[f. STEEL v. + -ING1.]
† 1. The action of stiffening (a bodice, etc.) with steel. Obs.
1601. Dent, Plaine Mans Path-w. (1611), 43. It was neuer a good world, since starching and steeling, buskes and whale-bones … came to be in vse.
2. The giving a steel edge or point to iron, etc.
a. 1819. Rees, Cycl., Steeling, in Cutlery, the laying on a piece of steel upon a larger mass of iron, to make that part which is to receive the edge harder than the rest.
3. Conversion into steel.
1860. Repert. Patent Invent., Oct., 317. These processes offer considerable advantages over those ordinarily employed for effecting the ‘steeling’ or the conversion of objects made of wrought or of cast iron into steel. Ibid., 318. The conversion into steel or the ‘steeling’ of iron or of cast iron.
4. In Engraving, the process of covering a metal plate with steel to render it more durable.
1871. Hamerton, Etcher’s Handbk., 41. Since the invention of steeling (protecting the copper by means of an infinitesimally thin coat of steel applied by galvanism) a dry point will yield larger editions than an etching would formerly.
1887. Athenæum, 24 Sept., 412/2. It will be retorted that, in these days of steeling, stamped proofs of etchings, line or mezzotint engravings, are in many cases … little better than ordinary prints.
5. The steel part of a machine.
1869. Rankine, Machine & Hand-tools, Pl. K 3, The bottom steeling on which iron is placed when it is being cut [by the shears]. Ibid., Pl. K 11, The steelings [of a guillotine plate shears] are 6 feet 6 inches long.
6. attrib. † steeling-box, ? a box-iron (cf. STEEL v. 7).
a. 1680. Glanvill, Sadducismus, II. (1681), 152. That she hurt Dorothy the Wife of George Vining, by giving an Iron slate to put into her steeling Box.
