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    The Iron Industry
    The Iron Industry
    The Iron Industry
    Ebook88 pages30 minutes

    The Iron Industry

    By Richard Hayman

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    About this ebook

    The iron industry was the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, producing a vital source of iron without which none of the great engineering achievements of the Victorian age would have been possible. This book charts the growth of iron making from the Middle Ages, covering the importation of blast-furnace methods in the fifteenth century, the adoption of coke as a fuel in the eighteenth century, and the invention of mass-produced steel in the nineteenth century. The developing techniques of iron making, all explained in a non-technical style, make a story in their own right, but combined with the experiences of the masters and workmen who laboured at the furnaces and forges, this volume offers a truly comprehensive account of one of the most important industries of recent centuries.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateFeb 25, 2016
    ISBN9781784420833
    The Iron Industry
    Author

    Richard Hayman

    Richard Hayman is an archaeologist and architectural historian who writes on the history of the British landscape. His other books include Riddles in Stone: Myths, Archaeology and the Ancient Britons.

    Read more from Richard Hayman

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    • 4/5
      About iron history, mainly in the industrial revolution. From charcoal to coke in Blast furnaces, but the pig iron always needed further refining in puddling furnaces, by heat, stirring and rolling. All that superseded by Bessemer converters, blasting air through the mix. It says Cast iron is 4% carbon mild steel 0.25%+ and wrought iron 0% carbon. Nice pictures and list of places to visit at the back, none in E Anglia really.

    Book preview

    The Iron Industry - Richard Hayman

    CONTENTS

    THE COMMON METAL

    THE BLOOMERY

    BLAST FURNACE AND FINERY

    THE COKE IRON INDUSTRY

    PUDDLING AND ROLLING

    MASTERS AND MEN

    STEEL

    PLACES TO VISIT

    FURTHER READING

    The old foundry at Brymbo, near Wrexham, was served by two cupola furnaces for melting pig or scrap iron. These are a rare survival as most iron-industry buildings were cleared when operations ceased, providing sites for redevelopment.

    THE COMMON METAL

    Iron has been one of the most important elements in the material world since the Industrial Revolution. As the eighteenth-century ironmaster William Reynolds pointed out, in the iron-bearing rocks below the soil ‘lay coiled up a thousand conveniences of mankind’. The iron industry was the driver of much of the economic development of Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To the iron industry we owe the development of large-scale mining in Britain’s coalfields, and flourishing secondary industries such as mechanical and civil engineering. British iron was used to construct steam engines, to cast cannon and to lay rails across the world in the nineteenth century. It was the universal metal, the material of the most memorable technical achievements of the day, including the Iron Bridge in Shropshire and the Crystal Palace, as well as an indispensable component of everyday artefacts such as thimbles and mouse traps.

    Iron is the commonest of the metallic elements. It unites easily with other elements, especially oxygen (to form rust) and carbon, but also with sulphur and phosphorus, which would provide the greatest technical challenges of the Industrial Revolution period. It has been used since prehistory although it was not the first metal to be exploited. The technology of smelting iron was quite simple, but the technique was difficult, which is why metals such as copper were exploited before iron. However, because of its abundance, once the technical difficulties of smelting it had been mastered, it quickly superseded other metals such as bronze and copper.

    Iron has been used in three basic forms: wrought iron, cast iron and steel. Wrought iron is pure iron, in commercial if not strictly in chemical terms. When it is white-hot it is malleable and can be hammered (forging) or rolled into a variety of shapes and, depending upon the quality, can be reduced to a thin sheet or narrow piece of wire without breaking. Cast iron has a carbon content of 3–4 per cent and is therefore an alloy of iron. When molten, it can be cast into moulds, but it is not malleable and it is brittle under a hammer, having a granular structure quite different from the fibrous structure of wrought iron. It can be cast into very precise shapes and is strong in compression, which makes it a good building material. Steel has a low carbon content, of between 0.25 and 1 per cent. It is a versatile alloy, capable of being worked like wrought iron, or it can be a more complex alloy containing a number of other elements to give it superior qualities. Chromium and nickel, for example, are added to make stainless steel.

    The history of ironworking can be divided into three main phases. The first was the bloomery, a furnace that smelted iron ore to produce malleable iron, which is known as the direct process. It was superseded by the indirect process, whereby iron ore was smelted in a blast furnace to produce molten pig iron, which

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