PARIS UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION, 1867.
THE
PRODUCTION OF IRON AND STEEL
IN ITS
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RELATIONS
BY ABRAM S. HEWITT,
United States Commissioner to the Univeral Exposition at Paris, 1867.
The manufacture of puddled wire-rods is a very extensive business in Great Britain, but no one has succeeded in naturalizing it upon American soil. With the best grades of charcoal iron it is indeed possible to make good puddled wire rods in the Uniter States, but at a cost too high to compete with the foreign article, in the production of which no charcoal is employed. I visited the works of J. C. Hill & Co., near Newport, in South Wales, and those of Richard Johnson & Nephew, at Manchester. In both these works, a mixture of several brands of coke iron is employed, costing on the average about £4 per ton. Single puddling furnaces alone are used, the charge of iron is 4 1/2 cwt., and the yield from 3 1/8 to 3 1/4 cwt., made up into five balls, and showing a waste much larger than usual. These balls are hammered under a five-ton helve, to a bloom 4 inches square, and this bloom is taken hot to a balling furnace, where it is heated and rolled down to the ordinary 1 1/8-inch billet for wire. The greatest possible care is taken at all stages of the operation, but the result of my observation is, that the puddling furnace is the stage in which the iron receives its proper preparation for a wire rod, and I think I may say that as a general rule, when high grades of iron are to be produced, I remarked a higher standard for the puddled bar than I have been accustomed to see in the United States. The practice of puddling for grain instead of fibre is more general, and I think I cannot be mistaken in saying that the puddle balls are far more thoroughly cleaned of cinder when puddled for grain. At Blaenavon [Wales] and at Le Creusot [France], at which works very superior iron is made, the grain of the puddled iron resembled puddled steel more than iron, and it seems probable that we shall hardly attain to the same regularity of product in America until the same careful attention is paid to the puddling process.
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