in North America. I want to say there was a locale in New Jersey that was worse, but he got the ball rolling, and it's since been cleaned up - well, encapsulated in many many tons of concrete - and the area has had been revitalized from when I was a kid. idk why that story just came to mind, but I couldn't stop typing it out once I started. Fun fact: My instructor, Ed Petruskavich, fwiw, said that Hyundai had a specific request for all the lowest grade steel they made for either their auto production, or their auto manufacturing plants. Obv, I can't know the truth to that anecdote, but it got a good chuckle in class. He was a great instructor. I remember asking him one time why don't we just use magnets to create a 'perpetually driven' motor. He told me once I figure out how to do it to let him know....
I worked in an R&D lab in the 90s and a ton of the leading engineers had started out in lesser roles but worked hard in the lab and picked stuff up for years until they basically had the equivalent of a Master's or PhD's knowledge in their niche field. Nowadays, companies focus too much on degrees and pieces of paper instead of work ethic and promoting/growing from within
its not the elders that were not valued, it was the patent system they didnt trust. Once you file a patent other people can view it, they are not supposed to copy it for a period of time, typically 20 years, but if you might not get caught it a huge skip in the research process.
which is why steel development has always been so slow - and why NASA had to cut gun barrels off the ww2 ghost fleet back in the 1970s in order to obtain seamless tubing for the shuttle engines (This is about the time the US government realised critical knowledge was being lost and sent out teams to trawl retirement homes before it was irretrievably gone - they reckon only 75% of the lore was saved and perhaps 10% of the actual knowledge behind the lore)
They did not want to patent their trade secrets, because the Patent system is about disclosure. The last for only 20 years, as opposed to Copyright, which is 70 years after the death of the author... which could be ~140 years or more for many books and songs, and Trademark, which can be indefinite. The company risks someone else Patenting this idea first. However, it could also extend the term they get to use it if they delay the Patent for some time before filing it. Further, once the concept of something like cold rolling is out, the Patent would only cover declared methods. So if another company had the concept, they could potentially achieve it by a new method. There are many really neat Patents from the late 90s, early 2000s which have become public domain which allow for small manufacturers to spring up or even for home users to begin crafting and fabricating hobbies. There are a couple I've used personally. Trade secrets.
Personally, I prefer the European system because of that. By having evidence that company A had been using an unpatented technique, company B couldn't patent it because of "prior art" by company A. Unfortunately, "prior art" is not part of the US patent system so stealing ideas is a business strategy.
@@Pantology_Enthusiast "prior art" still requires some form of disclosure. You can't just keep an invention secret, then when someone else applies for that patent suddenly reveal that you had it 4 years ago so it doesn't count. "Prior Art" may cover situations where you discussed the invention in a technical magazine, or a patent that was filed and not yet published. In the case of an invention kept secret when someone else files a patent, they may at best be allowed to continue using that invention. Maybe. ~~~~~~~~~~~ To copy-past wikipedia: Information kept secret, for instance, as a trade secret, is not usually prior art, provided that employees and others with access to the information are under a non-disclosure obligation. With such an obligation, the information is typically not regarded as prior art. Therefore, a patent may be granted on an invention, even though someone else already knew of the invention. A person who used an invention in secret may in some jurisdictions be able to claim "prior user rights" and thereby gain the right to continue using the invention. As a special exception, earlier-filed and unpublished patent applications do qualify as prior art as of their filing date in certain circumstances.
I like Elon Musk's attitude towards patents, that he thinks they're useless and a barrier to innovation. If someone can do better, they should be allowed to try without obstruction.
@@HiVizCamo Then why would you invest in researching new methods if your competitors can wait for you to pay for it, then copy your work? That leads to 'trade secrets' and non-disclosure. Non-disclosure leads to the general public and small businesses never gaining access to new inventions and methods. Case-in-point: "Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX says, “We have essentially no patents. Our primary long-term competition is China. If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”" -Elon's quote highlights a matter of legal enforcement on rogue nations like China. The Patent theft issue proves the disclosure versus secrecy point I made. When the patent system fails, business owners like Elon Musk become secretive, and it stalls the spread of new technology.
My grandfather worked in a shipyard and they swore by stelco.......I was buying a fishing trawler and my grandfather went and prevented me from buying a newer boat over the one built with stelco plate and 25 years later that other boat is gone to rust yet my girl is still going strong
I've worked in a Hot Rolling Steel mill since 2003...we still use control rolling to this day...determined by the grade and chemistry of the steel we are rolling. Everything said is accurate, we also employ heat treating to gain strength through a more uniform grain structure along the centerline.
Im always going to respect my elders. But im from a steel town, im 3 gen ironworker, i just did my time on the metallurgical side of my steelmaking. This reminds me of every oldtimer in the mill, they worked there 35 years knows enough to boast, but not enough to explain.
@@kipclifton9403 Good old Thomas Seebeck...remember kid, the things you learned were invented by men more similar to the old guys in the mill, than this generation...you don't have to be able to explain physics or physiology to be the greatest athlete in the world...the men who knew how, did 1000x more than the men who knew why.
@@allhopeabandon7831It's always a trip seeing younger generations try to talk down on the older ones... Not realizing they're playing life on "easy mode" because every shred of knowledge they learned about in a book or piece of technology they use that makes things "so much better/easier" only exists because those older generations discovered or invented it 💯
if they knew enough to explain, they are a liability to the company, so were actively prevented from finding out Most people are happy to "do as instructed" and not know the reasoning. This is why the USA (and certain other countries) is one of the most bureaucratically hidebound countries in trhe world ("We do it this way because we've always done it this way" - with no understanding of WHY it was done that way - leads to such inanities as an armed guard for a bench seat on a military base because sometime in the past someone needed to be there for a day to keep people off the wet paint)
This very thought has kept me awake on many occasions. I've always wondered what magic material a caveman might have accidentally made in his muddy clay forge that is lost to time. Who knows what things we might have today if they haven't fallen through the cracks of time
The stuff that survives is the stuff that gets passed down. (i.e. published to somewhere people see and use it, and where it's accessible for those who look)
I like to think that Humans have seen an image of everything that has been, or will be, staring at the sparks rising from a fire, the mind taking snapshots of red pixels.
I worked at Inland Steel Co. East Chicago Indiana from 1976 till 1989. Started labor at the 12" Bar mill, then labor on a Blast Furnace reline, Then Wireman for Field Forces, then labor at +3 Blast Furnace then labor at +4 BOF then back to Wireman at Field Forces. Then I quit. Lots of stories.
My dad worked for the Hamilton plant of Stelco as a sub-contractor for all their HVAC systems. I remember getting a tour of Number 2 Rod Mill when I was about 10. Place -amazed- me. I always wanted to work there. Then US Steel bought it and absolutely buggered it up, all the sub contract work was ousted and even the long time Union guys for Stelco were left hanging in the wind. Sad :(
I used to work for Combustion Engineering, in their Tennessee plant that built nuclear reactors. They would stack 12 inch thick plates ( 55 tons each) and put them in a furnace. When they hit 1400 drgrees, they were put into a well of salt water kept at a constant 45 degrees. This would strengthen the carbon steel by aligning the molecules. There was no steam or vapor, and the water didn't even touch the plate as it entered the water. It was something to watch.
The raw materials is one part of the “magic”. The other part is not over stressing the material. Paste of work is critical in many forging processes and in some cases speeding up the process will yield maybe more products but lesser quality.
Its true story of how some of the best plate steel that built the American Navy and other ships in the U.S. inventory. Also used for Military Tanks, bridges, Artilery.
"trade secrets" is why we can't replicate so much of the old stuff. Such things were deliberately not documented to avoid competitors getting hold of it
"Trade secrets" are still documented internally, just not publicly. If they weren't documented internally, that company would soon lose the ability to do that work themselves. Cold work wasn't some completely unknown technique. It has been around for centuries, and done industrially nearly as long as hot working. It's just hard and expensive to do, because cold metal is stronger than hot metal, requiring more powerful equipment to work it.
@@wagnerrp a lot of trade secrets _are_ documented, but in the 1970s NASA discovered that nobody knew how to make seamless tubing anymore. The problem is, if they're no longer relevant they get tossed in the skip not into public domain On top of that there's a lot of "lore" that isn't deemed worth documenting but is actually utterly critical to the business process
@@wagnerrp That's only partly true. There are places where significant bodies of institutional knowledge is just stored in the heads of a few old-guard engineers. This happens less nowdays, as companies are more aware of the risk of losing those secrets, but it's never 100% eliminated.
@@MrFelblood None of that knowledge would be stored in a patent anyway. Patents are deliberately vague, only providing the minimum amount of information necessary, and it's left up to the "skilled implementer" to figure out the fine details.
@@miscbits6399 " in the 1970s NASA discovered that nobody knew how to make seamless tubing anymore." uh.. extrusion? couldn't have been that hard to figure out
Makes for a great story from a mentor, but technology eventually does it better. Today these processes are standard and even better with the advent of materials science.
I learned so much about steel and metals from guys working in logging in Forks Wa. How to weld broken steel that had magnetism in it. One guy had the contact with Washington state on repairing all of the metal bridges damaged by collision. He would use a rose bud to heat and shrink metal. Those guys forgot more than I could learn!
It's always interesting how places will use patents strategically either by making generic ones to prevent people from innovating in an area they are focus on or by not filing them because they are so confident what they have is not something anyone else will easily find.
As I understand when they do it under the 1650 say 1200, they are applying less that half of the tonnage they normally use to roll it. Pretty cool stuff.
That sounds like the description I head from my Grandfather who worked in the Rail Rolling Mill a the Workington Iron & Steel Company in Cumberland England, they made rails for Railways/Rail-roads that were exported around the world, these rails were extremely wear resistant and lasted for decades in service, every thing was done by eye no kind of instrumentation was used, they also did small batch special purpose steels for the nuclear and armaments industries in the UK.
It is chemistry past the point steel becomes magnetic it forms large crystals and will be harder and more brittle, below that and you get a mild soft steel... What your talking about is rolling it at temp to prevent work hardening and then the slow cold passes are to cause work hardening so the steel is hardened like cold rolled without over hardening it which would make it brittle. Tempering is amazing.
Worked at Birmingham steel for years. Depending on what grade steel is being produced, we would do the same damn thing. It's actually how cold rolled is produced. Our steel is in ships, skyscrapers, bridges, and your backyard gate. We were the largest steel producer on the west coast. A lot of engineers considered ours to be the most consistent. So, there you go. Be proud of where you come from, but just know that there us always someone doing it just a bit better it's called humility. Learn it, live it.
Work hardening like this, at relatively cold temperature for steel, is about the only thing mild steel is capable of. Its amazing how smart our ancestors are, because this was done to plate armor back in the day too, using slightly better than mild steel.
One of my favorite things is experts and professionals who just... know their shit. And it doesn't even only apply to the industrial trades. Y'all ever talk to someone who works with any sort of dough about it? They can tell you if a 50lb batch is 2oz short of yeast by texture and smell.
That is why, as is said, steel gets into your blood: the pleasure of doing something well, shaping and manipulaing the material based on profound understanding of its nature and response to practical physics.
I am a carpenter / builder , I love having a beer with old guys and asking them questions about how they problem solved or did certain jobs . I ALWAYS learn so much from them !! The best way to learn are from guys with many decades of experience . If you can , always try to work on a job with them or ask them to come to your job if they are retired . You will learn so much , especially if you show them the respect they deserve . They are the best friends in the industry a tradesman can have !! 👏
The (rollers)in charge at Stelco would slam the steel ingots into the big super strong rolling press machines at high speed and pressure. The specially designed chrome plated giant rollers essentially hammered the crap out the steel. They were replicating what a blacksmith could achieve with his hammer. The pounding at critical temperatures was essential for the super high strength steel. They made skelp steel for shipbuilding and the plate mill made armour plate for the US Navy ships. They had a coil box where they would wind the coil one way then unwind it and rewind it the other way. Every so often a cobble would occur and a flying strip of steel went crashing everywhere, the mill would shut down for 15 or 20 minutes for the burners to slice it up into pieces so the cranes could drag it away. No American mill could match Stelco.
At one point my father was the sales manager for cold rolled and coated rolled for Stelco. Forced into retirement after 33 years. He never forgave them for that.
Wish I understood more about metallurgy. And chemistry... And physics. And knew enough English to make it through this video without a thesaurus and google in each hand and the yellow pages on my head.
I work at one of the companies in hamilton that fixes the trucks for stelco and defasco. Always like driving through the property to Dave at the diesel shop.
Besides folding steel onto itself, I wonder if the toughness of Damascus steel used this cold rolling principle: Hammer while very hot, wait a bit, hammer again when the sword has cooled a bit, etc.
both my grandfather's worked at stelco, they both contributed greatly to many of the techniques and processes that this guy speaks of. they were even recognized as some of the most important people within the company. they invented so many things for Stelco they had their name on almost every patent
Chemistry is the branch of science that studies matter, its properties, composition, structure, and the changes it undergoes during reactions. It primarily focuses on how different substances interact, combine, and transform, often on an atomic or molecular level. What is considered chemistry includes chemical reactions, bonding, states of matter, energy changes, and the study of elements, compounds, and mixtures. It can involve practical applications like drug creation or material engineering, or theoretical work like molecular modeling. everything involves chemistry since everything is made of matter and interacts through chemical principles, but the label “chemistry” is typically used when specifically studying or manipulating these processes.
@@drewpaloop6439 This is definitely considered material science. Yes, chemistry is involved, but chemically identical materials can have very different physical properties depending on how they are processed. Materials science combines physics, chemistry, engineering, and manufacturing.
@@Devotee777 So, you just said it; chemistry is the whole and material science is the branch. Thank you for agreeing. The only defense you could have is that it is physics because if comes before chemistry. have a good day
@@drewpaloop6439 No, that's clearly not what I said. Did you have a degree in the sciences? Material science or as it is often called, material science and engineering, is typically housed within the engineering school. It's not a branch of the natural sciences at all. Your only defense is perhaps that it is misnamed which led to your confusion about the matter😐
Companies today would never do this because they don't care about strength of materials anymore. In the eyes of modern hedge funds these kinds of practices are considered a huge waste of resources and whoever came up with these kinds of methods would be fired and blacklisted from their industry.
@@beowulf_of_wall_st In modern low spec manufacturing quality is not only not a concern, but it's considered a financial loss. Most firms would prefer to sell shitty items that break easily and will be quickly replaced. We live in an age where there's very little that's actually worth buying. You're always best off to become a minimalist, and learn to get by on used or homemade goods whenever possible.
@@franklincord2812 my dude steel foundries make steel today and they care about its strength, and today's steel is the best steel has ever been. you have learned one narrow principle that applies to certain consumer goods and you are acting like that's it's a universal law
@@beowulf_of_wall_st The principle I'm describing applies to all consumer goods. The only time that strength of materials applies is in B2B sales. My original claim, that nothing that you can buy at the consumer level is really worth having, and that you're always best off to be a minimalist and buy as little as possible, is absolutely true. We live in an age where everything is garbage, and if it wasn't for the government then average people wouldn't even be able to find reasonably safe food to eat.
i was in commercial drywall and we used to do all the framing. if we framed a big ceiling that had to be fire rated sometimes 2 layers of drywall (this been 30 years ago). but we had to tie wires to and sometimes if the ceiling was gonna be really heavy we had to lay this steel on the topside of the ceiling and screw it down real well. it was about an inch and ½ wide with the edges rolled over about a half a turn, well we attached the wires to that steel then the wires would attach to the structure at to other end. they used to call that steel cold roll and i never understood why. maybe " cold" for the pressing cause it was still at least a ¼ thick and "roll" for the edges? or " cold roll " just cause of the steel itself? this explanation of steel forming made me think of that.
Every process involving steel becomes a trade-off between toughness and strength. The final use should determine which quality needs to be optimized. This is a widely utilized concept, but this company just performed the optimization more accurately and effectively. Well done! ( He is wrong when he says it's not about chemistry
As a metallurgist, i always love to hear how science wasnt figured out back then, and hkw it absolutely isnt either today. Before, the idea of putting metal into a powder seemd like absolute craziness, and nowcwe habe additive manufacturing and LPBF. Next, we're going to have large scale amorphous metals and high entropy alloys and I'm so, so ready ofor the insane future that it entails.
It's amazing that Stelco has been around for over 125 years and despite being bought and sold by US Steel and having their customer base stripped by the Americans, they're still making steel that no one else can make.
The largest reason for a lack of progress in manufacturing is because the younger generation isn’t trying to grasp as much as the previous generations abilities and how they were pushing them. Good on you for recording this.
I noticed a few things over the years. When handleing firearms, German and in a few cases American firarms have a different feel and steel quality. Less Rust, dense, clean looking and feels nice. German old school anvils are different as well they "sing" instead of thunk when you hit them. We lost or burried quality and secrets long ago we are worse off for it.
Same reason we can't replicate the Saturn 5 rocket. Bunch of welders and engineers came to parts that just did not function the way the plans asked for and they improvised. 100's of little changes and tweaks. And not a single one ever documented. Best rocket ever made, and we can't make it again because of this.
Back when you learned as an apprentice, you traded labor to learn skills. It was the "trade" and yes secrets could enable the upper hand on competition. Lots of good men built today on the blood, sweat, and tears yesterday.
Today pretty standard for high strength construction steel. But awesome that it is around for so long. Was it standardized in any way? I mean... as a designer today I can't rely on properties that are not standardized properties of a steel type. Even if a magical steel comes around that has twice the yield strength while still being tough enough, I can't take advantage of that (legally) in most cases, if it isn't listed in some standard. This is Europe. But I'd expect similar difficulties in the US. I can design something with it. But when it crashes down and someone gets hurt, my rear is on the line for violating design guidelines using a non standard steel.
A trade secret for my old workplace was that we only did heat treatment on our tooling that we made on the night shift. During the day.. The cooling bath (200 litres of oil.) Was stone cold. ( 2-3 C ) So it took a lot to heat the oil. During the day it slowly heated up to around 16 C. But during the night that temp dropped again. It would take a lot of gas to heat the oil.. So we did the heat treatment on tooling early in the night shifts. The oil was slightly warmed and reduced the shock shatter that could occur during heat treatment. Just a few degrees could reduce the warping and shattering of 1600C tooling steel. Saved the company a fortune in wastage. We also had a 4am slot for "Tempering" so the oil was still warm from the heat treatment but not too cold.
2300 F is a high cone 10 in ceramics. I got to fire some Roku pottery. I remember watching the color of materials in the kiln to make sure they got up to the right temperature. That’s how you make sure the inside of the pot got hot enough. It’s would have to glow to the right color.
when people wonder why old engineering designs are difficult to replicate, and it's because the knowledge didn't get passed down
Sometimes the risk of publicizing the patent and losing the trademark secret to competitors was too great. There’s still plenty of space to patent these methods if rediscovered even if referencing prior art
Much of the steel making knowledge in the US has been lost forever. They used to make the best steel in the World. It's not so easy to just rediscover these things, some of it was luck and now that knowledge is gone.
@@_droid The fact that it happened like that is a disservice and a shame upon humanity. Probably have less collapsing buildings with the good steel if People weren't obsessed with greed and their personal hoards of wealth.
Imagine what the architects of the pyramids knew...
@@WingsOfADream1 they had phones....you know, to call the aliens for help
My grandfather worked at stelco his entire career. He is named as the inventor on one of their patents for an improved type of rock bolt. The main innovation was that it was hollow, which allowed for the bolts to be grouted in after they were already set and to detect movement in the rock away from the face
Pics or it didn't happen
Lies.. My pappy was the one who made the hollow bolt.
Fools be really arguing over the bolt lol
@@lilvegasbasc-se7en-0-duece67trolls need attention. So here you go.
Im their grandfather, they're both right.
Grandfather worked at Stelco Hamilton for 32 years. Not entirely sure what he did but he had dozens of “LECO” boxes with computer wire, this wire, that wire.. Didn’t know how much Stelco has their hands into back in the day. Doing a siding job maybe 8 years ago now, pulling off the old metal siding and on the back of every piece is stamped Stelco. Had no idea they made siding back then. Now I sit on my break down the road at NSC working with trains, something we both had a vast love for.
Been 3 years since he left, 2 months after becoming a great grandfather. Had a birthday party planned the weekend after his birthday where he was going to meet his great grandson for the first time. Didn’t even get to Tuesday, or his birthday. RIP Craig. ❤❤
😢 awesome sad story if that makes sense.
They'll meet eachother with time
@@JohnSmith-gp2xq I’m sure they already have. I’ve gotten a good amount of his model trains after he passed, and I just recently finished building a train table for my boys. I’ll come home after work to find trains on the floor, off the track etc. I can only imagine what goes on while I’m at work, playing with trains.
Living in the Hammer for 55 years now. Still remember when we had over 25K employees at Stelco. Did alot of contract work there. I'm pretty sure just about everybody knows someone who's worked there. To bad it and Dofasco are pretty much gone now. Alot of jobs for alot of people would have been nice.
My grandfather worked at stelco his entire career. He is named as the inventor on one of their patents for an improved type of rock bolt. The main innovation was that it was hollow, which allowed for the bolts to be grouted in after they were already set and to detect movement in the rock away from the face
I’ve worked at stelco nanticoke and the amount of steel they produce is insane. I’ve worked inside of the blast furnaces, hot strip mill, I’ve worked inside of the finishers, down coilers, and roughers. Nothing but amazed at the engineering that goes into these places. Dark dirty spot but it’s a good place to work
How's the work? Gonna be able to run around after you retire, or fixing to be chair bound?
@@unknownsoul1206 It's not like the old days. A lot of the process is automated now. But it depends on where you end up. I work as a millwright in the hot strip mill, and it's certainly one of the more clean spots. I would imagine the coke ovens would be a pretty crap spot to be. But in general it's decent money and you'll still be able to run around when you're older.
Nanticoke? In Pennsylvania??
@gussampson5029 Southern Ontario, Canada
@@mikehill6099 Oh ok lol. I was concerned thinking we had a big ass steel mill down the road and I never even heard of it lol. Canada makes more sense. 🇺🇸❤️🇨🇦
On a related note, i used to work for an engine builder back in highschool. He had one room in his shop that was extremely well insulated and sealed with excellent heat and cooling. He always kept it at a very exact temperature.
Before assembly, he would put all the parts, tools, assembly grease, etc in there. Everything needed to build he would have in there for a few days so that everything would be a specific known temperature.
When he assembled it, the tolerances would all be exact tolerances he measured because everything was all the same temperature and expansion.
Except him, but there wasn't much he could do about that, heh.
If he was a serious engine builder he would have slept in the room with the parts for a few days as well! Jk, that's some serious attention to detail and impressive. 👍🏻
Passion for perfection used to drive our trades, but we've sucked all the respect out of working for a living. You can't have quality without respecting the craftsman.
the temp was 68F.. that is the temp where metal dimensions are constant, i worked in a gauge making shop that made carbide ring and plug gauges and the "final homing" room was kept at a constant 68F and we had heat sinks to put the carbide plugs on to remove the heat from after diamond paste lapping them to size.
Superb
Thats god tier commitment and precision, well done
I lost my mentor 10 years ago, please ask all the questions you can of yours. Tomorrow is never promised, especially with these knowledgeable oldtimers. It's scary to think of the knowledge they were not able to pass on...
Yep, and we will have to relearn it all someday.
Thank NAFTA Our Gov Lies
or just study metallurgy, there are no secrets in metal science. My granfather was a blacksmith for 60 years, i was teaching him alot once i finished my degree.
What happened to America's toolmakers, expert machinists?
Their works were pieces of art comparable to the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism.
They passed away. No one wanted the apprenticeships. Manual machining and grinding can be a dirty, hazardous brains-on business requiring skills today's CNC computers have not yet equaled the old-timers' artistic quality and precision.
To many metallurgists with limited understanding of their metals and alloys. No experience in the shop.
☆ Trump 2024 ☆
Americans have not passed down their expertise because manufacturing left high-taxes and extortionary regulations of the Democraps and Rinos.
Who knows the smell of proper gringing speeds or sees the color to temperature relationships? Few, and those that can are sometimes unable to acquire the fine dexterity necessary to produce properly "polished" pieces. China uses slave blacksmiths and CNC computers to crank out the inferior crap we have now.
@@clairpahlavi wow, that was a story. none of it true but saw the trump thing so im guessing im dealing with the poorly educated.
tools, metals all that shit is far superior today than it has ever been. From your lack of knowledge you probably didnt need to tell me you voted trump. We could all tell.
all at night too, must've been able to visually guide temperatures. thanks to the mentor! learn something new everyday
Those rolling Mills / steel mills are dank dungeons in day or night
The rates for electricity are lower at night. The time of day has no effect on the properties of steel.
@@g1sokool669!!! yooooo thanks, I had no clue, happy friday!
@@g1sokool669 should've ended with a "?" instead of a "." lol, happy friday!
You're the asshole at work that knows the least, i guarantee it .@g1sokool669
I currently work in stelco Hamilton works as a 3rd party. Most of the mills were demolished or used as a warehouse. They demolished E furnace recently, putting the last nail in stelco Hamilton works coffin on making steel. They still make amazing steel.
US industry gutted by/from Chinese / foreign manufacturing and our own government selling out... sad but true.
They did the same thing to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana (companies like PGI, Cityworks, Citgo) all sold / owned by foreigners for tariffs and percentages that only go to the government goons... all the money and labor goes out / leaves the country... that money was supposed to be for you and your children... now all the materials, money and modality are all gone, you got sold out by corrupt child r@pists while you were working your ass off in order to keep up with their inflation.
Living in the Hammer for 55 years now. Still remember when we had over 25K employees at Stelco. Did alot of contract work there. I'm pretty sure just about everybody knows someone who's worked there. To bad it and Dofasco are pretty much gone now. Alot of jobs for alot of people would have been nice.
@furerorban9324 They we a force to be reckoned with back in their hay day. Dofasco is definitely not as large as they once were. But they still produce a lot of steel. I've worked in their mills for a few years now. It's always a treat to hear the stories from the old timers.
@@furerorban1488 thank you to all our governments who sent all our work to China!
@@KennethDavid-n8n its actually a European conglomerate that bought out hamilton steel. Neither major steel company was sold to china
I actually working in a plate finishing mill and a plate mill at BHP Port Kembla here in Australia nearly 40 years ago. Hot slabs would be sent down our rolling mill and would eventually be rolled down to the desired thickness before going across a cooling bed, would go through a leveller before going down a guillotine or rotary line where they would be cut to with and length. We also processed floor or checker plate and our finishing mill also processed both magnetic and non magnetic stainless steel. Have always found the whole process very interesting and videos like this really shows you how steel in processed elsewhere in the world. Thanks so much for sharing. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
It's a real shame what happened to Newcastle, good jobs lost forever
Old school fab guys with knowledge. Open your ears and ask questions when men like this speak.
Grandfather worked at Stelco Hamilton for 32 years. Not entirely sure what he did but he had dozens of “LECO” boxes with computer wire, this wire, that wire.. Didn’t know how much Stelco has their hands into back in the day. Doing a siding job maybe 8 years ago now, pulling off the old metal siding and on the back of every piece is stamped Stelco. Had no idea they made siding back then. Now I sit on my break down the road at NSC working with trains, something we both had a vast love for.
Indeed!
@@furerorban1488 I mean, if you could not steal other people’s posts to try and make then your own, that would be neat.
RIGHT,'' KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. PASS IT DOWN.
They COOKED that steel slow like a chefs would a sauce. And rolled out in temp intervals like a pastry chef making croissants
One of my college instructiors worked at the Sydney Steel Mill in Nova Scotia in the 1980s-90s. He said they used the 'cold rolled' method for at least some of their steel. Not sure what company they produced for, but I remember him telling me one of the 'automated process controller' representatives from the 'head office' of whichever process controller they used (want to say it was AB, Allen-Bradley, but I dont really recall now) began his work life as a literal janitor, but picked things up along the way, and became an expert in his field. I think he also said that that particular career path is all but closed off now. Gotta get those certs first now..
Yup, sadly there are very few of the guys(and gals) who were grandfathered in. The true irony? They typically know thier trade FAR better then folks coming in with expensive certs and degrees. Why? Because you knew your shit or you sought life elsewhere
I work at the Stelco coke ovens and our older rails are all stamped Sydney Steel.. some structural steel is stamped Algoma
I work at the Stelco coke ovens and our older rails are all stamped Sydney Steel.. some structural steel is stamped Algoma
@@philippickles693 Unfortunatley, after the plant closed, it left a lasting 'gift' to the folks in the surrounding area, known locally as the 'Tar Ponds'. It's suspected of causing a massive spike in cancer cases in the area. Back around 2000, a former worker from the plant, named Don Deleskie took it upon himself to start the 'unofficial' clean up of the site. He literally donned rubber boots, waded into it with a shovel and a bucket and got going at it. It helped bring national attention to what was referred to as 'one of' the dirtiest industrial waste sites in North America. I want to say there was a locale in New Jersey that was worse, but he got the ball rolling, and it's since been cleaned up - well, encapsulated in many many tons of concrete - and the area has had been revitalized from when I was a kid. idk why that story just came to mind, but I couldn't stop typing it out once I started.
Fun fact: My instructor, Ed Petruskavich, fwiw, said that Hyundai had a specific request for all the lowest grade steel they made for either their auto production, or their auto manufacturing plants. Obv, I can't know the truth to that anecdote, but it got a good chuckle in class. He was a great instructor. I remember asking him one time why don't we just use magnets to create a 'perpetually driven' motor. He told me once I figure out how to do it to let him know....
I worked in an R&D lab in the 90s and a ton of the leading engineers had started out in lesser roles but worked hard in the lab and picked stuff up for years until they basically had the equivalent of a Master's or PhD's knowledge in their niche field.
Nowadays, companies focus too much on degrees and pieces of paper instead of work ethic and promoting/growing from within
Materials in mechanical engineering had us map the material phase curves ! Cool to her them talk about this !!
Incredible, makes me sick to think how much knowledge is lost because our culture doesn't value our elders.
its not the elders that were not valued, it was the patent system they didnt trust. Once you file a patent other people can view it, they are not supposed to copy it for a period of time, typically 20 years, but if you might not get caught it a huge skip in the research process.
I'm just reading your comment here, and to be honest, all I'm seeing are facts.
My boss was the same way: we didn't want to patent.
But they took care of us otherwise. I was lucky to have worked for these folks.
This is the history of steel for thousands of years. Never let others know how you accomplish a better product.
which is why steel development has always been so slow - and why NASA had to cut gun barrels off the ww2 ghost fleet back in the 1970s in order to obtain seamless tubing for the shuttle engines
(This is about the time the US government realised critical knowledge was being lost and sent out teams to trawl retirement homes before it was irretrievably gone - they reckon only 75% of the lore was saved and perhaps 10% of the actual knowledge behind the lore)
@@miscbits6399 I'd hardly call going from ships to space ships in 30 years "slow"
They did not want to patent their trade secrets, because the Patent system is about disclosure. The last for only 20 years, as opposed to Copyright, which is 70 years after the death of the author... which could be ~140 years or more for many books and songs, and Trademark, which can be indefinite.
The company risks someone else Patenting this idea first. However, it could also extend the term they get to use it if they delay the Patent for some time before filing it.
Further, once the concept of something like cold rolling is out, the Patent would only cover declared methods. So if another company had the concept, they could potentially achieve it by a new method.
There are many really neat Patents from the late 90s, early 2000s which have become public domain which allow for small manufacturers to spring up or even for home users to begin crafting and fabricating hobbies.
There are a couple I've used personally.
Trade secrets.
Personally, I prefer the European system because of that.
By having evidence that company A had been using an unpatented technique, company B couldn't patent it because of "prior art" by company A.
Unfortunately, "prior art" is not part of the US patent system so stealing ideas is a business strategy.
@@Pantology_Enthusiast prior art is absolutely a consideration in US patent law
@@Pantology_Enthusiast "prior art" still requires some form of disclosure. You can't just keep an invention secret, then when someone else applies for that patent suddenly reveal that you had it 4 years ago so it doesn't count. "Prior Art" may cover situations where you discussed the invention in a technical magazine, or a patent that was filed and not yet published.
In the case of an invention kept secret when someone else files a patent, they may at best be allowed to continue using that invention. Maybe.
~~~~~~~~~~~
To copy-past wikipedia: Information kept secret, for instance, as a trade secret, is not usually prior art, provided that employees and others with access to the information are under a non-disclosure obligation. With such an obligation, the information is typically not regarded as prior art. Therefore, a patent may be granted on an invention, even though someone else already knew of the invention. A person who used an invention in secret may in some jurisdictions be able to claim "prior user rights" and thereby gain the right to continue using the invention. As a special exception, earlier-filed and unpublished patent applications do qualify as prior art as of their filing date in certain circumstances.
I like Elon Musk's attitude towards patents, that he thinks they're useless and a barrier to innovation. If someone can do better, they should be allowed to try without obstruction.
@@HiVizCamo Then why would you invest in researching new methods if your competitors can wait for you to pay for it, then copy your work?
That leads to 'trade secrets' and non-disclosure. Non-disclosure leads to the general public and small businesses never gaining access to new inventions and methods.
Case-in-point:
"Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX says, “We have essentially no patents. Our primary long-term competition is China. If we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.”"
-Elon's quote highlights a matter of legal enforcement on rogue nations like China. The Patent theft issue proves the disclosure versus secrecy point I made. When the patent system fails, business owners like Elon Musk become secretive, and it stalls the spread of new technology.
Finally something worth watching.
Thank You
dude YOU make the algorithm you clown
Dave is a veritable vault of incredible information! I really wish he would publish a book or a notebook of some sort.
My grandfather worked in a shipyard and they swore by stelco.......I was buying a fishing trawler and my grandfather went and prevented me from buying a newer boat over the one built with stelco plate and 25 years later that other boat is gone to rust yet my girl is still going strong
Old knowledge is good knowledge
So cool! I love the sharing of wisdom like this.
I've worked in a Hot Rolling Steel mill since 2003...we still use control rolling to this day...determined by the grade and chemistry of the steel we are rolling. Everything said is accurate, we also employ heat treating to gain strength through a more uniform grain structure along the centerline.
Imagine going back in time with the knowledge to build something like this. You would be a god.
Head to Germany or Japan in dubdubtwo and beat the outcome of the war.
Im always going to respect my elders. But im from a steel town, im 3 gen ironworker, i just did my time on the metallurgical side of my steelmaking.
This reminds me of every oldtimer in the mill, they worked there 35 years knows enough to boast, but not enough to explain.
How did the old timers measure the temperature so precisely without high tech sensors?
@@G5Ckxew thermocouples, about as simple as you can get, people like to say they have the melter eye, but they still rely on thermocouple,
@@kipclifton9403 Good old Thomas Seebeck...remember kid, the things you learned were invented by men more similar to the old guys in the mill, than this generation...you don't have to be able to explain physics or physiology to be the greatest athlete in the world...the men who knew how, did 1000x more than the men who knew why.
@@allhopeabandon7831It's always a trip seeing younger generations try to talk down on the older ones... Not realizing they're playing life on "easy mode" because every shred of knowledge they learned about in a book or piece of technology they use that makes things "so much better/easier" only exists because those older generations discovered or invented it 💯
if they knew enough to explain, they are a liability to the company, so were actively prevented from finding out
Most people are happy to "do as instructed" and not know the reasoning. This is why the USA (and certain other countries) is one of the most bureaucratically hidebound countries in trhe world
("We do it this way because we've always done it this way" - with no understanding of WHY it was done that way - leads to such inanities as an armed guard for a bench seat on a military base because sometime in the past someone needed to be there for a day to keep people off the wet paint)
Wow, a whole lifetimes worth of knowledge can be acquired and lost and be but a knick mark in the pillar of human metallurgical history.
This very thought has kept me awake on many occasions. I've always wondered what magic material a caveman might have accidentally made in his muddy clay forge that is lost to time. Who knows what things we might have today if they haven't fallen through the cracks of time
The stuff that survives is the stuff that gets passed down. (i.e. published to somewhere people see and use it, and where it's accessible for those who look)
We have only just discovered what made Roman concrete so durable compared to the modern mix. We can lose knowledge in a blink.
I like to think that Humans have seen an image of everything that has been, or will be, staring at the sparks rising from a fire, the mind taking snapshots of red pixels.
I worked at Inland Steel Co. East Chicago Indiana from 1976 till 1989. Started labor at the 12" Bar mill, then labor on a Blast Furnace reline, Then Wireman for Field Forces, then labor at +3 Blast Furnace then labor at +4 BOF then back to Wireman at Field Forces. Then I quit. Lots of stories.
My dad worked for the Hamilton plant of Stelco as a sub-contractor for all their HVAC systems. I remember getting a tour of Number 2 Rod Mill when I was about 10. Place -amazed- me. I always wanted to work there. Then US Steel bought it and absolutely buggered it up, all the sub contract work was ousted and even the long time Union guys for Stelco were left hanging in the wind. Sad :(
I used to work for Combustion Engineering, in their Tennessee plant that built nuclear reactors. They would stack 12 inch thick plates ( 55 tons each) and put them in a furnace. When they hit 1400 drgrees, they were put into a well of salt water kept at a constant 45 degrees. This would strengthen the carbon steel by aligning the molecules. There was no steam or vapor, and the water didn't even touch the plate as it entered the water. It was something to watch.
The raw materials is one part of the “magic”. The other part is not over stressing the material. Paste of work is critical in many forging processes and in some cases speeding up the process will yield maybe more products but lesser quality.
Pace of work not paste dumbass
One of the most valuable videos on TH-cam and it’s a short lol. Don’t miss out, know anyone in the industry? share this with them!
Its true story of how some of the best plate steel that built the American Navy and other ships in the U.S. inventory. Also used for Military Tanks, bridges, Artilery.
"trade secrets" is why we can't replicate so much of the old stuff. Such things were deliberately not documented to avoid competitors getting hold of it
"Trade secrets" are still documented internally, just not publicly. If they weren't documented internally, that company would soon lose the ability to do that work themselves.
Cold work wasn't some completely unknown technique. It has been around for centuries, and done industrially nearly as long as hot working. It's just hard and expensive to do, because cold metal is stronger than hot metal, requiring more powerful equipment to work it.
@@wagnerrp a lot of trade secrets _are_ documented, but in the 1970s NASA discovered that nobody knew how to make seamless tubing anymore.
The problem is, if they're no longer relevant they get tossed in the skip not into public domain
On top of that there's a lot of "lore" that isn't deemed worth documenting but is actually utterly critical to the business process
@@wagnerrp That's only partly true. There are places where significant bodies of institutional knowledge is just stored in the heads of a few old-guard engineers. This happens less nowdays, as companies are more aware of the risk of losing those secrets, but it's never 100% eliminated.
@@MrFelblood None of that knowledge would be stored in a patent anyway. Patents are deliberately vague, only providing the minimum amount of information necessary, and it's left up to the "skilled implementer" to figure out the fine details.
@@miscbits6399 " in the 1970s NASA discovered that nobody knew how to make seamless tubing anymore." uh.. extrusion? couldn't have been that hard to figure out
I grew up in hamilton, not that far from stelco
My mom would sweep the sidewalk out front of the house everyday a big pile of soot she would clean up
Makes for a great story from a mentor, but technology eventually does it better. Today these processes are standard and even better with the advent of materials science.
Old timers have the knowledge and the best storytelling skills
Some do, others are just senile coots yelling at clouds
I learned so much about steel and metals from guys working in logging in Forks Wa.
How to weld broken steel that had magnetism in it.
One guy had the contact with Washington state on repairing all of the metal bridges damaged by collision. He would use a rose bud to heat and shrink metal.
Those guys forgot more than I could learn!
It's always interesting how places will use patents strategically either by making generic ones to prevent people from innovating in an area they are focus on or by not filing them because they are so confident what they have is not something anyone else will easily find.
That really is an interesting story. To know how to shape the steel and heat it. It's a lost art to most individuals.
As I understand when they do it under the 1650 say 1200, they are applying less that half of the tonnage they normally use to roll it. Pretty cool stuff.
That sounds like the description I head from my Grandfather who worked in the Rail Rolling Mill a the Workington Iron & Steel Company in Cumberland England, they made rails for Railways/Rail-roads that were exported around the world, these rails were extremely wear resistant and lasted for decades in service, every thing was done by eye no kind of instrumentation was used, they also did small batch special purpose steels for the nuclear and armaments industries in the UK.
It is chemistry past the point steel becomes magnetic it forms large crystals and will be harder and more brittle, below that and you get a mild soft steel... What your talking about is rolling it at temp to prevent work hardening and then the slow cold passes are to cause work hardening so the steel is hardened like cold rolled without over hardening it which would make it brittle. Tempering is amazing.
This is why your channel is so amazing !!!❤ love hearing his stories and then your new ones with all his knowledge 😊
Worked at Birmingham steel for years. Depending on what grade steel is being produced, we would do the same damn thing. It's actually how cold rolled is produced. Our steel is in ships, skyscrapers, bridges, and your backyard gate. We were the largest steel producer on the west coast.
A lot of engineers considered ours to be the most consistent.
So, there you go. Be proud of where you come from, but just know that there us always someone doing it just a bit better it's called humility. Learn it, live it.
Or cheaper…
@@KennethDavid-n8n Ooh, did you say cheaper? I would like to buy for less, please!
(And so the downward spiral begins...)
Work hardening like this, at relatively cold temperature for steel, is about the only thing mild steel is capable of. Its amazing how smart our ancestors are, because this was done to plate armor back in the day too, using slightly better than mild steel.
I love learning from old timers like that. Just so full of useful information! Definitely keeps me interested in the conversations!
Learned something new today! "COLD" is a relative term.
So Wise , Thank You
One of my favorite things is experts and professionals who just... know their shit. And it doesn't even only apply to the industrial trades.
Y'all ever talk to someone who works with any sort of dough about it? They can tell you if a 50lb batch is 2oz short of yeast by texture and smell.
Somebody should have told Ray Shumake the part about not rolling steel below 1600°. I had to cut too many slabs off that had sponge on the ends.
That is why, as is said, steel gets into your blood: the pleasure of doing something well, shaping and manipulaing the material based on profound understanding of its nature and response to practical physics.
This is why we need domestic manufacturing. Amazing.
My grandfather was one of the guys who tested materials at Stelco Hamilton back in the day. Mane (Mike) Srdic.
I am a carpenter / builder , I love having a beer with old guys and asking them questions about how they problem solved or did certain jobs . I ALWAYS learn so much from them !!
The best way to learn are from guys with many decades of experience .
If you can , always try to work on a job with them or ask them to come to your job if they are retired .
You will learn so much , especially if you show them the respect they deserve .
They are the best friends in the industry a tradesman can have !!
👏
The (rollers)in charge at Stelco would slam the steel ingots into the big super strong rolling press machines at high speed and pressure. The specially designed chrome plated giant rollers essentially hammered the crap out the steel. They were replicating what a blacksmith could achieve with his hammer. The pounding at critical temperatures was essential for the super high strength steel.
They made skelp steel for shipbuilding and the plate mill made armour plate for the US Navy ships. They had a coil box where they would wind the coil one way then unwind it and rewind it the other way. Every so often a cobble would occur and a flying strip of steel went crashing everywhere, the mill would shut down for 15 or 20 minutes for the burners to slice it up into pieces so the cranes could drag it away. No American mill could match Stelco.
At one point my father was the sales manager for cold rolled and coated rolled for Stelco. Forced into retirement after 33 years. He never forgave them for that.
Wish I understood more about metallurgy. And chemistry... And physics. And knew enough English to make it through this video without a thesaurus and google in each hand and the yellow pages on my head.
I work at one of the companies in hamilton that fixes the trucks for stelco and defasco. Always like driving through the property to Dave at the diesel shop.
Besides folding steel onto itself, I wonder if the toughness of Damascus steel used this cold rolling principle: Hammer while very hot, wait a bit, hammer again when the sword has cooled a bit, etc.
A great example of the knowledge that could be lost if not for bright new minds getting into these aging industries 🙏❤️🇺🇲
both my grandfather's worked at stelco, they both contributed greatly to many of the techniques and processes that this guy speaks of. they were even recognized as some of the most important people within the company. they invented so many things for Stelco they had their name on almost every patent
"You couldn't do it with chemistry" Love this. Sometimes it takes brute force to arrange solids the way you need them to be.
My grandfather rolled steel at Stelco until the late 70’s. He could tell the temperature by the color. Interesting
That's how temperature works, it's how we know how hot the sun is. Colour and temperature are always directly connected
Bless Stelco.❤
“You couldn’t do it with chemistry”……. everything is chemistry!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No. Physically shaping an object with a hammer is not chemistry, it's material science
Chemistry is the branch of science that studies matter, its properties, composition, structure, and the changes it undergoes during reactions. It primarily focuses on how different substances interact, combine, and transform, often on an atomic or molecular level.
What is considered chemistry includes chemical reactions, bonding, states of matter, energy changes, and the study of elements, compounds, and mixtures. It can involve practical applications like drug creation or material engineering, or theoretical work like molecular modeling.
everything involves chemistry since everything is made of matter and interacts through chemical principles, but the label “chemistry” is typically used when specifically studying or manipulating these processes.
@@drewpaloop6439 This is definitely considered material science. Yes, chemistry is involved, but chemically identical materials can have very different physical properties depending on how they are processed. Materials science combines physics, chemistry, engineering, and manufacturing.
@@Devotee777 So, you just said it; chemistry is the whole and material science is the branch. Thank you for agreeing. The only defense you could have is that it is physics because if comes before chemistry. have a good day
@@drewpaloop6439 No, that's clearly not what I said. Did you have a degree in the sciences? Material science or as it is often called, material science and engineering, is typically housed within the engineering school. It's not a branch of the natural sciences at all. Your only defense is perhaps that it is misnamed which led to your confusion about the matter😐
Another wrought steel product that is preferred is cold hammer forged (often seen as CHF) steel for gun barrels.
I LOVE HEARING ODLTIMERS TALK ABOUT THE GOOD OLD DAYS. STELCO I'VE SEEN THIS BEFORE. LOVE IT.
Steel made in Canada, Steel Company of Canada - STELCO. My hometown is Sault Ste. Marie Ontario - home of ALGOMA Steel.
.
Exactly why we use "cold rolled" tubular steel in aircraft fuselage construction.
Lukens made the the best plate steel ever made, had the largest plate mill in the world for a very long time, 206".
nope
Companies today would never do this because they don't care about strength of materials anymore. In the eyes of modern hedge funds these kinds of practices are considered a huge waste of resources and whoever came up with these kinds of methods would be fired and blacklisted from their industry.
They don't care about strength of materials? What?
@@beowulf_of_wall_st In modern low spec manufacturing quality is not only not a concern, but it's considered a financial loss. Most firms would prefer to sell shitty items that break easily and will be quickly replaced. We live in an age where there's very little that's actually worth buying. You're always best off to become a minimalist, and learn to get by on used or homemade goods whenever possible.
@@franklincord2812 my dude steel foundries make steel today and they care about its strength, and today's steel is the best steel has ever been. you have learned one narrow principle that applies to certain consumer goods and you are acting like that's it's a universal law
@@beowulf_of_wall_st The principle I'm describing applies to all consumer goods. The only time that strength of materials applies is in B2B sales. My original claim, that nothing that you can buy at the consumer level is really worth having, and that you're always best off to be a minimalist and buy as little as possible, is absolutely true. We live in an age where everything is garbage, and if it wasn't for the government then average people wouldn't even be able to find reasonably safe food to eat.
@@franklincord2812 my dude rolled steel is a b2b product if anything is
Metallergy is a fascinating subject
I work steel. Machining benching polishing welding. It all makes a difference 1
i was in commercial drywall and we used to do all the framing. if we framed a big ceiling that had to be fire rated sometimes 2 layers of drywall (this been 30 years ago). but we had to tie wires to and sometimes if the ceiling was gonna be really heavy we had to lay this steel on the topside of the ceiling and screw it down real well. it was about an inch and ½ wide with the edges rolled over about a half a turn, well we attached the wires to that steel then the wires would attach to the structure at to other end. they used to call that steel cold roll and i never understood why. maybe " cold" for the pressing cause it was still at least a ¼ thick and "roll" for the edges? or " cold roll " just cause of the steel itself? this explanation of steel forming made me think of that.
marlin crawler uses cold rolled steel for their tube bumpers and thats exactly why instead of using extruded tubing like everyone else does.
Every process involving steel becomes a trade-off between toughness and strength. The final use should determine which quality needs to be optimized. This is a widely utilized concept, but this company just performed the optimization more accurately and effectively. Well done! ( He is wrong when he says it's not about chemistry
I used to deliver bricks to Stelco Steel in Hamilton and Nanticoke Ontario.
that manual 45 degree turn is absolute precision. Respect
The desire and pride to pursue real perfection in their craft is so admirable and largely lost now‼️💥🙄
As a metallurgist, i always love to hear how science wasnt figured out back then, and hkw it absolutely isnt either today. Before, the idea of putting metal into a powder seemd like absolute craziness, and nowcwe habe additive manufacturing and LPBF. Next, we're going to have large scale amorphous metals and high entropy alloys and I'm so, so ready ofor the insane future that it entails.
It's amazing that Stelco has been around for over 125 years and despite being bought and sold by US Steel and having their customer base stripped by the Americans, they're still making steel that no one else can make.
“You couldn’t do it with chemistry” bro that IS CHEMISTRY!
Nah, I'd call it physics.
@@greenaum It's a combination of both. Allotropes are chemistry, not physics
The largest reason for a lack of progress in manufacturing is because the younger generation isn’t trying to grasp as much as the previous generations abilities and how they were pushing them. Good on you for recording this.
I noticed a few things over the years. When handleing firearms, German and in a few cases American firarms have a different feel and steel quality. Less Rust, dense, clean looking and feels nice. German old school anvils are different as well they "sing" instead of thunk when you hit them. We lost or burried quality and secrets long ago we are worse off for it.
Takes me back to my material science class in Engineering school. They call it material science, but definitely more of an art.
Amazing wealth of information 🎉
I mean, that is literally chemistry...
Same reason we can't replicate the Saturn 5 rocket. Bunch of welders and engineers came to parts that just did not function the way the plans asked for and they improvised. 100's of little changes and tweaks. And not a single one ever documented. Best rocket ever made, and we can't make it again because of this.
Back when you learned as an apprentice, you traded labor to learn skills. It was the "trade" and yes secrets could enable the upper hand on competition. Lots of good men built today on the blood, sweat, and tears yesterday.
You have just been given Golden knowledge
That u sir for the valuable knowledge 🙏😊👍
Brilliant.
Today pretty standard for high strength construction steel. But awesome that it is around for so long.
Was it standardized in any way?
I mean... as a designer today I can't rely on properties that are not standardized properties of a steel type. Even if a magical steel comes around that has twice the yield strength while still being tough enough, I can't take advantage of that (legally) in most cases, if it isn't listed in some standard. This is Europe. But I'd expect similar difficulties in the US.
I can design something with it. But when it crashes down and someone gets hurt, my rear is on the line for violating design guidelines using a non standard steel.
A trade secret for my old workplace was that we only did heat treatment on our tooling that we made on the night shift.
During the day.. The cooling bath (200 litres of oil.) Was stone cold. ( 2-3 C ) So it took a lot to heat the oil. During the day it slowly heated up to around 16 C. But during the night that temp dropped again.
It would take a lot of gas to heat the oil.. So we did the heat treatment on tooling early in the night shifts. The oil was slightly warmed and reduced the shock shatter that could occur during heat treatment.
Just a few degrees could reduce the warping and shattering of 1600C tooling steel. Saved the company a fortune in wastage.
We also had a 4am slot for "Tempering" so the oil was still warm from the heat treatment but not too cold.
This is exactly the type of person that God wants.❤
Old timer with priceless wisdom
Awesome video.
2300 F is a high cone 10 in ceramics.
I got to fire some Roku pottery. I remember watching the color of materials in the kiln to make sure they got up to the right temperature. That’s how you make sure the inside of the pot got hot enough. It’s would have to glow to the right color.
I love this. Don’t really get it but someone does. They did. And humans are rad for so many things. Metal work is one of the big ones.
My dad worked at a resin foundry and honestly I think they should go back to that way.
Guy - "Couldnt do it with chemistry"
Science - "he actually DID use chemistry"
He meant the source material wasn't all there was to it, and the manufacturing process was the trade secret.
It's called Metallurgy.
Its a foundry term. Meaning added alloys and such.