Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-08-27
GREAT IMPROVEMENTS NAILS.
Making Them out of Bessemer Steel.

Neao York Journal OF Commerce.
A dispatch from Pittsburg states that
If the steel nails prove a success the ey.
pertinent would revolutionize the trade.
as a Few men could do the work Of hum
dreds. This has created no little excite
ment, and we have received a number of
letters asking how this could be, and by
what process the saving is effected.
The reason why steel nails can be made
With less labor than iron nails is because
the steel itself is made by the Bessemer
process, which turns out immense GUAM
titles by very simple machinery, while in
the case of iron used for nails the process
is by hand, very laborious, and slow. A
Bessemer converter can make from 100 TO
$50 tons OF steel per day, simply by the
help of few men to attend machinery.
1t is an enlarged foundry process, where
metal is melted and operated upon chemi-
cally. This metal is poured out into in
gOts, and these ingots are heated and
rolled into steel nail plate and cut the
same as the iron nail plates.
But the case is different with the plates
for iron nails. First, the pig iron is put
in pudding furnace, a half ton at a
time, and worked laboriously by two men.
puddler and helper, for an hour and a
half. Five cheats" constitute ordinarily
days work, and the product is in the
a
quarter of iron, which is heated and rolled
into nail plate and cut to convenient
lengths to be handled by the nail cutters.
Twenty puddlers and helpers might turn
out twelve to fifteen tons of iron plate in
day, but the same force at a Bessemer
plant might turn out ten to twenty times
that quantity Of steel. A Bessemer
"blOw" can be made in 80 to As min
utes and produce from 5 to 10 tons, ac-
cOrding to the capacity of the converter
simply by the labor of unskiIled men to
fill the converter with the necessary ma
terial and the labor of skilled man to
turn little wheel to regulate the blast,
by which the impurities IN the material
are oXIdlzed and eliminated. One Besse-
mer plant makes 700 tons in one day with
two cOnVerters doing their best, and this
with the work of a small squad of labor
ers. 1t would require the labor of from
1000 to 1,200 skilled iron workers to make
the same quantity of puddled iron, and
then 1t would be vastly inferior to the
Bessemer steel.
The actual labor of cutting the nail
plate up into nails is the same with either
iron plate or steel plate. The saving in
labor is in the preliminary processes
described.
There are at present two Bessemer
plants making steel nail plate. One is at
Bellaire, Ohio, and consists of two four
ton cOnverters. Its first blow was made
April %. A few men here do what 200
did before. The second Bessemer plant
is at Worcester, Mass, and also consists
of two fOur-tOn converters. The first
blow of this establishment was made on
June ,.
A third plant is in process of erection,
and will probably not be in operation
until some time next year; 1t will have
two four-tOn cOnverters. Here is a
present and prospective capacity of six
conyerters of four tons capacity each,
casting in less than an hour. Hand labor
in the rolling mills is being slowly driven
to the wall. Steel is supplanting iron
gently, but the revolution has obtained
strong fOOthOld and nothing can arrest
it. Steel rails can be made cheaper than
iron rails, and are much more serViceable.
The same will be true of other forms of
iron as progress is made.
There are at present sixteen Bessemer
steel rail establishments in the United
States, with productive capacity of not
far from 100000 tons ingots per annum.
Under the decline in railway building
this enormous capacity has depressed
prices. The complaint made as to steel
nails is that they are smoother than iron
nails, and, therefore, have less grip on
the surrounding material; but their use
has not been extensive enough to saw
what they are worth compared to iron
nails. They will certainly last longer,
and, being made with less labor and out
Of cheaper material, they can crowd iron
nails out, just as steel rails have crowded
iron rails out of the market.
The process Of pudding iron is costly
because done by hand. The spongy iron
is manipulated for the purpose of having
the foreign substances removed by oxv-
gen; but in the Bessemer process air is
simply forced through the molten metal.
and its oxygen unites with the foreign
substances and leaves the residue con-
verted into steel. In the hand process-i.
e., puddling-it is impossible to get a
strong or hot enough blast to drive out the
foreign substances which belong in crude
iron, i. e., carbon, phosphorus, sulphur,
ETC., but by the aid of powerful blasts in
the Bessemer process everything wanted
out is sent out at one operation by
chemical and mechanical action.
This somewhat glowing account of the
triumphs of Bessemer steel, we have
from source we deem reliable, and
we give it in answer to the inquiries
pouring in from all sides as to the future
Of this trade.