Sheet Lead for Roofs and Cisterns.
Whether the glazier precedes the plumber or the plumber the glazier, or whether the labours of both alternate during the building of a house, is a question of no great importance to our present object. We will therefore proceed to notice the kind of material employed by the plumber.
The comparative cheapness of lead, its admirable qualities, and the facility with which it can be cast and rolled into thin sheets, and drawn into pipes, cause it to be extensively used in building. The most productive mines of this metal in our own country are situated in Derbyshire, Devonshire, Cornwall, in Wales, and in the North; in short, the ore from which lead is generally obtained, called Galena, or Sulphuret of Lead, is found in all countries where the primary rocks appear at the surface. The ore greatly resembles the pure metal in brilliancy; but it is brittle, and not so easily fused. It frequently contains a sufficient quantity of silver to make it worth while to adopt a peculiar process in the reduction of it, in order to separate this more valuable metal. The ore is first broken into small pieces, and is then roasted in a reverberatory furnace, to drive off the sulphur. When this object is attained, the heat is increased, till the metal is fused, and then it is drawn off into moulds, which give it the form of blocks or slabs, called sows and pigs.
Sheet lead is made thus:—A large furnace is provided, into which pig-lead is thrown, and heat applied. When the lead is melted, a valve or cock is opened in the side of the furnace, and the glistening liquid metal pours forth, and falls on a large table, covered over with an even surface of fine sand, and having a ledge of an equal height above the sand all round it. When the melted metal is poured on the sand, two men, holding each end of a stiff wooden rule, called a strike, draw it along the table, resting on each side ledge: the liquid lead is pushed onwards by the strike, till it covers the whole surface of an even thickness, which of course is governed by the depth of the ledge round the table.
Milled sheet lead is formed by rolling a cast plate of the metal between large iron rollers, turned by machinery. These rollers are set closer and closer together, till the lead is reduced by rolling to the requisite degree of thinness. By this process, the lead is rendered more dense and more equally so, than it ever is by simply casting: milled lead, consequently, is more durable than cast-lead.
It should be here noticed that lead, when it is used for roofing, or for lining cisterns and gutters, is always laid on an even boarded surface, and not on battens or laths, like slate and tiles.