Wrought iron is an iron alloy which, in comparison with steel contains a low quantity of carbon and is mixed with fibrous minerals, often known as slag. This is responsible for it's wood-like effect, which is visible when it is engraved or twisted to the point of breakage. Wrought iron is tough, pliable,  and easily welded. Traditionally, it was often called "commercially pure iron", nonetheless it no longer qualifies because current requirements for commercially pure iron require a carbon content of lower than 0.008 wt%.

Before the development of effective strategies of steelmaking and the provision of enormous quantities of steel, wrought iron was the most common form of malleable iron. A modest amount of wrought iron was used as a raw material for the production of steel, which was primarily to supply weapons, cutlery and other types of blades. Call for wrought iron reached its climax within the 1860s with the adaptation of warships and railways, however then declined as mild steel grew to become more widely available.

Before they came to be manufactured from mild steel, objects created from wrought iron consisted of rivets, nails, chains, railway couplings, water and steam pipes, nuts, bolts, horseshoes, handrails, straps for timber roof trusses, and ornamental ironwork.

There are essentially two sorts of wrought iron;

* Charcoal Iron - Up until the end of the eighteenth century, wrought iron was made with charcoal, by way of the bloomery  process, in a finery forge or from the industrial revolution in a Lancashire hearth. The ensuing steel used to be extremely inconsistent, both in chemistry and slag content.

* Puddled Iron - Towards the end of the 18th century there was a call for wrought iron to be purified with coal as fuel. This resulted in ‘puddled iron’. The iron was kept separate from the fireplace in a furnace to forestall harmful sulphur and phosphorus from coming into the completed iron. Puddled iron, although inconsistent in its properties, was most often more constant than the previous irons, and the process lent itself to the manufacturing of significantly higher quantities. By 1876, yearly production of puddled iron within the UK alone was over four million tons.

These days, wrought iron is no longer manufactured on an industrial scale. Many items described as wrought iron, such as guard rails, garden furniture and fencing, are fabricated from mild steel. They retain that description because they were formerly made from wrought iron or have the appearance of wrought iron.

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