IRON 999 



patent was secured in 1835, is said by Overman to furnish very satisfactory results, 

 and where competent workmen are employed, a good furnace is said to make a heat in 

 two hours, producing neither too much nor too little cinder in the furnace. The com- 

 pound consists of common salt, 5 parts ; oxide of manganese, 3 parts ; fine white plastic 

 elay, 2 parts. The pig is heated as in common operations. It is melted down by a 

 rapid heat, the damper is closed, and the cinder and metal diligently stirred. In the 

 meantime the above mixture, in small parcels of about half a pound, is introduced in 

 the proportion of 1 per cent, of the iron employed ; if, after this, the cinder does not 

 rise, a hammer slag (rolling mill-cinder) may be applied. 



Puddling of Iron by Machinery. The earlier stages at least of the process of 

 puddling a charge of iron involve operations so simple that it is a matter for some 

 surprise that they have not long since been carried out by machinery. The constant 

 stirring of a little pond of molten iron is the thing to be done, and a common bar 

 of iron, with one end bent down at right angles, is the thing to do it with. The 

 necessary motions are in no way complex, and so far very simple machinery should 

 suffice for the operation. The history of attempts at machine-puddling runs back 

 nearly a quarter of a century. But it is only within the last year or two that the 

 practical adoption of puddling-machinery has been attended with success. It is 

 beyond question that the problem presented to the mechanician was formerly in- 

 vested with difficulties which modern experience proves to have been more or less 

 imaginary. Too much was attempted, and of course little or nothing done. The 

 paramount idea was that the labour of the puddler should be wholly superseded, 

 and the entire process, blooming and all, effected solely by the aid of steam-power. 

 In this lay a great error. There are many processes in the arts which cannot be 

 effected without the very effectual interference of the human arm guided by intelli- 

 gence, and puddling is pre-eminently one of these. The only available course to 

 adopt is to permit the machine to perform the major part of the hard work, leaving 

 the completion of the process to the man. Mechanism constructed according to this 

 principle has now been at work for some time with excellent results, and the uni- 

 versal adoption of machine-puddling is not, we, think, very distant. Mr. Menelaus, 

 of the Dowlais Ironworks, carried out a series of experiments on a very extended 

 scale. The system adopted at Dowlais is that known as Walker's, in which the iron 

 is exposed to the action of flame by the rotation and oscillation of the vessel con- 

 taining the molten metal, which takes the place of the ordinary hearth. The experi- 

 ments made at Dowlais were not, however, entirely successful. At the "Wombridge 

 Ironworks, Salop, Mr. Henry Bennett, the manager, introduced a system of his own 

 invention. Mr. Bennett read a paper on this machine, and the results obtained 

 from its use, before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, from which we select 

 the following remarks : 



' The importance of the application of machinery to diminish the severe labour of 

 puddling iron, by performing the merely mechanical process of stirring the iron, has 

 led to many attempts in that direction ; and, amongst others, it has been attempted 

 to make a rotary furnace for performing the entire operation by machinery. But not 

 till lately has any real success been attained, on account of the practical difficulties 

 that are met with in applying machinery for the purpose, arising from the great heat 

 to which any machinery in the furnace would be exposed, and from the necessity for 

 not interfering with the draught of the furnace, while making the whole machinery 

 simple and strong enough to stand the rough usage of the men employed. The design 

 of the writer in applying machinery to the process of puddling iron has been, there- 

 fore, to adhere as closely as possible to the ordinary course of hand-puddling, and 

 to employ the machinery simply to aid the puddler 'by relieving him of the most 

 laborious part of his work : namely, the stirring or working of the metal in the 

 puddling furnace. At the same time, the objects aimed at have been, by a more 

 rapid and uninterrupted process of stirring the metal, to shorten the time of the 

 puddling, thereby economising the fuel ; to improve the quality of the iron, by ren- 

 dering the process more uniform and perfect than with hand labour ; and to increase 

 the work of the furnace, by working larger charges than could be both puddled and 

 balled-up at one heat by hand labour alone. 



'With the machine now described, the ordinary puddling tool, or "rabble," is 

 worked backwards and forwards in the puddling furnace by a vertical arm outside 

 the furnace, to which it is connected by a notch in the handle of the rabble, dropped 

 loosely on a pin at the bottom of the arm. The arm is cottered at top into a 

 horizontal slide-bar, working backwards and forwards in a guide-frame overhead ; 

 this is driven by a connecting rod from a long iron bar, which extends longitudi- 

 nally over a whole row of puddling furnaces, and has a longitudinal reciprocating 

 motion given to it by a crank driven by the engine. The guide-frame is centred 

 on a vertical pin immediately over the door of the puddling-furnace, and is moved 



