Just going back to the basics...I'm trying to duplicate some of the early magnetic experiments. How were these gentlemen 400-300 years ago making permanent magnets like Gowan knight's magnetic machine? They weren't using neodymium or cobalt alloys, even Alnico is from 1930s and they weren't even...
Yes, I understand modern permanents are either special alloys or sintered ferrites, I could over time work with making an anisotropic ferrite bar magnet as Gowan sort of did with his iron filings pulverized to dust then fixed into a linseed matrix.
But let me then just clarify. All ferrite...
I now have a better understanding of what I want, like martensitic steel or 430 steel since that should be available (though oddly not easy to find in flats).
But strangely I can't seem to put two and two together why a low carbon steel is softly magnetic when structurally it should be ferrite...
I want to build an old school magneizer as a hobby and go through basically the steps taken by Gowan Knight to do it. It wold help then to know where to get some iron bars instead of a plain steel? I don't want to just buy bar magnets, the hobby's goal is to take a weak magnet like a lodestone...
Well I did read that but it isn't clear to me why the plain steel is difficult to magnetize. As far as I can tell it is either the steel is austenite, the magnet is too hard to magnetize with my weaker magnets, or I'm not leaving it in a field long enough to change enough domains.
Also wiki...
Well I figured while getting an answer to the title problem, I'll go all in and see how best an answer I can get on several things!
Basically I thought (seemingly wrong) that you could take a magnet, magnetize a magnetic metal, and repeat this process and compound magnets together eventually to...
