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[gtmattz]

http://www.gizagrid.com/body_egyptian_iron.html

Seems like the Iron Age and Bronze Age were more or less myths. Also I recall Goliath had a spear head weighed in iron while the rest of his equipment was weighed in bronze or brass, and the Iliad makes frequent mention of bronze cuirasses and iron spears. I suspect a reason exists for this.

I read that whole article and found it quite fascinating.

[Iapetus]

Cast iron has even more carbon in it, plus some silica.  It is hard (I presume harder than high-carbon steel, but I couldn't find any stats), easy to melt and cast (hence the name), but too brittle to be used for edged weapons/tools.

Cast iron (I'll refer here to the most common GRAY cast iron, whose coloring is due to the presence of graphite flakes/nodules in the iron matrix) IS hard, but definitely not harder than high-carbon steel: typical Brinell hardness for cast iron used for a marine engine block is around 200, while high carbon steel (quenched and tempered) is normally in the 400-450-ish...

The best tradeoff between hardness and toughness (impact resistance) is obtained using a low-carbon, high-alloyed steel which gives the part a very tough core, and then performing a localized hardening of the surface by thermal and chemical treatment (surface quench, carburising, nitriding, carbo-nitriding).

That'll teach me to have a quick read about one subject on Wikipedia, and then extrapolate from there to a realated one.

[Golcondio]

Hey I just cheated: I'm a post-mortem metallurgist so I spend at least 8 hours/day validating mechanical properties and microstructures of steel and (more rarely) other metals...