The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-12-16
STRETCH BILLET
 OUT TWO MILES
American Steel And Wire Company Place Of Mod
 ern Magic
Why is A. ten-penny nail?


 Citizens who have worried over that problem since their youth, falling to find the answer in the dictionary the Encyclopedia Britannica or the Book of Knowledge, would be able 10 solve the mystery as well as obtain enlightenment on other matters per taining to the humble natl if they visited the plant of the American Steel and Wire company at Fairfield.
 How many people know that sul- phate of iron is by-product of wire fences?
 How do they ever get 10, ,oo0 feet of wire out of chunk of steel comm. on- Y known as billet 4X1O inches thick and 50 inches long,
 NThe writer, personally, was most interested in the ten-penny and twenty penny nails. He had an ar gument. in his youth, that wound up in near neighborhood riot, because another boy Insisted that ten -pinny was the correct designation, and the nafl was so-called because 1t was 10 times as long as pin.
 Now. this is quite erroneous. Ten penny nail is correct, and the origin of the term dates back to the days when hand wrought nails first came into use in England. A nail that sold at the rate of 10 for an English penny, was a ten-penny nail. The trade still
 
 penny nail, being twice as large, costs more than a tenpenny now adays, instead of half as much.
 No Figures.
 This and many other interesting things came to light during the course of two-hour visit at the place where nails and tacks and barbed wire fence are turned out by the mil lions, but the superintendent asked one favor, and that was that figures be omitted from. this account, so the statistical hatchet will be buried. No- body wants to know, anyway, how many times the quantity of horse high and chicken proof wire fence produced in Birmingham would reach around the world. or such things.
 From the time when the steel bill tets are picked up from the storage yards by an electro-magnet and placed on the conveyer in a eontinu- ous furnace to the final process in which wire fencing is neatly rolled in bales and finished nails are packed in kegs, ready for market. the oper- ations of the American Steel and Wire mill at Fairfield are interesting to the point of fascination.
 The uniform billets are subjected to intense heat in the furnace through which the conveyor carries them, ana emerge white hot, a a temperature of 5400 degrees Fahrenheit. The glowing steel passes through grooves and undergoes a gradual dwindling process. until it emerges i'm the shape of missing snake 1900 feet long. It is then in the rod stage, and later is estined to go through other grada- tions of size until it has reached the minimum of No. 20 wire. Drawn to this fine size, the original billet be- comes 10000 feet of wire.
 Nails consist merely of wire of vary ing thickness chopped by automatic machinery of seemingly almost hu- nan intelligence, into the proper size, ciamped at the rate of thousands per minute into dies which shape the head and cut the point of the nail.
 Human Mechanism.
 The manufacture of barbc1 Wire and the weaving of wire fencing are further processes made possible by the extreme perfection of machines designed for this purpose. A machine through which two strands of wire run, cuts one wire into barbs of the proper size, sharpens then. and winds them accurately at intervals around the swiftly passing second wire. Sim ilarlY the weaving machines, like giant textile looms, bind the crossing wires at the proper intersections and an endless stream of completed wire fencing passes out faster than the eye can follow it. These machines may be adjusted so that the bottom of the fence for height of two feet or more will have smaller meshes than the top of the fence-this for farmers who want fences horse high" and chicken proof a the bot tom.
 The plant has it's own cooperage