Fire iron

“ Iron-filings, (for this Steel-dust is nothing more than pure iron reduced into small particles by filing or some other method,) when free from rust, and not mixed with any impurities, answer very well; but fire-work [36] makers generally prefer cast-iron reduced to powder, by beating thin plates of it on a cast-iron anvil with a heavy hammer, and sifting the broken particles through sieves of brass or iron wire, of different degrees of fineness, so as to separate the particles into grains of various sizes, according to the magnitude of the pieces. ”

“ Thus we see that a piece of iron, though heated to the highest point by the force of fire, and glowing and shining with brightness, when taken out of the fire and exposed to the air, gradually loses its splendour, becomes less and less clear and glowing, and at last loses the appearance of fire entirely, and returns to the dull colour which it had before. ”

“ In fire-works, it will appear obvious, that the various properties exhibited by iron are owing to the iron and carbon, to the changes which they undergo, to the combustion which necessarily ensues, and to the production of oxide of iron, and carbonic acid gas; effects that invariably take place, whether cast iron or steel be used, provided it is exposed to the action of agents, under the same circumstances and conditions. ”

“ For some reason or other, I don’t understand exactly what, a large piece of iron cannot be heated very hot in a small fire, even if the fire entirely covers it. I don’t think that any fragment of iron much larger than one of Jonas’s filings could be heated in a lamp so as to take fire. But it could be heated hot enough in a forge. The end of the iron which a blacksmith heats is often in a state of combustion when he takes it out of the fire. ”

“ Even cast iron, one inch thick, laid on tiles and cement three inches thick, has allowed fire to pass through both, to the boarding and joisting below, merely from the fire in an open fire-place being taken off and laid on the hearth. This arises from iron being so good a conductor that, when heat is applied to it, it becomes in a very short time nearly as hot on the one side as the other. If the smoke escapes up a chimney, or in any other way, there may be a serious amount of fire before it is noticed. ”

“ Fire enabled man to melt metals as if they were wax, to soften iron or copper which a deftly swung hammer shaped as he willed. Here, too, opened the whole world of chemistry, one of its first gifts the power to take an ore worthless when unchanged, and gain from it a battle-axe, a knife, an arrowhead. ”

“ And hence it appears that iron, and in general metals of all kinds, which are well known to grow very hot when exposed to the rays projected by burning fuel, are to be reckoned among the very worst materials that it is possible to employ in the construction of fire-places. Perhaps the best materials are fire-stone and common bricks and mortar. ”

“ In the present instance, namely, the effect of the composition of the Chinese fire by combustion, the iron is first ignited by the powerful heat created by the combustion of the powder, nitre, charcoal, and sulphur, and in this state, is thrown out with violence, and is itself consumed. The combustion of iron is nothing more than its oxidizement, during which a brilliant fire, which characterizes so pre-eminently the Chinese fire, is produced. ”

“ Wrought iron will occasion scintillations, somewhat of the same appearance, and steel, also, in greater abundance; and hence both are employed in sundry compositions. But the particular character, beauty, and brilliancy of Chinese fire must be attributed, first to the iron, and secondly to its peculiar state of combination with carbon and oxygen; for, we have said, that malleable iron, (which is deprived in a great measure of these substances in the operation required for its preparation) , produces an effect far inferior to cast iron. ”

“ With this he may light a match, and kindle the fire of his forge. The iron has become more dense by the hammering, and it cannot again be heated to the same degree by similar means, until it has been exposed in fire, to a red heat. ”

“ To accomplish these ends the iron must not be heated too quickly after it is at a good red heat, and the fire must be so made that the blast cannot meet it at any point until it has passed through the bed of the fire. ”

“ The instant the tinder comes into contact with the vital air it begins to burn with great intensity; and, communicating the inflammation to the iron-wire, it too takes fire, and burns rapidly, throwing out brilliant sparks, which fall to the bottom of the vessel in rounded globules, which become black in cooling, but retain a degree of metallic splendour. The iron thus burnt is more brittle even than glass, and is easily reduced into powder, and is still attractable by the magnet, thought not so powerfully as it was before combustion. ”

“ Much confidence has been placed in wrought-iron tie or tension rods, to take the lateral strain of the arches, and also in trusses to support the beams; but it must be evident that the expansion of the iron from the heat, would render them useless, and under a high temperature, it would be so great as to unsettle the brickwork, and accelerate its fall, on any part of the iron-work giving way: again, the application of cold water to the heated iron, in an endeavour to extinguish the fire, is almost certain to cause one or more fractures. ”

“ Prescott, “just remember three things: fuel, blast, and hammer—power, of course, behind the hammer. It’s the different variations that men have been making on those three things that have brought iron where it is to-day.
“Iron ore has so many things besides iron in it that the problem has always been how to get the impurities out.
“The old blacksmiths used to put it in the fire and hammer it; put it back in the fire and hammer again, until they worked most of the other things out. They made what is called forge iron. ”

“ Steel-dust is another important ingredient in fire-works, for being mixed with mealed powder or some other composition, and the mixture inflamed in a proper tube, or case, the jet of fire produces a most brilliant appearance by the sparks arising from the ignition of the iron in the oxygen gas of the nitre. ”

“ This tray being substituted for the connecting wire, as soon as the immersion of the apparatus causes the metal to burn, the rose-coloured flame appears, and if the residuum left in the sheet iron be afterward thrown into water, an effervescence sometimes ensues.
I have ascertained that an iron heated to combustion, by a blacksmith's forge fire, will cause the decomposition of the hydrate of potash. ”

“ Iron, above all, has excessive resistance, very valuable to us.
“Shovels, tongs, grates, stoves, are iron. These various objects, always in contact with the fire, do not melt, however; do not even soften. To soften iron, so as to shape it easily on the anvil by blows from the hammer, the smith needs all the heat of his forge. In vain would he blow and put on coal; he would never succeed in melting it. Iron, however, can be melted, but you must use the most intense heat that human skill can produce.”
CHAPTER XIII
METAL PLATING IN the morning some wandering coppersmiths were passing. ”

“ In the regions 290of iron-mines you will see towering aloft here and there huge chimneys, or blast-furnaces, at times sending forth great clouds of black smoke and at times lighting the sky with the lurid glow of flames. In these big blast-furnaces, the iron ore and coal are piled in layers. Then a very hot fire is made, so hot that the iron melts and runs down into moulds of sand, where it is collected. ”

“ When the conversion of the iron into steel appears to be complete, the fire is extinguished; and, after having been suffered to cool for six or eight days, it is removed. Iron combined with charcoal in this manner, is denominated blistered steel, from the blisters which appear on its surface, and in this state, it is much used for common purposes.
5. To render this kind of steel more perfect, the bars are heated to redness, and then drawn out into bars of much smaller dimensions, by means of a hammer moved by water or steam power. ”

“ Cast and wrought-iron have been frequently fused at fires in large buildings such as warehouses, sugar houses, &c., but according to Mr. Fairbairn's experiments on cast iron in a heated state, it is not necessary that the fusing point should be attained to cause it to give way. ”

“ The various compositions for brilliant fire, as the Chinese fire, owe their peculiar character to pulverised cast iron, and commonly to steel and iron filings. Now the effects in these cases are the same; for the same oxidizement ensues, more or less rapidly, which in fact distinguishes the kinds of brilliant fire. That of the Chinese is the most perfect, and next is the composition made with steel filings. ”

“ HANDLING FIRE It is by the aid of the etheric elemental essence also that the remarkable feat of handling fire unharmed is generally performed, though there are as usual other ways in which it can be done. The thinnest layer of etheric substance can be so manipulated as to be absolutely impervious to heat, and when the hand of a medium or sitter is covered with this he may pick up burning coal or red-hot iron with perfect safety. ”

“ Looked underneath the forge — at the edge of the bellows.
Already the production (F. birth) of iron had taken place, the
Genus steel had appeared.
(c.)
The genesis of steel is known, the origin of iron is guessed.
Water is the eldest of the brothers, iron the youngest.
Paltry fire the middle one.
Water is the outcome of a mountain, fire's genesis is from the sky,
Iron's origin from iron-ore (F. rust) .
Fire became violent, worked itself into a fury.
Evil fire burnt much land, much land, much swamp,
Burnt sandy fields run wild, burnt sandy heaths. ”

“ The filings of iron and steel may be sifted through sieves. A fine hair sieve will answer for common purposes. Their fineness depends, in the first instance, on the file, which is used. Steel or iron filings are more commonly employed in the compositions for brilliant fire.
The sparks produced by cast-iron are very brilliant; but the reduction of the iron to powder, or to a degree of fineness sufficient for use, is a difficult operation. It is of too hard a nature to be cut by a file. ”

“ I come, therefore, to the conclusion, that a certain proportion of these instruments were in use, not for scraping hides like the others, but for scraping iron pyrites, and not improbably, in later days, even iron or steel for procuring fire. Were they used for such a purpose we can readily understand why they should so often present a bruising of the edge and an irregularity of form. We can also find a means of accounting for their great abundance. ”

“ Meanwhile Henry Cort had in 1784 very greatly simplified the conversion of cast iron into wrought iron. In place of the old forge, in which the actual contact between the iron and the fuel, itself an energetic carburizing agent, made decarburization difficult, he devised the reverberatory puddling furnace (see fig. 14 below) , in which the iron lies in a chamber apart from the fire-place, and is thus protected from the carburizing action of the fuel, though heated by the flame which that fuel gives out. ”

“ Take filings of Iron, in what quantity you please; put them into a broad unglazed earthen vessel; set it under the muffle of a cupelling furnace; make it red-hot; stir [Pg 277] the filings frequently; and keep up the same degree of fire till the Iron be wholly turned into a red powder.
OBSERVATIONS.
Iron easily loses its phlogiston by the action of fire. The calx that remains after its calcination is exceeding red; which makes this be thought the natural colour of the earth of that metal. ”

“ He also states, that the loss of strength in cold-blast cast iron, in a variation of temperature from 26° to 190° = 164° Fahr., is 10 per cent., and in hot-blast at a variation of from 21° to 190° = 169° Fahr., is 15 per cent.; now if the loss of strength advances in anything like this ratio, the iron will be totally useless as a support, long before the fusing point is attained. ”

“ We see this in the case of iron which, however hard it may naturally be, yet when heated thoroughly in a furnace fire can be easily worked into any kind of shape, and still, if cooled while it is soft and white hot, it hardens again with a mere dip into cold water and takes on its former quality. ”

“ Its distribution is among high northern tribes, both Eskimo and Indian.
(3) As far as known, its range is limited to this area, only one other instance coming to our notice, that of the Fuegians.
2. FLINT AND STEEL.
The flint and pyrites method is the ancestor of the flint and steel. The latter method came in with the Iron Age. It is found in the early settlements of that period. A steel for striking fire was found in the pile dwellings of the Ueberlinger See. [58] The Archæological Department of the Museum has a specimen of a strike-a-light of the early age of iron in Scandinavia. ”

“ Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by striking flint against steel, or when an iron bar is worked for some time by powerful blows of the hammer. ”

“ A fire is lighted at the lower part, and the products of combustion, in their way upwards, meet with horizontal iron plates, which deflect them first to the right, then to the left, and thus compel them to make a long serpentine journey before they reach the chimney. By this220 means they give off their heat to the large surface of iron plate, and enter the chimney at a comparatively low temperature. The heat is radiated into the apartment from the large metal surface, no part of which approaches a red-heat. ”