| Bending Angle | (english) A 'V-shaped' piece of angle iron attached to the rear of the coil car in the Strip Steel, which is used to help the operator put bends into the front end of a coil. |
| Big Winch | (english) The tool used to spot (or position) the rail cars for unloading. It is located on the north end of the unloading area. |
| Black Oil Tempered Spring Steel Strip (Scaleless Blue) | (english) A flat cold rolled usually .70/.80 medium high carbon steel strip, blue-black in color, which has been quenched in oil and drawn to desired hardness. While it looks and acts much like blue tempered spring steel and carries a Rockwell hardness of C44/47, it has not been polished and is lower in carbon content. Used for less exacting requirements than clock spring steel, such as snaps, lock springs, hold down springs, trap springs, etc. It will take a more severe bend before fracture than will clock spring, but it does not have the same degree of spring-back. |
| Blacking Hole | (english) Irregular-shaped surface cavities in a casting containing carbonaceous matter. Caused by spilling off of the blacking from the mold surface. |
| Blanking | (english) An early step in preparing flat-rolled steel for use by an end user. A blank is a section of sheet that has the same outer dimensions as a specified part (such as a car door or hood) but that has not yet been stamped. Steel processors may offer blanking for their customers to reduce their labor and transportation costs; excess steel can be trimmed prior to shipment. |
| Blister Steel | (english) High-carbon steel produced by carburizing wrought iron. The bar, originally smooth, is covered with small blisters when removed from the cementation (carburizing) furnace. |
| Boil | (english) Agitation of a bath of metal caused by the liberation of a gas beneath its surface. May be deliberately induced by the addition of oxidizing material to a bath containing excess carbon. In the later case it is called a carbon boil and CO or CO2 are liberated. |
| Brass | (english) An alloy that is 70% copper,30% zinc. One of the most widely used of the copper-zinc alloys; malleable and ductile; excellent cold-working but poor hot-working and machining properties; excellent for soft-soldering; good for silver alloy brazing or oxyacetylene welding, but fair for resistance or carbon-arc welding. Used for drawn cartridges, tubes, eyelets machine items and snap fasteners. |
| Break Test (for tempered steel) | (english) A method of testing hardened and tempered high carbon spring steel strip wherein the specimen is held and bent across the grain in a vice-like calibrated testing machine. Pressure is applied until the metal fractures at which point a reading is taken and compared with a standard chart of brake limitations for various thickness ranges. |
| Bright Annealing | (english) A process carried out usually in a controlled furnace atmosphere, so surface does not oxidize, remaining bright. |