How do you knock a chunk off an iron meteorite?

March 24, 2008 10:17 PM

What hand tools would be needed to remove a chunk of iron from an iron meteorite you've discovered in the field?

It's the 1860s if that makes a difference, and you're on a remote hillside, and there's an iron meteorite. You need to chip, saw or otherwise knock off a couple good sized pieces of iron from it. What kind of tools could you reasonably have that would do the job? Would standard metal hammers and chisels of the period work, or would the meteorite be just as likely to break them as vice versa?

Short of a diamond-bladed circular saw (heavy and unlikely to be within an extension cord of a socket when you need it) how do modern geologists take samples from a chunk of iron?

posted by Naberius to science & nature (11 comments total)

There are (relatively) small diamond drills that let you take a small cylindrical sample from a rock. The sample leaves a hole the size of a 20c piece (about the size of a quarter, I think) and I'm told the drill can be used with some difficulty by a single person.

I haven't seen one in use, but I've seen the holes left in rocks and have been told how it's done.

As for the 1860s... I don't know if they had strong hacksaw blades back then, but if they did I'd think it would be your best bet.
posted by twirlypen at 10:26 PM on March 24, 2008

Dynamite?
posted by amyms at 10:29 PM on March 24, 2008

The iron meteorites I've seen in museums were solid pieces of metal. Trying to knock a piece off with a hammer would be like trying to knock a piece off an I-beam. Not gonna happen.

The only way to get a piece off would either be to heat it up (red hot, you aren't going to do it with a wood fire), or if cold to saw it off with something like a big hack-saw.

I suppose you could do it with a hammer-and-chisel if you had about 50 chisels you were willing to use up, and a month or so to spend. But even with a hack saw it's going to take a really long time, and you'll probably go through quite a few blades.

How about making the meteor small and having your character take the entire thing?
posted by Class Goat at 10:29 PM on March 24, 2008

By the way, it'd have to be really quite small if you expect your character to carry it very far without a cart. A 6 inch cube of iron weighs 61 pounds. (If I did my math correctly. Density of iron is 7.87 g/cm³)
posted by Class Goat at 10:41 PM on March 24, 2008

How much exactly does the character need?

If it's just to verify it's composition, even small very scrapings are enough to do a mass specrometry (or Sherlock Holme's era chemistry). Say doable with something made from a small non-gem-quality diamond.

Unless it's super-conducting or exotic or something, maybe liquid nitrogen/liquid helium to freeze the thing then a 6kg sledge hammer?

I guess it would be possible to wear it away over the period of generations if nothing harder was available in sufficient quantities to refine. Hmm - how long would a city made entirely of a stable crystal - say saphire - last in an Earth-like atmosphere?
posted by porpoise at 10:55 PM on March 24, 2008

Yeah, 6"cubed would weigh about that much. Then again, thats not really how one uses iron - that's about enough iron to make a wrought iron gate 10'x8'x.5", so its an odd way of putting it.
Iron's usually crushed and ground when mined.

By the way, you could have found your answer on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore
posted by lrodman at 10:58 PM on March 24, 2008

A meteor could arrive as one of many in a small shower... in fact that's probably more likely than one solo rock. Take one of the smallest ones as your sample, leave the big one back on the hill.
posted by rokusan at 2:36 AM on March 25, 2008

In 1860? A hammer and a chisel. (We are talking iron, not steel. Iron is fairly brittle and would chip relatively easily.)
posted by gjc at 5:10 AM on March 25, 2008

Yeah, a steel chisel would be much harder than an amorphous lump of iron. You could crack nodules off of a lump of iron ore very easily with steel. And steel would have been available to most people in 1860's.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:09 AM on March 25, 2008

Iron is ductile, not brittle. And meteoric iron would be far softer than a steel I beam that is specifically designed for strength. People have made iron tools by pounding fragments off of meteorites for thousands of years; a handful of giant iron meteorites supplied the native people of Greenland for centuries. A steel chisel would be perfectly adequate and available.
posted by Mapes at 8:34 AM on March 25, 2008

Well, that's what I wanted to hear. I certainly wasn't looking forward to having to jury rig up some kind of acetylene torch out in the middle of nowhere, that no one would believe anyway.

And it's not like lives are hanging on this. As long as a sizable portion of you are willing to believe it when you see someone whack bits of iron off a meteor with a hammer and chisel, I'm golden. Thanks everyone!
posted by Naberius at 8:48 AM on March 25, 2008