Ixvi PROCEEDINGS. 



liammers, which acting upon the balls while in the soft and plastic state in 

 which they are taken from the furnace, squeeze out as much as possible of the 

 impurities wliich are contained in their mass, and they are then passed through 

 heavy roughing rollers and reduced to the shape of a rude bar of a flattened 

 form, say from 6 to 10 inches wide by some 1 inch to 1^ inches thick, called muck 

 bars. These bars, after being allowed to cool, are then cut up into pieces some 

 two feet long and piled one upon another forming a pile some 8 inches deep. A 

 number of these piles are then taken and placed in a furnace where they are 

 again heated to a welding heat, and are then again passed successively through 

 a number of suitably shaped rolls, and so fashioned into bars and adapted for 

 sundry purposes. It must now be noticed that the operation just described and 

 the forming of the mass into bars depended entirely for its success upon 

 the quality possessed by iron, of being plastic at a certain high tem- 

 perature, and also that at this temperature, called a welding heat, its particles 

 when brought together will cohere, and may, by being pressed forcibly together 

 while at this heat, be formed into a solid mass, but there are sundry exceptions 

 to this result, for instance if some of the liquid slag or other impurities remains 

 between the particles of the metal, or between the surfaces to be united, then 

 the union will not be a perfect one, and a condition of the metal known as 

 " seamy" will result. This seamy condition rendered the metal quite unfit for 

 many purposes, and although very tine results were obtained in course of time 

 by careful management and by refining, as well as by compacting the mass by 

 very powerful mechanical appliance, yet there were some features in the structure- 

 of the material which suggested the need of efforts to obtain a metal possessing 

 greater homogeneity. 



The constantly increasing demands made upon the metal by very numerous new 

 uses which were found for it also stimulated the thoughts and investigations of 

 the ablest minds. Physics and chemistry joined hands in endeavouring to 

 realize what seemed within the bounds of practicability, viz., to evolve some- 

 means of producing an iron which should meet the exacting demands of new- 

 inventions, and their application in enterprises of an importance and magnitude- 

 theretofore almost undreamed of. 



We have noted the difficulty which occurs when impurities, such as are always 

 present in some degree with malleable iron, are contained between the numerous 

 fissures in the spongy mass. It is almost impossible to get rid of them, and the 

 result is they get rolled or hammered into the mass of the metal in the succeed- 

 ing processes to which it is subjected in the course of its preparation for the 

 market. 



In the process of rolling, these impurities become drawn out into fine longitu- 

 dinal defects, sometimes involving an entire lamina, and sometimes in defects of 

 less extent. As the masses of metal turned out from the furnaces increased in 

 size, so the hammers and rolls required to deal with these masses had to be also 

 increased in size and power, but yet these improvements did not meet the case 

 in furnishing a metal free from the troubles named. Very much ingenuity how- 

 ever was displayed in efforts to improve these tools so as to give a greater 

 economy in the production and also greater freedom from the imperfections com- 

 plained of. 



