a full softening of the ferrite matrix and short enough to avoid a growth or morphological modification by diffusion of the spheroidal carbides the final size wire is supplied as coils or straightened and cut to form small diameter bar stock that can be machined to produce small high precision parts such as pivots axles gears pins and screws for watches and other precision instruments the alloy exhibits in the cold drawn condition a much better cold formability than the known pb alloyed carbon steels that property makes the alloy highly amenable for cold rolling of threads cold stamping e g of sockets cold heading forging in closed dies bending and further cold shaping techniques the process according to the present invention is designed to provide a microstructure in the alloy that includes the following features a distribution of small spheroidal carbides substantially all of which are not more than about 6 microns in major dimension a uniform distribution of fine sulfides preferably mn rich sulfides substantially all of which are not more than about 2 microns in major dimension and a fine grain size typically an astm e 112 grain size of 9 or finer preferably astm 10 or finer processing trials were performed to determine an annealing cycle that produces the.