The Coal Pile and Fire Box of a Reverberatory Furnace
Turning the Pigs to Insure Even Melting
The puddler quickly separates into two or three white-hot balls the 400 pounds or so of spongy iron. These balls, full of and dripping with cinder, are seized, one at a time, with long tongs, removed from the furnace and rushed to the rotary squeezer through which they are twisted and turned, ever becoming longer and smaller in diameter until they emerge from the other and narrower side much compacted and with but little of the cinder which they originally carried. Without being given time to cool, the blooms are seized and shoved into the “muck rolls,” whence after a few passes they emerge as long flat bars, very rough and imperfect in appearance.
After shearing into short lengths, many pieces of this “muck bar,” as it is called, are made into “box piles” and tied together with wires. These are charged into the furnace of the finishing mill. After coming to a white heat the box piles go to the finishing rolls where they are rolled into bars, rods, plates, or other shapes desired. By repeated cutting, piling, heating, and rolling, double refined and other high grades of wrought iron are made, each repiling and rerolling, of course, producing a more compact and better product.
Puddling the Melted Charge
Considerable Cinder Overflows During the “Boiling” Stage