Metallurgical Analysis of Plomb Tools

We are occasionally asked to provide metallurgical information on Plomb tools.  Until recently, this request was impossible to answer.  Metallurgical analysis is beyond our capabilities. 

As luck would have it, a team of graduate student metallurgists broke a Plomb wrench while constructing test equipment.  They contacted us to learn what they could about the wrench.  They performed a failure analysis of the wrench as a class project, with equipment we can only dream of; an Optical Micrograph, a Spectrometer and a Scanning Electron Microscope.  The students shared their analysis with us, in return for the information we provided.  We are grateful to these metallurgists for their contribution to our knowledge of Plomb tools.

The wrench is a #1230 combination wrench, sized 15/16".  It has a 1942 date code. 

The students were assembling a metal framework, using an impact wrench and the Plomb wrench.

We hope these pictures "speak for themselves" because we can't answer technical questions they may raise.

Alloy Artifacts says there's too much carbon in this war-time steel, and it isn't a standard tool alloy.  We know there were shortages of critical metals and this wrench indicates that even hand tools were affected by the war effort.