Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: William Fischer, Jr.
Taken: November 29, 2008
Caption: Making Iron
Additional Description: Interpretive marker in front of furnace reconstruction:
The ironmaking process was well-known and cold-blast furnaces built in 18th and 19th century America mimicked designs first used 400 years earlier. A thick stone furnace, shaped like a flat-topped pyramid, served as the place of transformation, where minerals became metal. Fillers dumped alternating layers of charcoal fuel, iron ore, and limestone flux into the top of the furnace. As the charcoal burned, air forced into the furnace from the outside raised the temperature to 2,600-3,000 F creating several byproducts. Carbon gases escaped up the furnace stack, molten iron slag floated on the liquified metal. Workers drew off the useless slag and guttermen channelled the iron into connected castings called pigs.

Cutaway drawings depict the working of the furnace.
Submitted: December 3, 2008, by William Fischer, Jr. of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Database Locator Identification Number: p45613
File Size: 0.073 Megabytes

To see the metadata that may be embedded in this photo, sign in and then return to this page.