[Godzilla]

If they worked with Iron could they not have found the secret of steel. I understand you are saying they didn't know how to refine Iron.

Please tell us where such advanced metallurgy has been identified with the bom age in the americas (provided you think the bom lands were in america). Mining and smelting leave things that are nearly indestructable over the short period of time we are talking here - mines, slag, retorts, charcoal kilns, etc. Evidence of such a culture is completely absent in the Americas bm during the bom era. If they had steel - why is FARMS/Maxwell trying to convince all that the nephites REALLY had clubs with chips of flint in them for "STEEL" swords eh?

[ReverendJames]

You can't puddle steel as you would iron or copper or bronze. Steel is a highly complicated process. As of yet we've not been able to reproduce Damascus steel. It's a lost art. And unless the steel that Nephi made was stainless it probably rusted into dust in a very short time.

It's not easy to make steel in the first place. Where did Nephi get the carbon, manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten and other elements to act as a hardening agent, preventing dislocations in the iron atom crystal lattice from sliding past one another. It ain't easy.

And as Godzilla pointed out - where are the kilns, the remnants of them? There are kilns that date back thousands of years in the Middle East, where are Nephi's?

[BlueMoose]

There are many metals in the family called steel.