Hand steel is

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

with the use of a

chisel A chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge (such that wood chisels have lent part of their name to a particular grind) of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal by hand, stru ...

-like tool. The chisel is struck violently with a striking tool, usually with a

sledgehammer A sledgehammer is a tool with a large, flat, often metal head, attached to a long handle. The long handle combined with a heavy head allows the sledgehammer to gather momentum during a swing and apply a large force compared to hammers designed t ...

. It is one of the several mining techniques used in

traditional mining Traditional mining, also known as old-school mining, is a mining method involving the use of simple manual tools, such as shovels, pickaxes, hammers, chisels and pans. It is done in both surface and underground environments. Until the early 1900s, ...

and one of the several with the use of basic

hand tool A hand tool is any tool that is powered by hand rather than a motor. Categories of hand tools include wrenches, pliers, cutters, files, striking tools, struck or hammered tools, screwdrivers, vises, clamps, snips, hacksaws, drills, and kni ...

s. Hand steel was used in the 19th and 20th centuries for

surface A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is ...

and

underground mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

References

Traditional mining Hand tools {{mining-stub