The weekly pioneer and Democrat., 1864-09-23

And naught but his blood can see!
Alas! in his glory he perished,
He will never come back to me
How HerseshOes are Made by Ma.
chinery.
The Providence (R. I) Press has an
interesting account Of the manufacture OF
horseshoes by machinery in that city.
This is comparatively new branch ofin-
dustry, involving some curious processes,
and it will be remembered that the intro
duction of machine-made shoes recently
created an excitement among the Journey
men horseshors in New York. The Press
says:
Perhaps the manufacture of most inter-
est from its novelty and completeness, is
that of horseshoes. In almost no branch
of business has machinery made greater
change in the cost of production and in
the perfection Of workmanship than in the
manufacture of horseshoes. The shoes
turned out in the factory are as much su-
perior to the old homemade shoes as
modern cotton fabric is to the product of
the hand loom. And so much has the in
PRODUCTION of machinery cheapened the
process that machine-made shoes can be
sold by the ton at about the same price as
the raw material.
The process of manufacture is not long,
and, Notwithstanding the employment Of
some most ingenious machies, is not at all
complicated. The iron, brought in the
yard in pigs, is first puddled to extract all
the impurities left by the melting process.
This consists in placing the iron in a fur
mace where it is brought to liquid state,
and there repeatedly stirred and worked
with a long iron ladle till the most of the
impurities have found their way to the top,
and have been removed. The mass is
there allowed to cool, and during the cool
ing is worked by the ladle or potter into
Jumps which are taken while yet re.-hot
to the machines in which tbo pud-
ding is completed. These can be
best understood by supposing an i'm
mense pair of shears, with one side
stationary and the other working upon it
the blades of the shears being not of
sharp steel, but OF heavy, broad, fiat
masses of iron, so arranged that the lump
the pudding furnace and placed upo. the
platform formed by the lower half of hese
great shears, will be compressed repeatedly
and with the greatest force by the upper
half. The mass of iron is turned in every
direction under the enormous pressure of
the upper arm of the machine, till all the
remaining dag and other impurities are
forced out, and the mass formed into suit
able shape to be rolled out into bars. The
pressure to which it is subjected is so
great that, as the outer layer Of the iron
is gradually cooled and forms hard crust,
the crust is broken, and streams OF the
molten metal pour through the cracks and
down the sides of the cooling mass.
These pudding and rolling processes
are, to one unaccustomed to seeing the
working of iron, the most interesting parts
of the manufacture. The works are run
through the entire night, and this is the best
time to see these processes to advantage.
The huge buildings, with roof and rafters
half lighted by the lurid glare of huge
masses OF molten iron, the wOrkmen vita
faces now in darkness and now flushed by
the sudden and ghastly light of the opened
furnaces, and the weird and varying light
upon the neighboring trees and houses,
presents scene of strange interest which
nightly attracts groups of gazers.
The iron, after pudding, is again heated
in a furnace and taken to the rolling ma
chimes, where, by being passed through a
succession of rollers each smaller than the
preceding, it is reduced to bars of the size
suitable to be at once made into shoes.
Besides the iron which is thus prepared
for use in the establishment, great guam
titles, designed for the market, are pud.
died and rolled into bars of about the
thickness of mans arm.
The iron prepared for the manufacture
of horseshoes is next cut into lengths, ant
the making the grooves and punching tn
nail holes is done upon the straight bar
before they are made into horseshoe shap:
The punching machines, of which sever
or eight are used, punch the holes in
shoe at two blows, and one machine
tended by boy, is able to trim off at {
single stroke OF knife, the rough edge
left by the punches.
The bars thus prepared are taken to th
horseshoe machines, of which there ar
six now in operation. In these they ar
placed upon an iron table, upon which
fixed core or dill projecting above th
surface Of the table, and having its edg
SO made as exactly to fit the inner edg
of q horseshoe. An arm in the shape Of
n is then driven forward and forces th
har to bend around the core into the OK
act shape of shoe. A steam trip-ham
NOR then gives the shoe number of heav
hlows. between which jet of water
driven by the machinery upon the shoe