Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

by Robert Routledge

Fig. 22.—Section of Blast Furnace.

It need scarcely be said that great care and expense are bestowed on the construction of these furnaces. Only the best and most refractory materials, such as firebricks, are used for the lining, and the exterior is a casing of solid masonry, strengthened with iron bands. When a new furnace is finished it takes a month or six weeks to put it into operation; but when this is done it will remain in action night and day continuously for a long period—perhaps for eight or ten years—before the necessity for repairs requires a “blow out.” And the blow out and restarting, without the cost of repairs, entail an outlay of several hundred pounds.

The gases leaving the throat of the furnace consist mainly of nitrogen and a little carbonic acid, together with about one-third of their volume of the combustible gases, carbonic oxide, and some hydrogen; but these last do not leave the furnace in an ignited state, because the oxygen there has already been consumed. They are conducted by the “down-come” pipe, G, Fig. [22], to a point at which, by means of a valve, they can be directed to one or other of two circular towers entirely filled with firebricks, arranged chequerwise, so as to form innumerable passages between them. The furnace gases are admitted at the bottom of the Cowper tower, or “regenerative stove,” into a flue to which a regulated quantity of air has access, and there they are fired: the flame ascending the flue to the upper part of the tower, thence descends, communicating its heat to the firebricks, which soon acquire a very high temperature, especially where the flame first enters, and the burnt gases leave the tower for a tall chimney, leaving most of their heat in the firebricks. When this action has continued for a sufficient time, the connection of the regenerator with the throat of the furnace is cut off, and the escaping gases are directed into the other regenerator, and at the same time the blast from the blowing engine is made to ascend among the firebricks of the first, where gaining increasing temperature as it ascends—the stove being hottest at the top—the air leaves the tower to be conducted to the tuyères at such high temperature as already mentioned. While the one regenerator is thus heating the blast, the other is in its turn accumulating heat from the flames of the escaping gases; and thus they are worked alternately, the action being constantly reversed after suitable intervals.

When iron is combined with a much smaller proportion of carbon than in cast iron, and contains little or no graphitic or uncombined carbon, we have the very useful compound known as steel. In the earlier half of the century it was customary to distinguish steel from malleable iron on the one hand, and cast iron on the other. If the compound contained from 0·5 to 1·5 per cent. of carbon, it was called steel by some authorities, while others extended these limits a little on either side. Later it was found that the presence of elements other than carbon can confer steely properties on iron, and indeed it is possible to have a metal containing no carbon, but possessing the characteristic properties of steel. Sir Joseph Whitworth proposed to classify a piece of metal according to its tensile strength, without any regard to either its chemical composition or its mode of manufacture: if it could not bear more than 30 tons per square inch it should be considered iron, but if it had a higher tensile strength, it should then be regarded as steel. To estimate the engineering value a figure depending upon the elongation or stretching of the specimen before breaking was to be added to the number of tons of the breaking load. This stretching power of steel is in some cases of as much importance as the tensile strength: the ordnance maker, for instance, considers a steel with a breaking strength of 53 tons under an elongation of 5 per cent. as for his purposes to be rejected: while a specimen showing a breaking strain of only 30 tons along with an elongation of 35 per cent., on 2 inches of length, he will regard as good. The tensile strength of steel depends in part on its composition, in part on the mode of manufacture, and in part on the subsequent treatment. The average tensile strength of a wrought iron bar per square inch of section is about 25 tons (30 is the maximum); while the like average for steel is 43 tons, and some kinds of cast steel will bear nearly 60 tons. Steel bars of a certain temper subjected by Sir Joseph Whitworth to a process of hardening in oil showed a tensile strength of even 90 tons per square inch. These figures will suffice to show the great utility of steel in structures and machines. But steel has besides a characteristic property which makes it extremely valuable in a great variety of applications, namely, its capability of being tempered. If a piece of steel is heated to dull redness and suddenly cooled by plunging it into cold water, it becomes so extremely hard that it cannot be acted on by a file; nay, its hardness may be made to rival that of the diamond, which is the hardest substance known. Now by a second operation this hardness can be reduced to any required degree: this is done by re-heating the metal to a certain moderate degree between 430° F. and 630° F. and again cooling it by immersion in some cooling medium. In this “letting down” process, it is the highest temperature that produces the greatest softening, and the properties of the tempered steel will depend upon the precise degree to which the metal has been reheated. For example, if the product be required for making into sword blades, or watch-springs, and to possess much elasticity, the proper temperature is between 550° F. and 570° F.; but if the steel is to be suitable for saws the temperature must range within a few degrees of 600° F., according to the fineness of the tool intended; a lower temperature would give a metal too hard for them to be sharpened with a file. On the other hand, sharp cutting instruments and tools for working metals are obtained hard by tempering at lower degrees than springs. In practice the index of the temperature is taken from the colour of the film of oxide that gradually forms on a polished surface of the metal as the heat is raised, and begins by a very pale yellow (at 430° F.), passing through deeper shades into brown, then through purple into deep blue (at 570° F.), etc. The reader will now see why watch and clock springs have their deep blue colour, and he can observe for himself the whole series of colours by very gradually heating a piece of polished steel over a small flame.

If we compare the chemical composition of wrought iron and of cast iron with that of steel as regards the content of carbon, we see at once that steel holds an intermediate position, so that if in the puddling furnace we could arrest the decarbonization at a certain point we should obtain steel; or if, on the other hand, we could put back into chemical combination with the decarbonized wrought iron a due percentage of carbon we should in that way also obtain steel. And it will be observed that the oldest primitive furnaces could not have failed sometimes to have produced steel as the net or final result of such actions. In fact, steel always has been and still is produced on one or other of these two principles, applied in divers ways, but severally and distinctly directed to that end. Of the many more or less modified processes of steel-making that have been in use, we need here but briefly mention a few which were the processes of the first sixty years of our century, and are to a considerable extent still in operation, although eclipsed in importance by two other processes that, since the date referred to, have been supplying the metal in enormously increased quantities, and which will have to be particularly described.

The most usual of the older processes of steel-making, still carried on at Sheffield and elsewhere, is known as the cementation process: it consists in heating bars of the best wrought iron in contact with charcoal, at a high temperature, for three or four weeks. At Sheffield the iron bars and charcoal are packed in alternate layers into troughs 14 ft. long by 3½ ft. deep and wide, constructed of slabs of siliceous sandstone 6 in. thick. The last layer of charcoal at the top is covered to a certain depth with a layer of refractory matter, and the flames from a furnace beneath are made to envelop the stone troughs or pots, as they are technically called, for a period of a week or more according to the thickness of the bars operated upon. These are generally 3 in. broad and from five- to six-eighths of an inch thick. When it is found by withdrawing a test bar for examination that the operation is complete, the fire is gradually diminished and the whole allowed to cool slowly, which requires about a fortnight. Instead of only charcoal, a mixture of powdered charcoal or soot with a little salt has been used by some makers—which mixture, technically called cement powder, has given its name to the process. In some works 16 tons or more of iron are treated in one operation. The bars are found unchanged in form, but increased in weight by perhaps 27 lbs. per ton, for carbon has combined with the iron, being apparently transferred in the iron from one particle to another. The surface of the bars becomes rough and uneven from a multitude of blebs or blisters, and hence they are called blister bars, and the steel of which they now consist is named blister steel. In this conversion we may suppose that the iron at its outer surface first enters into combination with carbon taken from the carbonic oxide gas, which would be produced by combustion of the charcoal with the limited quantity of air in its interstices, and the oxygen thus set free would immediately seize again on the surrounding charcoal, and by repeated changes of this kind in which the oxygen acts as a carrier of carbon to the iron, in which it is transferred inwards from particle to particle. The cause of the blisters has been much discussed: probably the cause is the formation and escape of a volatile compound of carbon and sulphur at the surface of the soft metal; for it is known that nearly the whole of the little sulphur in the wrought iron disappears in the cementation process. Blister steel is never homogeneous, for near the surface it always contains more carbon than within; the bars are therefore broken up into short lengths which are carefully assorted, bound together with wire, heated, welded together under a hammer or by rolling, and finally formed into a bar, which is stamped with the outline of a pair of shears, and is then known as shear steel, because this product was generally found the most suitable for making the shears used in dressing cloth.

Another method of dealing with the blister steel is to charge crucibles or pots having covers with 50 or 100 lbs. weight of the broken-up bars, and subject the crucibles to a strong heat in a reverberatory furnace, when the metal melts, and at the proper moment the contents of a great number of pots are almost simultaneously poured into a mould to form an ingot. The result is a very uniform steel of the finest texture, known and highly esteemed as cast steel or crucible steel. This steel is much more fusible than iron, but less so than cast iron.

The production of steel by arresting at a certain stage the decarbonizing of cast iron in the puddling furnace requires much experience on the part of the workman, who has to learn when the desired point has been reached by certain indications, such as the appearance of the flame, or by the examination of a small sample of the fluid metal withdrawn and rapidly cooled. Various additions to the charge in definite proportions are generally made, such as scales of iron oxide, or a quantity of an oxide ore (hæmatite, etc.) or other materials, the most essential for a good product consisting of a little manganese in some form. The result is puddled steel; and this, like blister steel, can be converted into cast steel by fusion in crucibles, running into ingot moulds, and subsequent treatment by hammering, pressing, rolling, etc. In 1864 puddled steel was described as an article of great commercial importance, but this it soon lost by the introduction of simpler, cheaper, and more reliable processes. The methods and improvements proposed for the production of steel have been exceedingly numerous, as is shown by the records of the English Patent Office alone, which contain up to the end of 1856 specifications of ninety-two patents for different steel-manufacturing processes, while from 1857 to 1865, the epoch-marking period of steel making, seventy-four more patents were obtained for this purpose. It would be quite beyond our limits to make special reference to these, and to the numerous patents which have since been granted, but there is one of great importance in steel-making which must be mentioned, and that is the patent for the employment in the cementation process of carbide of manganese, taken out by J. M. Heath in 1839. This made England almost independent of the former large importations of Swedish and Russian iron, and it caused an immediate reduction of £40 in the price per ton of good steel, effecting a saving which up to 1855 is calculated at not less than £2,000,000. Heath was one of those who fail to benefit by their inventions, for his was boldly appropriated by another person who took advantage of a verbal flaw in the specification, and Heath did not obtain any redress from the law courts until, after ten years’ litigation, a majority of Exchequer judges reversed all the previous decisions against him (1853). In the meantime the man had died, but as the patent was about to expire his widow was on petition granted an extension of it for seven years. The nature of the influence of manganese on steel-making has not been fully explained, and there is some diversity of opinion on the subject, as it is said—on the one hand, merely to remove or counteract the injurious effects of sulphur or phosphorus; on the other, to impart to the steel greater ductility, strength, and power of welding, tempering, etc.

The manufacture of crucible or cast steel has been carried on at Essen in Prussia by the firm of A. Krupp & Co., on a scale surpassing anything attempted elsewhere,—theirs being the largest steel-works in the world, and remarkable for the variety and excellence of its products. It began in so small a way that it is said only a single workman was employed. To the Great Exhibition of 1851, at London, Krupp’s firm sent a block of crucible cast steel weighing 2¼ tons, a larger mass of the metal than had ever been shown before, and looked upon with no little astonishment, for at that time steel was a precious commodity, the price of refined steel ranging from £45 to £60 per ton. At the next London Exhibition, in 1862, the Essen Works showed a block of cast steel 20 tons in weight, and at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, one of 52 tons. This casting, which was first made of a cylindrical shape, was forged into an octagonal form under an immense steam-hammer, larger than the Woolwich hammer described on a previous page, for the weight of the moving part is no less than 50 tons. This huge mass of cast steel was of the finest quality; the forging into the prismatic form was to show its malleability, for it was intended for the body of a gun to have a bore of 14 inches. Since the period referred to, ingots of more than 100 tons have been cast. That shown at Vienna was the product of some 1,800 crucibles, each containing 65 lbs. of melted steel, which had to be poured into the mould in a regular and continuous stream, so that the metal might solidify into a perfectly uniform mass. Such work can be done only by trained men, who act in regular ranks with military precision, and in pairs emptying their crucibles into channels previously assigned, then filing off to the other end of the rank to receive another crucible, while the pair of men who were behind are pouring out theirs, and so on in succession. The crucibles are emptied into a number of channels formed of iron lined with fire-clay, and leading down into the mould. Many precautions have to be taken to ensure the regular progress of the operations, and all the time required to fill the huge moulds may be counted by minutes.