Steel’s Renaissance Man – Benjamin Huntsman

There’s some discussion about Benjamin’s birth, as although he was born in Lincolnshire, many believe that his parents were German and arrived shortly before his birth. Although they were farmers, the young Benjamin showed an aptitude for a wide range of careers, particularly in mechanics.

The young Huntsman set up his first business in Doncaster as a clock maker. While many would be happy to pursue the life of working with small, precise mechanisms, Benjamin also used it to fabricate tools and even work as a locksmith. If that didn’t keep him busy enough, he used his engineering knowledge to work as a mechanic repair man, which even at the beginning of the 18^th Century wasn’t in-keeping with his established businesses.

Benjamin Huntsman’s clearly enquiring mind wasn’t done with working on a number of different projects, as he used his standing and reputation to be granted a licence to practice surgery in an experimental fashion and acted as a consultant in what we’d now refer to as Ophthalmology.

In his mid-thirties, Huntsman turned his attention to steel manufacture and spent years experimenting and refining his techniques. He eventually made a cast steel in clay crucibles, which were then molten using coke and poured back into clay crucibles. Initially, the new steel was rejected by Sheffield’s cutlers, as it was much harder than the imported German steel that was popular at the time. It was actually French cutlery makers that recognised the potential of this new cast steel – and they used it to make implements that were then reimported into the UK.