Ironworking

“ Without anyone in control of it, the machine vomited forth tacks. The supplies of iron ready to be manufactured into tacks raised themselves of their own accord; one piece after another, thrust themselves through the air, and inserted themselves in the proper machines. It was at first an uncanny thing to see. When these supplies were exhausted, iron sprouted out of the earth, the ground round the factory exuded pure iron as if it were being drawn by suction from the depths of the earth. ”

“ We forget that, with primitive methods but fine ores and a fuel devoid of sulphur, the production of steel of fine quality is as easy a process as the manufacture of iron, in fact the only difference between the method of procuring iron and steel under these circumstances is the length of time the process is allowed to go on. The ancient founders used the finest ores, often containing 75 per cent. of iron, and, working with charcoal fuel, which was nearly pure carbon, they could produce steel as easily as iron. ”

“ The toughness of malleable iron renders it applicable to purposes, where great strength is required, while its difficult fusibility, and property of softening by heat, so as to admit of forging and welding, cause it to be easily wrought.
2. Cast iron, from its cheapness, and from the facility with which its form may be changed, is made the material of numerous structures. Steel, which is the most important compound of iron, exceeds all other metals in hardness and tenacity; and hence it is particularly adapted to the fabrication of cutting instruments. ”

“ We should now make our own iron. We have already spent about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make iron here, but we have failed, not for want of ore or for want of skill. Where is the difficulty? There has not been union enough in the men who engaged in that work. After we had spent about one hundred thousand dollars, an ingenious man, named Peter Shirts, would have brought out the iron as good as ever was made, and that, too, by means of a small furnace of trifling cost ”

“ The specification of the invention will be comprised in a few words, as it will only set forth that a reverberatory furnace being built of a proper construction, the pig or cast iron is put into it, and without the addition of anything else than common raw pit coal, is converted into good malleable iron, and, being taken red-hot from the reverberatory furnace to the forge hammer, is drawn out into bars of various shapes and sizes, according to the will of the workmen. ”

“ One naturally wonders how it is possible to mine and carry these ores to the shipping ports of Duluth, Superior, Two Harbors, Marquette, Ashland, Escanaba, etc., put them aboard ore carrying boats, transport them by steam power to Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and the many other iron centers and convert them into iron and steel at a profit. This, of course, is only possible because of the inventive genius of man. For every operation ingenious machinery has been constructed which has brought the cost of such operations to its lowest terms. ”

“ While I write, iron is doubtless flowing from blast furnaces in England, Wales, and Scotland; while I write, ingots of white-hot Bessemer steel are being dealt with under the steam-hammer or in the rolling-mills; while I write, horse-shoes are being forged, and, at each moment, in one way or another, pieces of iron of every temperature could be found, from those which are as cold as the iron apparatus used by Sir James Dewar in his experiments in the liquefaction of air, up to the glittering melted steel which is poured from the tilted converter. ”

“ The multifarious use of iron in our day has given its name to the age. We have got far beyond the primitive applications of that metal—every day it is supplanting some other substance, and there is no saying where the wide-spread and varied service we exact from it will stop. The invention of the steam-engine, and the improvement of manufacturing machines, would be comparatively valueless, unless we had at command a cheap and abundant supply of iron for their construction. ”

“ These wonderful developments in the production of iron and steel were even more dependent upon the development of machinery for transporting the material and handling it in the factory than was the case with the textiles. Pig iron cannot be made without having in immediate conjunction three natural materials, iron ore, limestone and some material to produce intense heat. The iron is only found in the form of “ore,” being iron mixed with rocks, earth or other matter which must be removed in order to use the iron. ”

“ Industry and applied science in every direction which could be useful to constructive work were progressing steadily and with rapidity. Especially this was the case with the manufacture of iron, which rendered undertakings easy that would have been impossible to the older engineers, who had little at their disposal except timber, stone, and brick. And later, when, in the march of progress, iron had to give way to steel, engineers were enabled to undertake and carry out successfully, undertakings which their immediate predecessors could not seriously consider for want of the proper materials. ”

“ No matter how we try, probably none of us ever realizes the immensity and importance of the iron and steel industry with approximately 460 huge blast furnaces here, 5000 cast and malleable iron foundries, about 1000 Bessemer and open-hearth steel and some 3000 puddling furnaces, and the many thousands of factories which each day are turning the products of these into rails, plate, wire, pipe, and the infinitude of finished articles which enter into and are mighty factors of our civilization. ”

“ You see that a man who works in iron must be both an artist and a smith—he must blow the forge and use the hammer. That gate in cast iron would be almost ugly. In the Swedish wrought iron, it is truly beautiful.
“The old fellows knew much more about the artistic side of iron than we do. Look at the old French locks—even a French king prided himself on his ability to make locks.
“There was a time when an apprentice to a locksmith had to make a masterpiece lock before he could become a master. It usually took him two years to do it, for he had to chase and chisel it from the solid. ”

“ The story of railroading leads naturally to that of progress in iron and steel work generally, which has been extraordinary during the century. Of inventions in this direction perhaps the most notable is the Bessemer steel-making process, which converts iron into steel by the direct addition of the necessary quantity of carbon, and has had the important result of making steel cheaper to-day than iron was not very many years ago. In iron-working machinery the progress has been very great, and in no other field has the genius of the American inventor been more conspicuously displayed. ”

“ It is safe, I think, to challenge the ordinary reader of the present day to name a machine which is not composed largely or almost wholly of iron. The whole structure of our modern industry depends on the means of getting cheap iron. “Without it the engine, the spinning-jenny, the power-loom, the gas- and water-pipe, the iron vessel, the bridge, the railway—in fact, each one of our most important works—would be impracticable from the want and cost of material.” ”

“ Containing, as it does, a larger percentage of iron than any other source from which the metal is commercially extracted, its employment as an ore results in great economy of fuel, as well as a reduction in the proportionate costs of transport. When ores of iron require [Pg 190] to be brought from oversea places, it is obvious that those which will concentrate to the purest product possible, and which are in other respects specially applicable to the production of grades of steel of exceptional tensile strength, will have the preference. ”

“ Prescott,” said Billy, “explained to me about steel, and about forges.”
“When this country was first settled,” said Uncle John, “men had little forges to make iron, just as their wives had spinning wheels to make wool for clothes.
“When they began to make nails—they couldn’t build houses without nails—there was a forge in almost every chimney corner. Children, as well as grown people, used to make nails and tacks in the long winter evenings. People then took nails to the store to pay for things, as in the country they now take eggs.
“That old forge iron was never very pure. ”

“ Thus the last field of activity for the laborer and his shovel, in the iron-ore industry, has been usurped by mechanical devices. From the time the ore is taken [283] from the mine until it appears as molten metal from the furnaces, it is not touched except by mechanisms driven by steam, compressed air, or electricity. And yet, so rapid is the growth of the iron and steel industry that there is almost always a demand for more workmen. ”

“ Now they put back the right amount of carbon, and make the iron into steel.
“It’s a chemical process. When the air strikes the hot metals the oxygen unites with them, and they burst into flame. The whole process takes between fifteen and twenty minutes.”
“I am very sure,” said Dr. Crandon, “that I shouldn’t like to work here.”
“When we get to the open hearth process, which is the rival of the Bessemer,” said Mr. Prescott, “I expect that none of you will want to work there.”
“For my part,” said John Bradford, slowly, “I prefer Prescott mill.”
“So do I,” said Billy. ”

“ It was only after the next great advance that we found man utilizing iron for his purposes of civilization. This metal, which with us is so common, was in those days very expensive, so much so that it could be used only for purposes of war and as the gifts of kings.
But the world was traveling fast and it was not long before the iron-carbon alloy, steel, was produced. Even so, many hundreds of years elapsed before the present wonderful age was ushered in through the great inventions of Henry Bessemer and the Siemens brothers. ”

“ But there is one grand defect in this iron, although it is so tractable that it may be worked under the hammer into a thousand different shapes at the will of the smith; may be drawn into wire so fine as to be woven in a loom or made into a watch spring that weighs only the tenth of a grain, and rolled into leaves as thin as paper, insomuch that a pound of raw iron costing a cent affords steel sufficient for seventy thousand watches, worth one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To be mothers of iron ore (F. rust) , to be generators of "blue mouth".
The maidens stood in a dell, the "tin-breasts" lay powerless
On a little bank of land, on a narrow piece of ground.
There they made (F. built) iron, and by degrees formed steel,
Pulverised iron seeds, pounded lumps of steel.
God happens to arrive at the place where the iron seeds were.
Found the pounded bits of iron, the manufactured lumps of steel,
Carries them to the smithy of a smith — under the forge of Ilmarinen. ”

“ IMPROVEMENTS in the arts and sciences have gradually modified the methods of producing iron and steel, and, in their turn, the arts and sciences have felt the reaction; for all improvements in the manufacture of iron and steel have consisted, not so much in the production of a better quality of the article, as in the cheapening of production by the application of the principles indicated by the progress of science, and by the use of superior machinery. ”

“ Now in the series of operations, the blast-furnace, puddling and crucible processes, through which the iron passes from the state of ore to that of crucible tool steel, it is so difficult to detect just which are the conditions essential to excellence in the final product that, once a given procedure has been found to yield excellent steel, every one of its details is adhered to by the more cautious ironmasters, often with surprising conservatism. ”

“ The iron, by this manipulation, is strengthened, refined, made more elastic or more resistant, and adapted to the use each artisan dreams of. If every blow should fracture it, if every furnace should burn the life out of it, if every roller should pulverize it, of what use would it be? It has that virtue, those qualities that withstand all; that draw profit from every test, and come out triumphant in the end. ”

“ The machinery that is now employed in the iron trade, not only enables the people to be supplied cheaply with all sorts of articles of iron, but it enables a great number of people to find employment, not in the iron trade only, but in all other trades, who otherwise could not have been employed; and it enables everybody to do more work with [Pg 154] the same exertion by giving them better tools; while it makes all more comfortable by furnishing them with more commodious domestic utensils. ”