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If the fire is hot enough, and there is enough oxygen, the steel will burn. (think cutting torch) The simplest answer is that the steel heats up. A cutting torch doesn't "burn" the metal away... it melts the metal along your cutting line. Very few chemicals can oxidize steel with enough ferocity to burn it with a flame. A couple of exceptions that I have seen in my career were F2 and ClF3. Of course those are very strong oxidizers. Heating steel to a prescribed temperature then either quenching it quickly or holding the temperature a a certain level for a period of time will alter the grain structure and therefore the properties of the steel. Think tempering. You can learn much more about that by researching steel phase diagrams. Time-temperature relationships are the oldest and most common methods of changing a metals strength and hardness.

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16y ago

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