IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF MALLEABLE IRON AND STEEL
Year: 1858

page_text: application for Letters Patent was not given within the time prescribed
by the Act.)
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Charles Sanderson at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 6th March
. 1858.
c'I, CHARLES SANDERSON, of Sheffield, in the County of York, Merchant, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
MANUFACTURE OF MALLEABLE IRON AND STEEL," to be as follows:-
This Invention relates, firstly, to the adaptation for the purpose of obtaining
malleable iron of the process patented by me on the 24th November 1855, for
the manufacture of iron; and, secondly, this Invention relates to the employ-
ment in the manufacture of steel of refined iron prepared according to the
above-named patented process.
This process consisted in refining pig iron or fluid iron as it came from the
blast furnace, by adding thereto (while on the bed of the reverberatory
furnace) a chemical reagent, which, by its decomposition when acted upon by
the heat, would evolve elements capable of combining with the carbon con-
tained in the fluid iron, and reacting upon the silicon, aluminium, sulphur,
The
phosphorus, arsenic, or any other impurity contained in the iron.
refined metal was then run into moulds, and subsequently by the ordinary
mode of puddling further manufactured into malleable iron.
The object of the present Invention is the production of malleable iron
directly from the puddling furnace or charcoal refinery, without the inter-

page_text: vention of the process of refining the crude iron prior to its treatment in the
puddling furnace as above, described.
I, however, make use of. this process as an auxiliary means of attaining the
desired end; I therefore melt pig iron in the puddling furnace, as it is now
melted in the operation of puddling pig iron; or, I introduce the usual
quantity of crude iron in a fluid state, say 4 to 5 cwt., as may be most con-
venient; I then add to such fluid iron any suitable chemical reagents, as those
described in the before mentioned Patent; enlarging the proportion so as to
effect a more rapid decarbonization of the iron, and I next proceed to puddle
up the iron in the ordinary way; or, I melt crude pig iron in a charcoal refinery
or introduce fluid iron into it, and at once add the reagents to such iron in
quantity sufficient to decarbonize the iron, and I then proceed to work the
iron in the charcoal finery in the ordinary way. In these operations I do not
run out the metal in a refined state from the furnace, but produce malleable
iron directly and at one operation from the furnace in which the crude pig or
fluid iron is acted upon.
In the manufacture of cast steel the iron which I use I decarbonize by means
of the reagents named in the Patent before referred to, so that it shall contain
a minimum per-centage and definite quantity of carbon; I then melt the
metal so decarbonized in a crucible, alone or with the addition of malleable
iron, or iron converted into steel or iron ore which has by any process been
deoxidized for the purpose of obtaining cast steel, the quality of which may be
determined according to the purity of the materials used.