Hand steel is

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

with the use of a

chisel A chisel is a hand tool with a characteristic Wedge, wedge-shaped cutting edge on the end of its blade. A chisel is useful for carving or cutting a hard material such as woodworking, wood, lapidary, stone, or metalworking, metal. Using a chi ...

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

sledgehammer A sledgehammer is a tool with a large, flat, massive, often metal head, attached to a long wooden or solid handle. The long handle is combined with a heavy head which allows the sledgehammer to pick up momentum during a swing and applying a large ...

. It is one of the several mining techniques used in traditional mining and one of the several with the use of basic

hand tool A hand tool is any tool that is powered manual labour, by hand rather than a motor. Categories of hand tools include wrenches, pliers, cutter (disambiguation), cutters, File (tool), files, hammer, striking tools, chisel, struck or hammered tools, ...

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 geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a la ...

References

Traditional mining Hand tools {{mining-stub