The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-11-09


the monster. Stepping to the edge of
the platform, you see that the load
has fallen not into a pit of roaring
flame. but on to the sloping sides OF
a great iron cone. But when the last
load is dumped, the cone, in obedience
to the laws of it's mechanism. sinks
slowly into the furnace, the ore and
fuel slide into the fire, and a below
ing flame rolls superbiy skyward. A
moment, and the cone comes evenly
back to place and the demonstration
ceases.
Within that inferno is a lake burn
ing with perpetual fire. Some thirteen
years ago that furnace was blown in
that is, the first fire was laid on its
cold hearth. Kindlihg wood and coke
and limestone and more coke, with
little ore atop, were piled up to a
third the hight of the big furnace. Fire
was applied, and when it was roaring
nicely more wood and coke and lime
were fed to it and a gentle breath
of hot blast was turned on to help
combustion. Before many days the
furnace was running full blast and full
charge; and so, night and day, it has
roared ever since. Ton upon ton of
ore and fuel and f1ux are tumbled into
Its Unsuitable NAV; and ton upon ton
of molten metal pours out from the
crucible at it's base. Three shifts of
men tend it day in day out, from one
years end to another.
What Happens in the Furnace.
Just what goes on inside this raging
furnace?
OF the three materials dumped in
at the mouth, the coke was for fuel,
the ore for melting, and the limestone,
or flux, was there to take to itself inn
| purities which otherwise might solid
he faa- tod
limestone, moreover, floats on the sur
race or molten iron and can be tapped
| OFF easily when the furnace is poured.
| These three things falling in at the
! mouth of the furnace meet at first no
very fierce heat, but as they sink lower
| and lower in the throat the heat grows
more intense. The limestone first parts
| With its carbonic acid and then be-
| comes quicklime. The iron ore turns
| spongy; the particles of iron begin to
unite with phosphorus and silicon and
| carbon and sulphur, and other things
| in the charge which do it no manner
| of good. But by the time it reaches
white heat in the crucible at the bot
| tom, the quicklime> has wooed away
the bulk of the impurities, uniting
| them with itself as fluid Stag. Every
particle of the original charge is con-
verified into either gas or fluid; nothing
| remains in the furnace from that
| particular dose of material. Clinkers
| in blast furnace would mean sheer
| ruin. The gas is piped off to feed the
blowing engines and the blast stoves,
and the iron and Stag are tapped off
below, to go their several ways.
Turn back to the hoist, now, and
| you will find your cage descending with
the empty buggies and full cage COM
| ing up to the mouth of the next fur
mace. The man at the winding engine
is no respector of visitors. You must
take passage when the signal sounds,
| or wait the next car.
Down at the foot of the blast furn-
ace the air is choking with the stencil
| of gas. An eerie red light fills the
shed, and a slow river of molten me-
tai, white as flame at the tap-hole, but
| glowing ever more darkly red as it
flows, is pouring sluggishly through
a tangle of sand cutters into the open
mouths Of row of Gartuan ladies',
drawn up on fiat cars in a trench be-
low. 'Ladle" is the ironmaster's
term for the vast caldrons which make
nothing of burden Of thirty tons OF
foaming, fluid metal.
A River of Fire.
On one side of the fiery river a lit
tie sluice gate lets a current of irri-
descent, floating Stag drain off from
1 the top of the pure metal and go mean.
dering away in a vivid CLASSY brook
to the iron Stag car which awaits it
A car load of the half-cooled stuff
looks like nothing so much as the lava
bed of a sleeping volcano. Through
irregular assures in the dull crust come
tiny sulphurous flames and an angry
glow from the smothered fires below.
While you cough and shield your
scorched face from the glare and
| fierce heat from the crimson streams
you learn about a notable chance in
the practice of a modern steel plant
Once the molten river before you
would have been decoyed through a
series of burrows connected with the
main channel and allowed to cool par
TALLY. Then the iron in the smaller
| NOTES.-The pigs-would have been
broken with sledge hammers from the
| large masses-the sows. 1t was warm
| business and strenuous. But the
world moves. Nowadays the fiery
stream pours directly into the waiting
ladies and an electric engine whisks
it away, still glowing, across the yards
| to the Bessemer works. Gold pig is
made only when the converters are
idle and even then a neat device does
away with the heavy task of pig-mak-
| ing. The fluid iron is run into series
| of metal n1olds, working on the endless
| chain principle, and passed through
the Chill, tanks filled with cold wa
| ter-coming out at the other end suff1-
GENTLY cooled and shrunken to be
| slipped from the molds and loaded
upon trains bound for the Bessemer
| works.
Wholesale Pyrotechnics.
| Pyrotechnics awaits you within the
| dark Bessemer mill. A fierce gush of
| binding white fire streams Kissing
athwart the dim enclosure, accom-
panied by a vivid rain of bursting
stars. squat, black retort is belch-
| ing from it's short thick neck this
broad stream of glory. 1t is a Besse-
mer converter. The long drawn, hiss
| ing roar is the screech of the hot blast,
| tearing it's way through the fluid
metal, winnowing out impurities, and
| making of iron, steel. Every moment
the flame grows more furious; the
| twenty-ton converter trembles under
| the violence of the surging with
in Splashes of fluid Stag begin to be
thrown out and fall in increasing
showers of crimson sparks into the
black pit below.
Suddenly tinge of amethyst comes
over the wilderness Of the fire: the
flame dwindles and dies down. The
carbon is burned out. Quick comes a
burning may spoil the fiery broth. The
huge iron egg is tipped on one side.
vomiting a stream of sparks which
break harnlessly. against the opposite
wall. From out the dark swings round
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