AN IMPROVEMENT IN THAT DEPARTMENT OF THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON COM- MONLY CALLED PUDLING
Year: 1822

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, RICHARD
SUMMERS HARFORD, of Ebbro Vale Ironworks, in the Parish of Aberystruth,
in the County of Monmouth, Ironmaster (one of the people called Quakers),
send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Fourth did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of that part of the United Kingdom
of Great. Britain and Ireland called England, bearing date at Westminster, the
Ninth day of January, in the second year of His reign, give and grant unto
me, the said Richard Summers Harford, my exors, admors, and assigns, His
especial licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Richard
Summers Harford, my exors, adñors, and assigns, during the term of years
therein mentioned, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend,
within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention
of "AN IMPROVEMENT IN THAT DEPARTMENT OF THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON COM-
MONLY CALLED PUDLING;" in which said Letters Patent is contained a proviso
that if I, the said Richard Summers Harford, shall not particularly describe
and ascertain the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the
same is to be performed, by an instrument in writing under my hand and
seal, and cause the same to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chan-
cery within four calendar months next and immediately after the date of the
said Letters Patent, that then the said Letters Patent, and all liberties and
advantages whatsoever thereby granted, shall utterly cease, determine, and
become void, as in and by the same, relation being thereunto had, will more
fully and at large appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Richard Summers Harford, do hereby declare, that having observed much
inconvenience and difficulty from the use of cast-iron bottoms or floors when
they are applied to pudling furnaces, from the rapid manner in which they are
deteriorated and destroyed by the severe action of the heat that must neces-
sarily be applied to that class of furnace, and having found that when such
bottoms or floors are covered in the ordinary way with iron slag, sand, or
scoria, that either of these substances form not only very imperfectly the means
of defending the bottoms or floors from the injury that occurs, when they
are exposed to the intense heats necessary in the pudling process, but either
of these substances impart or engender impurities greatly injurious to the
formation of good iron, I have therefore, been induced to investigate the
nature and properties of such other materials as appeared to me more suitable
and better calculated. for the purpose; and having discovered various sub-
stances either of which will completely prevent the evil consequences before
stated from the use of sand, slag, or scoria, and which I shall hereafter fully
explain. I have also observed, when the cast-iron bottoms of floors of pudling
furnaces are covered with sand, iron slag, or scoria, that portions of the
siliceous matters contained in those substances become intimately united and
intermixed with the iron while it is under the process of pudling, and con-
sequently imparts such a degree of impurity as to render the iron of a very
inferior quality when compared with that which I produce by my improve-
ment. Now, in order to prevent the injury which I have described to the
cast-iron bottoms or floors of pudling furnaces when great heat is applied, I
spread or lay over the whole surface of the bottom or floor of a pudling
furnace a sufficient quantity of charcoal, either in the state in which it is
obtained of the manufacturer or formed into powder (the latter being the
state. in which I prefer it); and as the charcoal in either state is a non-
conductor of heat, it answers the purpose of protecting the cast-iron bottoms
or floors of pudling furnaces from the injurious effect of intense heat better
than any substance or material hitherto used for the preservation of cast-iron
bottoms or floors of pudling furnaces.
And I hereby further declare, that although I prefer the use of charcoal in
the way
I have described, yet the same beneficial effects may be produced by
using any of the following substances; namely, chips or shavings of wood,
sawdust, peat, turf, the spent bark from tanpits, plumbago, old leather, leather
shavings, or soot, also any animal or vegetable matter or substance to which,
when heat is applied, will form a sufficiently durable charcoal for the purposes
before described.

page_text: And, lastly, I do hereby declare that my said improvement consists not
only in having discovered the benefit of using various substances for the
better preservation of cast-iron bottoms and floors of pudling furnaces, but for
the substitution of such substances for those of iron slag, scoria, or sand,
which impart and engender impurities very injurious to the formation of good
iron, but which my Invention totally obviates, and thereby produces a superior-
iron, and thus effects an important improvement in that department of the
manufacture of iron commonly called pudling.
In witness whereof, I, the said Richard Summers Harford, have here-
unto set my hand and seal, the Eighth day of. May, in the year of
our Lord One thousand eight hundred and twenty-two.