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Niklas,

Check your PM's.

Pete

This is an interesting reprint sales site which has a pic of Edske in 1858 where Sir Henry Bessemer developed his process at this blast furnace. The process was refined by Goransson, a Swedish inventor: http://www.alexdenouden.nl/01/bessemer.htm


Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

This is from Niklas:

A typical triphammer is seen in operation at
Österbybruk, a Vallon Forge in Uppland region of
Sweden. By 1680 all workers here were from Vallonia
part of present day Belgium. Vallon Forge type iron
production continued until 1943. This Vallon forge is
being reconstructed in recent years. First they
reconstructed waterwheel, then bellows and hearth,
then the large triphammer. In summer of 2007 the
triphammer was inaugurated, his picture was taken
then. This forge can now be considered fully
operational again.

Forges like these were used to hammer cast iron "pigs"
into long rods, which were the raw, mallable iron that
was sold to be used in making final products.
Scheffield in England was single largest buyer of iron
from Vallon iron producers. Dannemora mine, the main
iron mine for Vallon forges, is nearby.

The smith using the triphammer is Hasse Gille, a 14th
generation Vallon smith, who actually worked at this
forge. He is wearing traditional clothes, a long,
linen shirt, a leather apron, wooden-soled clog shoes
and a black hat. Because of heat in the smithy, these
were only clothes they wore.

The triphammer is run by an underflow waterwheel,
which turns the tripwheel, blurred in this picture
because it is turning. These triphammers operated
continuously from about midday on Monday until
Saturday afternoon. Everyone nearby had to live with
the noise of the hammers, that included the owners
living in elaborate manor houses.





Pete

Do you think that dude has ear plugs --- or, just says, "What?" a lot?

Rocketman,

Ponder the following information. Hasse Gille, like many, many other Vallon smiths, is an excellent folk musician (nyckelharpa). Those of us that travel in those Swedish folk music circles often marvel that they still have such good hearing, as evidenced by their music and easy conversation. This relationship goes back hundreds of years, the Valloner having a rich musical tradition. I have yet to learn of any use of hearing protection.

What did affect Vallon smiths badly was that their shoulders wore out after a lifetime of hard physical labor. They also often got bad lung infections in winter, thanks to having to rush out to the waterwheel and remove ice that interfeered with operations -- remember that they were hot and sweaty and wearing little more than those long, linen shirts and leather aprons. Also, the air in those forges was full of smoke, etc., not great for healthy lungs!!

All,

The second picture that Pete kindly posted for me, is a multi piston "bellows" that provides forced air to hearth where iron is heated before hammering. It too is driven by waterwheel.

Niklas

Niklas:

Your info is regarding a forge and I would assume that the bellows for a furnace/hearth would be similar. Regarding a furance of hearth: either the bellows or piston bellows forcing air into the furnace is what constitutes a "blast furnace." Fine effort by all.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey,

Now I am confused. Do not all forges have some type of bellows arrangement? Would simply having a bellows make it a blast furnace?

Pete

I thought I understood that blast furnaces were for smelting ore to get contained metal out. Actually, most smelting furnaces I know of have some means of forcing air into the charge of ore, flux, etc. to achieve needed high temperatures to extract metal from ore and do a measure of extraction of unwanted impurities from metal.

Forges, so far as I know, always have some means of forcing air into the hearth so as to get highest temperatures, especially on demand, to heat metal that is to be worked by hammer. The piston "bellows" in the photo are called "blow machines", in direct translation from Swedish Blåsmaskin. There are no actual "bellows" in them. They are purely for getting higher temperatures in the hearth. NO smelting is done in this building.

Niklas

Fellas:

I've been reading too much iron and steel. Sorry for the confusion. My mistake by mixing and matching forge, furnace and hearth. Maybe there should be some definitons of the primary types. But below is info concerning hearths and heated air.

All below is from Bell’s(1884) “Manufacture of Iron and Steel”

“The hearth and Catalan fire-as the latter was called from its use in that province-blown by means of a fall of water known as the trombe, or by bellows, were the only means employed for ages in furnishing the world with the iron it required.”

“Some Catalan furnaces, which I had an opportunity of examining in North Carolina, were near 3 feet from back to front and 2 feet from side to side, by 18 inches or 2 feet in depth. They were blown by a trombe-a very simple form of apparatus, in which the current of air is produced by water falling through a square upright box of wood, the blast being conveyed to the hearth through stems of trees bored for the purpose. Into the furnace are thrown charcoal and ore, the latter in small fragments. The hot embers, and the masonry heated by the previous charge, quickly cause combustion to pervade the mass, when the blast is turned on.”

“Contemporaneously with the use of the Catalan hearth, at all events in later times, the Stuckofen was worked in Germany, and the Osmund furnace was employed in Sweden, both being driven with compressed air. A mere addition to the height constituted all the essential difference between these two forms of furnaces and their primitive predecessor.”

Niklas has stated that the Osmund was a type of pig iron.

“The writings of these two authors, Agricola(Georg Bauer) and Dudley(Dud), appear, therefore, to fix the date of its(blast furnace) introduction at somewhere about the beginning of the sixteenth century.”

In Sweden and Russia until the latter part of the 18th century, a hearth similar to the Catalan know as the Lancashire hearth was used.

“The march of improvement seems to have been but languid, for, with the aid of the steam engine and the substitution of iron cylinders for leathern bellows, the average weekly make in 1788 of the 85 furnaces in the kingdom was scarcely 15 ½ tons per furnace.”

“So far as I know, neither Bessemer(Sir Henry) nor Siemens and Martin ever had a word to say against the hot blast. But a more striking instance even that this is that afforded by Sweden. In the manufacture of that quality of Swedish iron which has a world-wide reputation for cutlery steel, no new process is rashly introduced; and the Swedish ironmasters, no doubt for good reasons, adhere to the use of the old Lancashire fire, and, for the highest qualities, have forbidden the introduction of the puddling furnace into their primitive forges.
No iron making community in the world is more dependent for mere existence on a continuance of ancient reputation than the Swedes. They saw nothing in the adoption of the hot blast to impair their traditional renown; and I believe at the present moment that the use of hot air is the rule in their country.”

“since the ore employed for their manufacture is almost free from sulphur and phosphorus, and charcoal, the fuel used in Sweden and Russia for the blast furnace and Lancashire and Walloon fires, is the purest form of solid combustible with which we are acquainted.”


Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

So, in keeping with the original intention of this thread.

Hearth:
A brick, stone or concrete structure used to house a fire.

Furnace:
A vessel used to smelt ore or refine smelted ore (pig iron) that traditionally uses forced air to increase the heat.

Forge:
A structure that provides a heat source to bring metal to a working temperature for fabrication.

These are a bit generic, but do they make sense?

Pete