@farmerman,
I don't have all of the specifics on the EDaX....just the results of ~70% chromium/~30%iron.....the test was done at James Madison Univ. in Virginia.....EDS-SEMS was done before the fragments came into my possession....kind of a long story.....geologist said, quote, "I hesitate to call it stainless steel because I've never seen or heard of anything with that much chromium".....I contacted him attempting to gain more specifics but he did not retain any info or notes about the tests. I will contact him again and see if the scanning mode you referred to might be standard operating procedure in his department. Thanks for the insight.....sounds like a good test to run. Chemist that ran TOF-SIMS told me that the primary matrix structure was chromium.
As for surface etching......no.....that is the natural appearance.....there is a flat surface on fragment #2 where EDS-SEMS sample was removed (a fairly large sample I might add, I actually cringed when I saw that) that would be ideal polishing/etching.....I have been reluctant to do so up to this point.....don't want to contaminate anything before any addition testing may be done (I hope).
