we do in this day of telegraphs, telephones and 

 barbed-wire fences? 



To return to the early wire drawing of my grand- 

 father, he explained that as the wire was elongated 

 as drawn by the nippers, he seized and coiled it by 

 hand into rings of a suitable size for annealing. He 

 was not long in discovering the great waste by oxi- 

 dation from the frequent annealing in open furnace, 

 that on the coarser wires the scale was removed with- 

 out seriously injuring the wire by steeping or boiling 

 in vats of very dilute sulphuric acid, which at that 

 time was a costly process, but some saving was made 

 by evaporating the spent liquid in the shape of the 

 residual copperas or green vitriol, but as the wire 

 was reduced in size, the effect of the acid was very 

 injurious, causing much waste by breakage in drawing 

 fine numbers, and sometimes rendering it so brittle 

 as to unfit it for card teeth, not only breaking in 

 bending the teeth, but in after use the cards breaking 

 off close to the leather. Some mode of annealing 

 must be devised to prevent contact with the air and 

 oxidation. 



The first experiment he tried was to reel the wire 

 into coils of about i foot diameter, with a body of 2 

 inches, which he firmly bound with wire, making it 

 as compact as possible. This he encased in well- 

 ground and worked clay, such as is used for brick- 

 making. He was careful in selecting his clay to have 

 such as would not harden and self-glaze at a tempera- 

 ture so high as to effectually anneal the wire encased 

 in it. After slowly cooling, this outer casing was 

 broken off and the wire cleaned by heating, when it 

 was found almost as bright as before annealing. 



The next move was to turn on a lathe soapstone 

 rings, half hollowed out to receive the coil of wire, 

 encasing it. When two of these rings were closed 

 together, the union being made tolerably air-tight 

 with finely ground soapstone, making a dry luting, 

 they were placed in a dome furnace, the lower one 

 resting on iron bars. Five or six of these rings placed 

 one above the other, separated by small soapstone 

 blocks, filled the furnace. When heated to a proper 

 temperature, the fire was drawn, the dampers closed, 

 and they were allowed to cool in the furnace, for it 

 was found, if taken out, to recharge the furnace with 

 a fresh set, and they were allowed to cool in the air, 

 the soapstone rings rapidly disintegrated. The wire 

 annealed in these rings was not as bright as when 

 encased in clay; the confined air was just sufficient 

 to blue the wire, without forming any injurious scale 

 to injure the draw-plates. 



As to quality of wire, all that was desired was ob- 

 tained, but the maintenance of the soapstone rings 

 and loss of time in cooling in the furnace was too 

 expensive. To obviate this, a Mr. Miller, who was 

 at that time carrying on a pottery for the finer quali- 

 ties of earthenware and fire tiles, made a number of 

 fire clay rings that was an improvement on the soap- 

 stone, as they did not injure by quick cooling, and 

 could be taken out of the furnace and a fresh charge 

 put in without cooling down. This success led to 

 experimenting with cast-iron annular annealing pots; 

 they were from 12 to 14 inches deep, with annular 

 space of from 2% to 3 inches. The wire was reeled 

 to a size to fill this space, and so loosely bound that 

 when driven down with a wooden rammer and hand 

 mallet they filled the entire space to the exclusion of 

 the air, as much so as when encased in clav. The 

 top of this annular space, when filled within about 

 1 inch of the top, were closed with sectional iron plates, 

 well luted. 



When I took my first lessons in this process, charcoal 

 was used as the fuel, but it soon gave place to anthra- 

 cite coal, except for the finest numbers of brass wire. 

 The furnace was of the simplest possible construction, 

 circular, with dome-top annealing chamber, while 

 the pots were placed on a couple of iron bars extending 

 across the furnace sufficiently above the bottom of the 

 charging door to admit of an iron forked lever carrying 

 the pot to pass in and seat it, and again to be used 

 in removing it — the fire immediately under on a 

 grate, as in the common cannon stove. Over and 

 close to the fuel was a flue opening into the main flue; 

 this was closed by a damper when the fire was well 

 ignited, and the entire heat thrown into the annealing 

 chamber, passing through the center and around the 

 outside of the annealing pot — the draft through the 

 chamber being regulated by a circular flue in the apex 

 of the dome that opened into a close chamber. Con- 

 nected with the main flue, over this circular flue, was 

 suspended a long truncated cone, made of soapstone, 

 so arranged that it could be raised or lowered from 

 the outside of the furnace, leaving an annular opening 

 around it, which could be increased or diminished 

 with great accuracy, and thus perfectly regulating the 

 heat within the annealing chamber. 



In the first experiments, the management of this 

 conical damper seems to have been one of great 

 nicety until perfectly understood. To test the furnace 

 for uniformity of heat in the annealing chamber, a 

 very ingeniously constructed double gridiron pryom- 



93 



