[9] Iron, semi-steelified, is made with charcoal 1-150th part. Soft cast steel, capable of welding with ditto 1-120th do. Cast steel, for common purposes, with ditto 1-120th do. Cast steel, requiring more hardness, with charcoal 1-90th do. Steel, capable of standing a few blows, but quite unfit for drawing with ditto 1-150th do. First approach to a steely granulated fracture is from 1-50th to 1-40th do. White cast iron, with charcoal 1-25th do. Mottled cast iron, with ditto 1-20th do. Carbonated cast iron 1-15th do. And supercarbonated crude iron 1-12th do. The original barrel-welders, the real Damascus iron-workers, were, like some of ours of the present day, not the most _conscientious_ individuals, nor the most honourable. For, strange to say--but it is not more strange than true--on examination of most real Damascus barrels to be met with, we find the iron must have been so valuable as to induce the workmen _to plate_ or _veneer_ the superior mixture over a body of the commonest iron: all large barrels are thus made, rifles especially. I presume the moderns _borrowed_ the invention; and it would be well if they made no more extensive use of it than on rifle barrels. The modern method of making wire-twist and Damascus iron, being gradations from the same material, are here described under one head:-- Alternate bars of iron and steel are placed on each other, in numbers of six each; they are then forged into one body or bar; after which, if for the making of wire-twist barrels, they are rolled down into rods of 3-8ths of an inch in breadth, varying in thickness according to the size of the barrel for which they are wanted: if for Damascus, invariably 3-8ths of an inch square. When about to be twisted into spirals for barrels, care must be taken that the edges of the steel and iron shall be outermost; so that when the barrel is finished and browned it shall have the appearance of being welded of pieces the size of wires, the whole length of the barrel. A portion of the rod, pickled in sulphuric acid, exhibits the following appearance, the bright parts being the steel, the other the iron. [Illustration] When about to be converted into Damascus, the rod is heated the whole length, and the two square ends put into the heads (one of which is a fixture) of a kind of lathe, which is worked by a handle similar to a winch. It is then twisted like a rope (or, as Colonel Hawker says, wrung as wet clothes are) until it has from twelve to fourteen complete turns in the inch, when it presents this appearance. [Illustration]