Photograph from Press Illustrating Service, Inc. 

 REAMING OUT RIVET HOLES WITH COMPRESSED-AIR MACHINE 



The world uses sixty times as much iron and steel today as it used during the Napoleonic 

 wars. There wasn't a mile of railroad, a foot of steel bridging, a building of structural steel, 

 a farm implement more complicated than a grain cradle in all the world when Napoleon 

 surrendered his dream of empire at Waterloo. And yet those best able to judge believe the 

 hundred years to follow the present war will mark more human progress than the amazing 

 century that followed Bonaparte's downfall. 



Some of it will go to the puddling fur- 

 nace and become wrought iron ; some will 

 take the cupola route and become cast 

 iron ; much more will go into the Bes- 

 semer converter and become soft, malle- 

 able steel ; but more still will take the 

 path that leads to the open-hearth fur- 

 nace. A little, comparatively speaking, 

 remains behind, finds its way into a cru- 

 cible furnace or an electric furnace, and 

 becomes the tool steel of the industrial 

 world. 



KNEADING IRON LIKE DOUGH 



In making wrought iron, used generally 

 in the manufacture of chains, pipe, grills, 

 bolts, nuts, and the like, about 560 pounds 

 of pig iron is heated until it reaches the 

 consistency of dough. Slag soon begins 

 to form, and, being lighter and more 

 fusible than the pure iron, floats to the 

 top and the greater portion is poured off. 



At this stage the iron begins to form into 

 small pasty globules, about the size of a 

 pea, each globule surrounded by a thin 

 covering of fluid slag. 



Stripped to the waist, with arms and 

 muscles like those of a prize fighter, the 

 puddler for nearly an hour and a half is 

 stirring or "puddling" the iron. He takes 

 a bar of iron, known as a rabbling bar, 

 which in itself would make a load for 

 most men, puts one end through the 

 furnace door, and turns the pigs until 

 melted, stirring the mass so as to expose 

 all parts of it to the action of the over- 

 head flame until the impurities are largely 

 eliminated. The iron is then formed into 

 two or three pasty balls, which are taken 

 out of the furnace dripping with slag 

 and conveyed by means of tongs to the 

 "squeezer," where most of the remaining 

 slag is pressed out. 



It is a strange thing about iron that 



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