How can I buy 99.5% iron bar?

Bill Kahn

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I am interested in a 1" x 2" x 6" (or bigger) bar of fairly pure iron. 99.5% would be nice.

Nearly all the iron grades, and steel grades, I see are not this pure.

But I do see that A1003 steel is close to 99.5%.

My local metal supplier cannot get A1003. The obvious online sources do not seem to have 1" thick A1003. Maybe it is not made?

Does anyone know is 1" thick A1003 made? Where can I get it?

Or, is there some other (not expensive) source of 1" thick fairly pure iron?

Oh, and the purpose is pretty trivial--I am an element collector and my "iron sample" is 1018 steel, which is not as pure as I would like--its properties are meaningfully different from actual iron. I mean, that is why we use steel and not iron after all. I do not want to be a material collector. Just an element collector. Yeah, as I said, pretty trivial.

Thanks.

-Bill
 
Wrought iron is essentially pure iron. Upwards of 99%.
The impurities are largely contained in the slag inclusions trapped by the refining process.
Don't confuse wrought iron for what is passed off as ornamental wrought iron which is usually just low carbon steel.
I have several hundred lbs of wrought iron that was salvaged from an 1893 bridge but I can't vouch for it's composition.
 
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Thank you for this pointer Jim. Collections are funny--everyone has their own standards for what belongs and what doesn't. For me it has to be 1x2x6". I can explain the "reason" but really it is just some self-imposed silliness. Here is a snapshot of most of my collection. But I will reach out to these folks to see if they have a big piece I can machine to shape. Best, Bill
 

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Wrought iron is essentially pure iron. Upwards of 99%.
The impurities are largely contained in the slag inclusions trapped by the refining process.
Don't confuse wrought iron for what is passed off as ornamental wrought iron which is usually just low carbon steel.
I have several hundred lbs of wrought iron that was salvaged from an 1893 bridge but I can't vouch for it's composition.
RJ. Thank you for the information about wrought iron. The composition I had read did not show it to be so pure. From https://www.machinedesign.com/mater...-the-difference-between-cast-and-wrought-iron I read

Wrought Iron​

Wrought iron is composed primarily of iron with 1 to 2% of added slag, the byproduct of iron ore smelting—generally a mix of silicon, sulfur, phosphorous, and aluminum oxides.

So, at 98% it is about as pure as my 1018.

-Bill
 
Wrought iron is was historically made in a bloomery from cast iron . The cast iron originally molten was poured out and worked under a hammer. The the process, which burned the various impurities, mainly carbon, out of the metal was repeated until the metal was deemed fit for use. As such, there was nothing that could really be metallurgy and composition could vary greatly.

Wrought iron was mostly phased out in the latter nineteenth century as a structural material, being replaced by mild steel. Because of superior chemical resistance, it was used for storage vessels and pipe and production of those forms continued until the mid twentieth century. I suspect that iron was probably made to tighter specifications as the more pure the iron was, the better would be the chemical resistance. I have one specimen of that type of iron, a section of 3.5" pipe that began life in sulfur mining in Louisiana, as evidenced by the residual sulfur coating the inside of the pipe. The Frasch process, as I recall, where super heated water under high pressure was pumped down an outer pipe and molten sulfur forced up an inner pipe.
 
Search eBay or Amazon for “Soft Iron Rod. Ideal Core for making electromagnets. (3.9 X 0.8 X 0.3)inches.Bar”.

I don’t know if that will be pure enough for you.

Also this:


Or:


Or search eBay for “Iron Metal 10mm Density Cube 99.9% Pure for Element Collection USA SHIPPING”.
 
Thank you for this pointer Jim. Collections are funny--everyone has their own standards for what belongs and what doesn't. For me it has to be 1x2x6". I can explain the "reason" but really it is just some self-imposed silliness. Here is a snapshot of most of my collection. But I will reach out to these folks to see if they have a big piece I can machine to shape. Best, Bill
Man, your collection has really grown!
 
Man, your collection has really grown!
Yes. (Thank you for noticing). I retired a couple of years ago and with more time in the shop my skills have greatly improved. (many many mistakes (aka learning opportunities)). So I have been able to cast many of the lower melting point materials. Even strontium (which reacts with air and so I had to melt while keeping isolated from the atmosphere. I do not have the sort of budget for a vacuum furnace. In this case I welded closed a (slightly oversized) steel container (yes, have learned to weld) before heating.) And the machining, even friable materials like antimony or very fragile materials like sulfur, I have worked up some techniques that work well enough. Like finding after getting a diamond saw blade that cut the silicon I could sand it in mill down to my desired surface finish and size. Won't win any awards, but who else has a bar of selenium on their mantel? I am still working to get some more of the basics (nickel, cobalt, chromium, manganese) at affordable prices. Some commercial outfits are happy to produce perfect samples for me, at several thousand dollars a pop. Way way over my retiree budget--I have much time but little money. I am enjoying the scrounging. And the full macro-size of the pieces in my collection--you really get of sense for their different properties (thermal conductivity (the copper is cold), density (real tungsten is way way heavier than the lead), sound (molybdenum tings beautifully--cadmium thuds worse than lead),...) at pieces this sized. The tiny 1cc and 1in^3 collectors kit pieces are too small to really experience. And their purity is terrible--for example the 1in^3 tungsten commercial sample's density is only 12.8! And, it is highly magnetic. Yes, heavier than the steel, but not by much. And the steel is stainless (making it shiny) but isn't magnetic! So, the tiny commercial samples are far from rocking my boat. Again, thanks for noticing the growth. At some point I'll get all the samples lined up again--I have a few more since that snapshot. -Bill
 
Pretty interesting on the misleading marketing for a lot of these elements.. I hope you're not shooting for a large quantity of fluorine in elemental form :).
 
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