Mining for Souls
Page 51 =76
Standish Furnace page 6
top fillers. In hand filling it required as many men on top as they
had filling the buggies on the bottom. However, the top fillers were always
more expensive labor than at the bottom of the furnace because it did not
pay to have a foreman supervise the relatively small number of men required
and yet the oper~ion of dumping with which they are entrusted is of the utmost
importance. With hand filling slight variations in the method of dumping,
more frequently than any other cause, deranged the work of the furnace. For
this reason it was necessary to secure a higher grade of labor for at least
one of these top fillers by paying higher wages. Another reason for
paying higher wages is that the men are under certain liability to be overcome
by the furnace gas when remaining for a long time on top. It was impossible
to make the bell absolutely tight and keep it so, all the while. Small
particles of stock lodge on its seat and hold it open by an almost microscopic
amount until the next dumping when they are swept off but very likely replaced
by similar particles in some other location so that the bell seldom shuts
absolutely tight. For all these reasons the elimination of manual handling
of the stock from the bins to the furnace top was the goal of the furnace
builder for many years. Blast furnace engineers were often sure that they
could build a top that would give results as good as those of hand filling,
but managers, knowing that they would be held responsible for the operation
and that bad construction would not be an acceptable excuse for bad furnace
work, were for a long time very careful of using any method of filling of
whose results they could not be absolutely sure in advance. This, for
a long time, meant hand filling exclusively. In 1895 the Carnegie Steel Company
decided to build at Duquesne a plant of four furnaces with a capacity of
six hundred tons per day each. These furnaces were filled exclusively by
automatic means. Having demonstrated that furnaces could be operated
successfully by mechanical methods on such a large scale, other companies
soon enlarged the blast furnace bottom and redesigned their tops for automatic
filling, to this very day. There continued to be a demand for the iron until
1930 and then the output exceeded the demand. Blast furnaces throughout the
country were being abandoned and torn down. Because of the quality of the
iron here at Standish, we continued to operate on a limited basis until
1938 when they decided to shut down. In 1939, when Republic Steel leased the
property, the blast furnace was abandoned and torn down. The following furnace
burden was taken from a burden sheet before they remodeled the top. 6 coke
900 5400# Buggie 8 sintered ore 11008800#filled 4 limestone 625 2500# This
was a furnace burd~n some time after the change: 3 Coke 11000 Sintered
ore 2100 Lime Stone 1000 Tailings Maynard& Osher and Dr. S. Keysor
and article by J. R. Linney The 3 important varieties of iron are dependent
very much upon the amount of carbon the iron contains: Pure iron melts
at c 1525 degrees C. Cast iron-fusible and brittle Wrought iron-slaggy,
malleable iron which cannot be hardened by sudden cooling. Steel-iron malleable
between certain limits of temperature, and classified into three grades
of hardness - soft, medium and hard, containing roughly less than 0.25 to
0.60 and more than 0.60 per cent carbon, respectively. Charcoal pit burning
down. changing wood into logs of charcoal to be reused.
Sources:
Adirondack Museum photos, Blue Mountain Lake, NY;
History of Clinton County, New York;
from History of Mining of Chateaugay
Ore and Iron Company.
Go to Page 1 of The History of Lyon
Mountain.
Go to Page 3 of The History of Lyon
Mountain.
Go to Mining History for The History
of Mining in the North Country.
Go to Page 5 of The History of Lyon
Mountain.(for article on Lyon Mt. and Mineville)
Go to Page 52 of Mining for Souls.
Back to Page 50 of Mining for
Souls.
Go to Page 1 of Mining for Souls.(cover
page)
Rod Bigelow
Box 13 Chazy Lake
Dannemora, N.Y. 12929
rodbigelow@netzero.net 
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