The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-05-07
BOMBAY WISHES CRATE BARS MADE
 IN BIRMINGHAM
World Wide Demand For Semi Steel Product of Thomas Crate Bar
 Company
By RICHARD F. JOHNSTON

By RICHARD F. JOHNSTON
 large textile mill in Bombay, India. has written the Thomas Crate isar company. this city. asking for specifications on the semi-steel w. SD grate bars made by that con- eern for it's seven 400-horsepower boilers. The inquiry states that i've want your grates"
 These grate bars are made by the Thomas company at it's plant in East Birmingham, located there in 1911. Ed l., Thomas, head of the industry, moved his foundry here from Val dosta, Ga. that year The reason was simple but ppealng one. MT Thomas was paying S9.65 per to nmore for forwarding his product Co the Bald win Locomotive works at Philadel- phia from Valdosta. than he would pay by producing and shipping from Birmingham It was a matter of s965 on each 100 tons. Crate bars weigh, either when made out of cast iron prior to 1921 or of semi-steel a s produced by the Thomas company since that year Even greater diff feTences existed to other points
 Mir. Thomas names three epochal years in his business career. In 19GT h' Nht tAtIHtit kidIt hdi now in use wherever there are steam boilers. In 1914 he took the road himself, sold grates himself and es- tablIshed his selling organization. In 1921 he perfected and bepane manu- facture of the semi steel bar. They were lean years" said MT. Thomas They called for initiative. I gave it and the result is the sale of this Birmingham product from Canada to Cuba and from Maine to Hawaii"
 Honored nt Home
 Thomas grate bars are honored in their own country. They are in use a t iron. steel and by-produet works and the like by the Tennessee. Sloss- Sheffield. Woodward Iron, American Steel and Wire and the other large industrial concerns, at the terminal station. in laundries, wherever, in fact coal is burned.
 The Thomas bar ig made with meshes from 3-16 of an inch to 1i4 inches. This allows for all kinds and qualities of coal, coal dust If needed. Thomas grate is made to burn hog eed products and saw dust at saw mills.
 Right now the petroleum by products works of Pacific coast are asking for the Thomas bar because
 
 of 99 per cent purity and generates a heat that cast iron bars cannot withstand. For the same reason the cement mills Of California are in- quiring for the Thomas semi i-steel bar. Sugar refineries are especially interested because most exacting ser vice Is required In their retorts.
 Baldwin Locomotive works have been putting the Thomas Rrate bar in their locomotives for dozen years and they are being specified for loco motives made by the Lima Locomo- tive words.
 Go Everywhere
 The iron works of Bath, Maine, are equipped with Thomas grate bars and they are in the immense steel work S of Carnegie company Jones & Laugh lin and others at Pittsburg and the steel companies at Youngstown and elsewhere. They go to almost every foreign field. Mexico, Cuba, British West Indies, Honduras, Hawaii, 70 Canada and to India. No Birmin9- ham product travels further afield.
 The plant at East Birmingham is in the shadow of the Sloss- Sheffield blast furnaces and across the street Is the Southern freight depot. Tracks running through the plant connect
 
 Louisville and Nashville roads. Raw materials and shipping depots are practically on the spot.
 Their Composition
 The Thomas grate bar. as made since fall of 1921, is half steel. It is 50 per cent steel and 50 per cent pig iron. The result is this:
 The component steel with it's high fusng point, great strength and toughness, is protected by the cast iron from scaling and deteriorating under the constant heating and cool ing procfss.
 The component cast iron, with its fire resisting qualities, borrows stpength and toughness from the steel and protects what it borrows. "Semi-steel mixture sets up a hard ness with powers to withstand the expansions, stresses, strains, rough treatment and hard usage given fire castings. Only hard, tough. strong castings can withstand such exacting service
 All fire castings such as retorts, pans, vats, boiler fronts, doors, liners, rims, plates, arches, common grate bars and the like are also made of the same semi-steel as the elliptic grate bars
 The elliptic bar was already famous when made of cast iron. for it's even distribution of air, it's complete com bustion of fuel and the ease with which the grate bars are operated and teh. fire bed kept continuously clean.
 Conquest of the trade was com pleted when Mir. Thomas found out how to and began making them of half steel and half cast iron ia 1921.