wrought iron

[engineer one]

although this might seem off topic, i hope it will cause some interest.

during the early and mid industrial revolution in england, much of what we now call steel work was made of wrought iron, in particular locomotive, bridges, wheels and certain other tools including i think certain kinds of armaments were made of it. now you cannot buy anything new in wrought iron, that which is called so is in fact a kind of steel, or people call it "wrought iron work".

we lost the process post the beginning of the 20th century.

anyway doing some research for a book about railway locos, we find the need to discover what we can about the production of wrought iron, so i thought i'd see whether people like alf, and bugbear, even scrit had any knowledge or leads. also it might be interesting to see what machines were made of wrought iron.

paul :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

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[Alf]

Don't look at me - Ironbridge would strike me as the place to ask but I was only 3 when last there and singularly failed to take in any details... :lol: iirc BB went not that long ago but you might need to draw his attention to this thread 'cos he so rarely ventures out of Hand Tools.

Cheers, Alf

 

[engineer one]

hey alf i thought of you particularly because of the books you seem to end up.

in particular, i am looking for info about the max size that mills could roll
150 or so years ago. there seem to be some maximum sizes that were possible, but for once i don't know why :lol:

if you can nudge bb for me would be grateful.

jacob, have heard of it, but not yet seen it.

paul :wink:

 

[Scrit]

Hi Paul

Well, call me a nayseyer, but there is one firm in Yorkshire still making wrought iron, The Real Wrought Iron Company at Thirsk. I came across them through Rourk's the decorative wrought iron fabrication people in Burnley a few years back - so the process isn't quite lost., yet

Scrit

 

[Anonymous]

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[engineer one]

scrit you are right, and i have found out about them, but like all things you kind of wonder. anyway its bank holiday so we will talk to them a little later.

glad you stopped by, what really interests me is the rolling mill part of the process to see what the widest and longest sheets that could be produced,
cause we think the sizes imposed certain limitations that cast steel eventually overcame.

jacob, have checked wiki too and you are right, very interesting..

shame all those rolling mills got sold off :lol: :lol:

paul :wink:

 

[Scrit]

Paul

If you want to look into later wrought iron production in the UK I suggest you might do a search for the name "Hingley" with "wrought iron" and/or "Titanic". The Hingley family were closely involved with the production of wrought iron chains and anchors in the Black Country (Cradeley Heath, Netherton, Lye, etc) and one member, Noah, made the chains and anchors for the Titanic. Although wrought iron chains seem to have disappeared from production in the early 1960s, I can still recall walking down Hayes Lane in the Lye in the mid 1970s and hearing the distinctive sounds of trip hammers at work forging steel chains. Of course all this industry is now long gone.

Scrit

 

[engineer one]

see i knew i could winkle it out if i tried :lol: :twisted:

i can remember some of these things too, and of course dear old fred dibnah in his last tv series found a number of companies that still display the ability to produce things in old fashioned ways.

i will check the reference, but if you think of where i might find details in relation to actual manufacturing details, please let me know. :roll:

paul :wink:

 

[DaveL]

Paul,

I visited Iron bridge ~ 15 years ago and they had a rolling mill that they were trying to put back together. I have no idea what has happened since then but I spent a whole day wondering around at Iron Bridge, will worth a visit just to see the different classes of houses and trades they had on display.

 

[engineer one]

thanks dave useful, all the bits are coming together.

i have a theory that rather like the width of railway tracks, ie the distance between average horse drawn cart wheels. certain of the items we think of as standard sizes became so because of production difficulties with the materials in their construction during the industrial revolution.

since they did not have the internet etc, something else must have come into play to set standards and sizes.

for instance in america it was the war between the states that established many things like screw threads for the mass production of the rifles by the northern army armoury at springfield, then later winchester, in england it happened later with the lee enfield rifles.

what we are trying to understand is where the sizes restricted by the size of the span of the various buildings in which they were made, ie did the machine have to fit in specific spaces???

any way all so far has been helpful
=D>
paul :wink:

 

[Alf]

Totally not helpful, but along the same lines apparently the average staircase in old Portsmouth was just under three foot wide because the dockyard shipwrights were entitled to take "chips" under three feet long as part of their perks. A custom abolished when it dawned on someone in authority that the chippies were deliberately starting with larger sections of timber than required just to get enough "chips" to do up their (and their families, friends, paying customers etc) houses.

In short, you never know what the influence might be on something being a certain size. :lol:

Cheers, Alf

 

[engineer one]

except we all know about 6inches and driving :twisted: :lol:

thanks alf that does extend the knowledge base, and allows us to ask ever more interesting questions

paul :wink:

 

[Scrit]

Surely the limitations of wrought-iron were down to the amount of labour required to produce the stuff. In order to beat the faggots into a single very large ingot you'd need something like a Nasmyth steam hammer, the first of which went into service in the early 1840s. Steel, on the other hand, doesn't require this part of the process - the blast furnace ingot goes straight into the rolling mill.

Railway lines were a major consumer of wrought iron, but the first steel railway lines were laid in 1857 at Derby station on the Midland Railway and adoption by other railways was very swift, so much so that all major railway routes in the UK had largely changed over to steel rail by the 1880s. So fast was the change in materials that a number of wrought iron rail makers, such as the Abernant Ironworks went to the wall in the "wrought-iron slump" of the 1870s. Railway engineers seem to have preferred steel over wrought iron because it was available in longer lengths and had a more consistent structure (which gave better riding characteristics for the trains), and it was less liable to breakages. Steel railway line is one of those odd products which haven't changed in structure for 150 years until recent demands for higher loadings have lead to the introduction of new steel alloys since the 1990s.

But the collapse of Bouch's first Tay railway bridge (which utilised cast iron columns and wrought-iron girders) can't have done the reputation of wrought iron much good as an engineering material for large structures

Scrit

 

[engineer one]

as usual scrit unexpected extra knowledge.
actually some railways were quite late with steel rails, and of course the GWR did not remove iron rails until the gauge narrowing in 1892
when they changed from the brunel 7ft 0in down to the stephenson
4ft 81/2in

from my interest in the GNR i know that some of the early steel wore very badly, and when Ivatt joined in 1896, he famously walked the length from london to the field near york, carying a pistol and then almost walked off the job unless the board relaid all the mainline tracks in better quality steel.

the thing is though that many early things like loco tenders, were made from wrought iron sheets which were rivetted and joined and from the drawings i have there seems to have been some standardisation, which may well be to do with two arm lengths across.

as for the Tay Bridge, there was much thought that it like the Titanic was not quite built up to the spec and of course it was a really stormy night
and they did not have as many people checking out stress factors.
but i agree it did kind of sound the death knell for major use of wrought iron in major public works.

paul :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

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[Alf]

Paul, it suddenly occurred to me to check Google books - appears to be quite a lot there to keep you busy even if it's just a pointer on where else to look.

Cheers, Alf

 

[engineer one]

thanks alf, that looks really useful

but be carful of these sudden impulses they can catch you out, or even worse, catch youwith your wallet open :lol: :twisted:

paul :wink:

 

[WoodStoat]

On the topic of the Tay Bridge collapse, the disaster provided the subject matter for the most famous poem of the immortally dreadful poet William McGonagall, the only published work, so far as I know, to extol the virtues of buttresses in rhyme, albeit excruciating.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

'Twas about seven o'clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-
"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers' hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov'd most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o'er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill'd all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav'd to tell the tale
How the disaster happen'd on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

 

[Hitch]

Another limit of the very early stages of wrought iron production was the speed at what it cooled, before it could be hammered. Thin pieces probably be hard than larger pieces, up to a point where it becomes awkward to handle.
That was until Henry Cort thought up the rolling mill.






Puddling and rolling: AD 1783-1784


In successive years Henry Cort, an ironmaster with a mill near Fareham in Hampshire, patents two processes of lasting significance in the story of metallurgy.

One is the technique which becomes known as puddling, for which Cort patents a machine in 1784. Cort's innovation is a furnace which shakes the molten iron so that air mingles with it. Oxygen combines with carbon in the metallic compond, leaving almost pure iron. Unlike the brittle pig iron (or cast iron), this purer metal is malleable. Capable of being hammered and shaped, it is a much more useful metal in industrial processes than cast iron.




ktu







In the previous year Cort has also patented a machine for drawing out red-hot lumps of purefied metal between grooved rollers, turning them into manageable bars without the laborious process of hammering. His device is the origin of the rolling mills which subsequently become the standard factories of the steel industry.

Cort's subsequent career exemplifies the risks involved in the entrepreneurial excitements of the Industrial Revolution. After spending all his own money on his inventions, he raises further capital from the deputy-paymaster of the navy. It turns out to have been embezzled. Cort is ruined before his inventions bring him a profit.