The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It

rt of my clothing (if any spot was still dry) and with my sweat cap wipe the sweat and soot out of my eyes. For the next seven minutes I "thickened the heat up" by addi

to take place. Adding the roll scale had cooled the charge, and it was thick like ho

bake a

a frog to

ent aw

come and

ture that is supposed to live in flames. For the cooling down of that molten batter d

the size of a thick wash-rag, and the puddler carries it in the hand

clay. For a good brick wall is stronger than a wall of brittle iron. Yet nature will not give us pure iron. She always gives it to us mixed with the stuff that weakens it-this dross and brimstone. Nature hands out no bonanzas, no lead-pipe cinches to mankind. Man must claw for everything he ge

They are the brimstone that makes him brittle. He is pig-iron until he boils them out of his system. Savages and criminals are men who have not tried to boil this dross out of their nature

mes breaking through the lake of molten slag in my furnace. Probably from such a sight as this the old-time artists got their pictures of Hell. The flames are caused by the burning of carbon monoxide from the oxidation of carbon. The slag is basic and takes the sulphur and phosphorus into

to water again when it gets cold. But in the boiling iron puddle a chemical change is taking place. The iron is not going up in vapor. The carbon and the oxygen are. This formation of gas in the molten puddle causes the whole charge to boil up like an ice-cream soda. The slag overflows. Redde

with all the strength in my body. For now is my chance to defeat nature and wring