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Started by Tom, May 15, 2002, 05:28:39 PM

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Tom


The iron furnace is the Great Western Furnace along theTrace in the land between the lakes...a beautiful and restful drive, deer ,turkey, trees and buffalo. The furnace reminded me of Jeff's lime kilns.

Don P

I thought I'd give y'all some more food for thought on these old furnaces. Think about the number of trees they ate at the coalings...the charcoal piles where the colliers worked.
The recipe for iron;
20 bushels of charcoal
800 lbs of ore
80 lbs of limestone
Add to furnace 3 times per hour as long as its in blast. Tap 3 times per day to yield 4-1/2 tons pig iron.
What an appetite!
I forgot to tell Tom where the Trace is. Stewart Co Tenn. Kind of a flat Blue Ridge Parkway...45 MPH and they do mean it, but I found myself going much slower most of the time anyway. Take the side trip if you're ever in that neck of the woods.

swampwhiteoak

LBL is a neat place.  I grew up within 20 minutes of an entrance.  They still got the buffalo, Don P?

For those of you who've never been there - lots of oak, mostly dry site types like southern red, post, blackjack, ect with lots of other stuff to.  Average site index50 is probably around 50 for the common species.  Some sites are quite good for mushroom hunting though.  

Mostly surrounded by the Tennessee River (Kentucky Lake) to the west and the Cumberland River (Barkley Lake) to the east.  

When LBL was inhabited it was full of moonshiners because much of it was inaccessible.  Lots of federal agents got "lost" looking for stills.  When they decided to dam up both rivers they went in and kicked the locals out, razed the buildings, and turned it into a Nat. Recreation area (or whatever they called it back then).  Only thing left of settlements is obvious former homesite clearing and foundations, the occassional well, and plenty of cemetaries.  Most of the families that got kicked out didn't move too far away and many of them still have pretty bad feelings about the whole thing.

TVA used to manage the area.  They did a pretty good job.  A few local enviro groups didn't like them and got congress to change the juristiction to the forest service within the last couple of years.  They wanted the park service, but they wouldn't take it.

One of the screwball things TVA did was introduce fallow deer {european import).  Not sure if this is common in other places but I haven't seen them anywhere else.  Really odd looking small deer that will mess with your head if you're 12 years old and trying to bag a whitetail (not that I'd no anything about that  ;)  ).

I got lots more stories but you can read about LBL here:
http://www2.lbl.org/lbl

L. Wakefield

   You'll think I'm foolish (and rightly so.. :D)- but I'm interested in a bit more info on that seemingly simple method of iron production (simple compared to buying Bethlehem Steel..) I looked into steel production as a primitive skill briefly awhile ago; and was principally impressed by the potential extreme toxicity- fumes and etc.

    Do you have any webrefs?   :P  lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Don P

I've crashed the mess out of my computer of late (a skill I'm perfecting, when prompted to restore your computer to a factory new state do not select that option...it was an empty box when new :D :D) But I got on
http://iron.wlu.edu/anvil.htm
at one time and read about bloomeries, or blueberry forges, as they are called back in the boonies. One side note on the old hand wrought iron is that the silica was pounded back into the metal instead of being fluxed out as in modern metals, it gave some degree of rustproofing. Remember the porch collapse at UVA in Charlottesville a few years ago. The iron strut that failed had been specced by Thomas Jefferson and had been in service since that era...think modern steel would have lasted that long? Remember one of the proofs of aliens was an obleisk in India of strange alien metal that hadn't rusted...I got an opinion :D. More interesting info worth reading up on is pioneer gunsmithing and barrel fabrication, a lost art.
There are 4 old furnaces like the one pictured that I know of on the ridge near the house. Eagle cliff, Raven Cliff, Noble, and I can't recall the last, quite an industry at one time.

Off to the dungeon, basement framing :'( :D


Ron Wenrich

We have the Cornwall Iron Works down the road from here.  It was started in 1732 and the mine ran until 1972.  That's when Agnes came in and flooded the mines.  They were down 900 feet and the gold and rare metals were worth more than the iron ore.  It was an open pit mine and Bethlehem Steel was running it.

The Cornwall Iron Works is still open for visits.  They provided cannons and cannon balls for Washington and the troops.  Maybe I'll get to stop in someday.

I used to find lots of charcoal flats throughout the area.  Nothing would grow on the flat, but on the fringe areas, there would always be good quality and larger timber.  Must have been all that potash.

The flats were located anywhere you could get a mule.  I found some where modern day loggers would not dare go.  Rotation was about every 20-30 years.  Charcoal was a major product in many portions of the state, until coke firing replaced them.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

splinters

I'd be interested in anything on the Bloomeries and making of iron. Ive seen pictures of the process and want to try it. I'm kind of a nut about starting from scratch. You know, the kinfe instructions stare with, Several buckets of iron ore, add limestone, heat until----, you get the picture.  Thought that at one time it was done as a demo at Cornwall Furnace. It was also produced in Upstate NY Open pit, bloom iron and water powered forge.  Thats why the village is Old Forge.

L. Wakefield

   I'm with you on the 'making from scratch'. We did already have a brief thread that dealt with the production of charcoal. Is there enough interest in this  to start a 'primitive arts' thread? One fella had been making the charcoal and then using it to produce his own black powder. Now THAT'S an art worth knowing. So is the production of flint and stone tools (obsidian knives can be sharper than scalpels..), beermaking, all the methods of firemaking...has anyone ever made a dugout or a birchbark canoe?      

               lw
 



L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

L. Wakefield

   And papermaking- it's a potentially extremely polluting industry. But what does it look like on the smaller scale? Say for areas where the big producers don't want pulp, so if you are logging there is simply no way to utilize what would otherwise be 'pulpwood' except maybe as biomass, and that's a pretty big operation too. I am interested in scaling down, local operations, and independence. (Mobile papermaking.. :D :D) Cottage industries fight back.

   Bearing in mind that this is not always or even generally practical. But if you look at the opposing tendency- scaling up, multinationals and conglomerates- and the potential for the accompanying large-scale market tyranny and accompanying governmental fingers in the pie which have lobbying interests always working to control them...as you know I am always an advocate of stepping out of the middle if you are being squeezed. Just show me how.   lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Ron Wenrich

The biggest problem with cottage industries is marketing.  So much labor goes into the making of the product, markets are often hard to find.  Co-ops often help.

But, we have communities that do a thriving cottage business.  The Amish have roadside stands, selling produce, quilts, baked goods, and furniture.  Tourism helps in their marketing, but you will often see goods in the local farmer's markets and auctions.

They give a good idea in production, since labor and production costs are cheap.  No insurance, little energy costs, and if you need more labor, just have a few more kids.

We also have a furniture store that sells for several different shops.  It is really nice to go in and select a certain style of wooden furniture and know you are helping the local economy and getting a good quality product.  Quite often you have to wait on production, but it's worth the wait.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

L. Wakefield

   Increasing size in industry- as with increasing size in government- can lead to a pretty unwieldy structure. Layers upon layers of bureaucracy and regulatory functions don't put the power players in touch with the real action, but only with the money and power generated by the real action. Many of the large companies took enough of a pounding over the last 20 years and the trend in downsizing that they learned a valuable lesson in customer friendliness.

   I feel that 'friendliness' is a concept that when genuinely applied, works well both upstream and downstream in business. It should not simply be coddling the customer- who is NOT always right!- but should be part of a contractual relationship beween business and customer- and among employees and employers.

   Such an attribute can be the icing on the cake of a local business- which has, as you say, the added benefit of the knowledge that you are supporting the local folks.

   Friendliness is not always a characteristic of local business. Many a newcomer to a small town has gotten the 'cold shoulder'- sometimes for a generation- and such petty tyranny does nothing to help people on either side of the relationship.    lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Don P

Last month Michelle and I went to a small lecture in the neighboring county by a local archaeoligist on early ironmaking in the area. I thought some of you might be interested.
We are in southwestern Virginia, the national forest ridge that overlooks us is Iron Ridge. There are 3 old furnaces up there that I was aware of, he talked of a number more. One map he passed around showed a dozen local furnaces in the antebellum period, this was once a major influence on the local economy.
The ironworks employed or caused to be employed large number of people. The top tier consisted of the founder, clerk and ironmaster. Then there were keepers, fillers, guttermen, moulders and their helpers, blacksmiths, colliers, miners, teamsters, laborers, and many woodcutters. Our virgin forest went into charcoal production.
Aside from the iron ore and charcoal, limestone is also used in large quantity as a fluxing agent. About 150 pounds per ton of ore was required, varying with the quality of the ore.
The furnaces here were of the cold blast type. A large stone pyramid is built about 35 feet tall, it is lined with sandstone or firebrick. The furnace is built into or along a bank to aid charging near the top with wheelbarrows. The iron oxide is reduced within the furnace by the oxygen combining with the carbon monoxide to form CO2, leaving iron. The limestone combines with the impurities, silicates mostly to form slag, a glasslike layer that flowed down to the crucible that formed the base of the furnace and floated atop the iron that was also pooling there. The three ingredients were constantly being charged into the top of the furnace in their proper ratio and the iron and slag were periodically tapped or drawn off from archways or adits that were built into the base of the furnace. A cold blast of air was also admitted into the crucible through the tuyere arch. The air blast was supplied by a waterwheel working a bellows or blowing tub, a piston in a cylindrical cask. These furnaces ran 24/7 for years at a time, once they were fired they were kept going until the lining failed. The three old furnaces I knew about, Noble, Eagle Cliff and Raven Cliff were along Cripple Creek. There was also an earlier furnace in Independence at the falls of Peachbottom Creek. There are a number of references in early county history to Furnace Road, it was the road to this furnace. The ore from the area around the other three furnaces proved superior to the ore around the Point Hope furnace and it was eventually abandoned.

QuoteMichelle holding a pig of iron, the red mottling indicates a hematite ore
Several times a day the slag was drawn off through the cinder notch and the iron was tapped by knocking out a clay plug in a hole to the crucible. Several tons of 2600-3000 degree iron flowed out into a trough cut in the sand on the ground of the casting shed that fronted the work adit. Branching off this trench were molds dug into the ground on each side that resembled pigs nursing on a sow, pig iron. This was a convenient form to transport the iron to other fineries or blacksmiths for further work. Molders also ladled hot iron into the molds they had been making up. Pots, pans, kettles and stove plates were cast at this time, cast iron. Some of these wares were transported to the Holston river to go to markets.  

Jeff

Is dat Mrs P? Great post Don,  And guess what? We all knew about that one old Furnace named Noble.
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Don P

Yup thats my sweetwife, I just went back and put a caption on the pic.

I think maybe your confused Jeff, I thought there must be a hot blast furnace with the same name  :D  ::)

Jeff

Hi there Michelle!

DanG! Ya mean I aint the first one that may have said Blast that Noble!
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Bro. Noble

I didn't even read this thread and I'm not going to.

I'm not even going to tell you about the neat furnace at St. James, Mo.  At Merimac State Park.  Has a neat museum that tells all about how the iron was smelted.
milking and logging and sawing and milking

Don P

 :D ;D :D

Hang on I gotta go order me an official MOmap fo' my Mopar  ;D

There is some interest in refiring the furnace by town, one of our councilwomen was there to learn more about it. Who knows, I told them if they wanted to start a hot fire I'd come  8).

Bro. Noble

Smelted


SMELTED-------thats a neat word.


They smelted the iron.


Jeff smelted a dead armadillo when he visited me.
milking and logging and sawing and milking

Minnesota_boy

Didn't Jeff know you can't get pig iron from an armadillo.  You gotta use a pig for that.  ;D ;D
I eat a high-fiber diet.  Lots of sawdust!

shopteacher

  You guys are really dredging up the memories for me. I spent 13 yr. working the blast furnaces at Monessen, Pa.  Started as a labor, went on to charging the furnace to working helper on the cast house floor to mechanical department where I took care of the tyres and water cooling system. One of my biggest responsibilities was purging the complete furnace system with steam during shutdown to prevent explosions from taking place.
  Tapping the furnace is quite a site to see, especially if you never seen it before.  The Keeper would swing a pneumatic-hydraulic drill around to the tap hole and drill a 2"to 3" about 12' deep hole through the clay plug.  Sparks, molten iron, dust and dirt shoots out for about 100' when the plug is pierced.  A huge trough is is front of the furnace that begins to fill with molten iron and slag. At the end of the trough is a skimmer that allows the iron to go under and down to fill the torpedo's, I believe these held about 75,000 lb.  The skimmer would cause the slag floating on top to flow off to the side down the slag runner and into a line of slag pots. The furnace would be tapped 2 or 3 times a shift and fill usually 3 sometimes 4 torpedo's.  At the end of the cast the furnace would start to blow and a huge mud gun was swung around to the tap hole and a mud plug would be dispensed to plug it up until the next cast.
    It was a very hot, >:(very dangerous :(, very dirt place to work.  The blast furnace emits huge quantities of carbon monoxide and if in the wrong place for a short period of time, well I'm sure you all know about CM.  It was quite a scary feeling when they shut the place down and I no longer had a job, but I've never been sorry to be away from the blast furnace.  
    Went to college got my degree in Tech, Ed./ Ind. Arts and have a great shop, a good school district and have met some great kids over the past ten years.
     Best of luck to all who want to go back to smelting iron and the old methods, but I think I'll buy mine from the local steel supplier. ;D
  
Proud owner of a LT40HDSE25, Corley Circle mill, JD 450C, JD 8875, MF 1240E
Tilt Bed Truck  and well equipted wood shop.

Don P

We finished up early today and had time for a nice spring walk in the woods. We visited the Ravens Cliff Furnace. It's kinda brushy in there for a shot but it is very similar to the Noble Furnace nearby. This is Noble Furnace

This is carved in a stone near the top of Ravens cliff, notice the date July 4th 1876


I'm not reccomending you try this at home but I've never been inside one and it appeared clear and stable so I slid under the arch and into the hearth. Nothing like 130 year old soot. This is standing in the furnace looking up. It looks like the brick lining collapsed inside.


These are a couple of shots of the wall in the bosh, the widest area of the hearth. I can't tell if it is stuck to the rocks and bricks or if it is the rocks and bricks. It was definitely kinda warm in there.



This was a little chunk I found outside, it is semi fused and has charcoal, limestone and iron ore all stuck together in a little clinker. It must have been an unfinished charge when the furnace cooled. There's a piece of sponge iron in the background


These are whatsits. They hang on the exterior. Other furnaces have stones projecting at similar points. I don't know if they held the air belt or staging or  ???


It fascinates me to walk up to one of these old things and think about the activity that surrounded them. The walk in is along what is obviously an old railbed chiselled thru the cliff in places. Our ancestors were something else.

Bro. Noble

Thanks Don,  Interesting stuff 8) 8)
milking and logging and sawing and milking

Paul_H

Yes,thanks for the tour!
Science isn't meant to be trusted it's to be tested

Don P

We've been working about a mile or so from Eagle Furnace lately (1862). Yesterday I took a trip to the woods with my trusty shovel.  I spotted a unnatural bench in the hillside and made for it. It was obviously old, I stuck the spade in and knew where I was. I took Michelle and the camera back up there today. This is a coaling.




The native soil here is a tan shale. That's charcoal dust.

The land for a coaling was levelled in a roughly 30' circle by the collier. He then built a flue log cabin style out of smaller wood. The cordwood was then stacked upright around the flue, the flue was extended and then another rick of cordwood atop the first. The pile was then covered with leaves and dirt leaving a few entrances for air down low and the flue at the top. When all was sealed he would light the stack, let it heat, and then carefully smother it admitting just enough air to keep it going but not letting it burn up. This process took over a week of careful watching and tending. A moments inattention and the labor could be lost in one hot blast. When the time was right, he would totally shut the pile down and let it cool for several days. Then he would carefully open it up, keeping the charcoal clean, put it into baskets and take it to the furnace.

Standing on the levelled area brought back a memory from reading about the Stonewall Brigade. I believe it was on Massanutten in the Shenandoahs. He staged his cannons on a group of coalings that had a commanding view of the valley and road below and had quite a platform to fire from.

Since making the post above about Raven's Cliff Furnace and Foundry I passed a pleasant afternoon talking to an old timer. He told me that one of the items produced at that furnace were the salt pots used in Saltville nearby. When they pumped the salt brine up from the underground salt domes the brine was put in large cast iron cauldrons and boiled to make salt. It was kind of neat to connect those two early industries.

Dave Shepard

Around here we call them charcoal pits. I have a couple on my property, and have found some on the mountain on the other side of the valley. There is a lot of red oak around here. There was a furnace in Salisbury CT supposedly took 7,000 acres of oak forest a year to fire. I have visited the Sloane/Stanly museum in Kent, CT, which is on the site of an old furnace. Very imposing structure. My blacksmith club hosted Michael McCarthy this summer who did two smelts for us. Very interesting stuff.

Here is Michaels smelter.



Here is one of the blooms. It was nearly 30 pounds, and very "steely" as Michael put it.




Dave
Wood-Mizer LT40HDD51-WR Wireless, Kubota L48, Honda Rincon 650, TJ208 G-S, and a 60"LogRite!

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