Eagle Iron Works

Eagle Iron Works. Pennsylvania's Longest-Lived and Last Operating Charcoal Iron Manufactory. , KEY DATES AND DEVELOPMENTS , 1810 Roland Curtin and business partner Moses Boggs establish Eagle Forge on a seven-acre tract acquired from miller Philip Antes; for the next eight years, Eagle Forge refines pig iron obtained from nearby furnaces., 1815 Roland buys out Moses Boggs, becoming sole proprietor of Eagle Forge., 1818 Roland builds Eagle Furnace (charcoal-fueled, cold blast) and a workers village near iron ore deposits one mile south of Eagle Forge; the furnace (which no longer exists) supplies Eagle Forge with pig iron for a quarter-century., 1825 Roland acquires the Antes mill tract adjoining the west and south sides of the Eagle Forge property, then builds on it a four-story stone gristmill and one-story log houses for forge employees and their families., 1829 Along Bald Eagle Creek near Eagle Furnace, Roland builds Centre County's second rolling mill, continuing his expansion of Eagle Iron Works., 1832-33 Roland builds Martha Furnace 15 miles up Bald Eagle Valley; the smeltery produces pig iron for Eagle Forge through the next 15 years, as Eagle Furnace is shut down., 1848 After Roland Curtin's retirement, sons John and Constans (operating as "C.&J. Curtin') build Pleasant Furnace 400 feet south of Eagle Forge, replacing defunct Eagle Furnace and recently-sold Martha Furnace; as Eagle Iron Works' only functioning furnace after 1848, Pleasant Furnace becomes known as "Eagle Furnace.", 1899 After a decade of market-induced dormancy, Eagle Iron Works is reopened on a smaller scale by third-generation ironmaster H.R. Curtin and a small group of investors operating as the Eagle Iron Company., 1921-22 Eagle Furnace's wooden superstructure is destroyed by fire in May 1921; fourth-generation ironmaster Hugh Laird Curtin elects not to rebuild; Eagle Forge refines the last stockpile of pig iron, then shuts down early in 1922; Eagle Iron Works enters history as the longest-lived and last operating charcoal iron works in Pennsylvania., Eagle Furnace (below, ca. 1905) was "in blast” year-round, conditions permitting. It was charged and tapped periodically around the clock, except on Sundays. Charging took place every half-hour, with each charge comprising approximately 320 pounds of charcoal (as fuel), 700 pounds of iron ore (containing metallic iron and non- iron "impurities"), and 150 pounds of limestone (whose calcium served as a flux, binding with the impurities to form slag). The furnace was tapped every 12 hours, yielding approximately 1½ tons of pig iron (sixty 50-pound pigs)., Every day while "in blast,” Eagle Furnace consumed about 960 bushels of charcoal, produced from 32 cords of wood, derived from just over an acre of timber. Fueling the furnace for a year required felling one square mile of forest. On an iron plantation, the majority of workers were engaged in charcoal production. Every autum[n] more than one hundred men and boys (fellers) went to a forest to cut down trees, split the timber into four-foot lengths no thicker than six inches (billets), then stack the billets into enough cords-piles 4 feet high by 8 feet long by 4 feet deep-to supply Eagle Iron Works with a year's worth of charcoal. The cord wood was allowed to season for a few months, then colliers and their helpers arrived to begin transforming the wood into charcoal., [Center box text reads] , An IRON WORKS is an industrial plant where iron is produced and/or processed. A works might include:, a FURNACE, in which iron ore is subjected to intense heat and chemical processes that separate the lighter mass of non-iron elements-collectively known as "slag"-from heavier iron, through a process called "smelting", a BLAST HOUSE, in which air is pumped into a metal tube (tuyere pipe) extending to and into the crucible of the furnace, stoking the furnace fire to smelting temperature (~2800°F), a CHARGING HOUSE, where batches of charcoal, iron ore, and limestone are periodically fed into the top of the furnace stack, in a procedure known as "charging", a CASTING HOUSE, where smelted components of iron ore are released from the furnace's crucible by "tapping" the furnace; slag is drawn off first, then molten pig iron is channeled into either cast iron molds or into a pattern of impressions (pig bed) carved into the sand-and-clay floor, a TUYERE SHED, attached to the casting house to protect the end of the tuyere pipe as it enters the furnace (tuyère is the French word for "nozzle"), a FORGE (a.k.a. finery forge), in which solidified pig iron is heated and softened in small blast furnaces (bloomeries), then refined through pounding with a mechanical triphammer, yielding bars of reworkable wrought iron (a.k.a. merchant iron), a FOUNDRY, in which pig iron is reheated to a molten state, then poured (cast) into molds, yielding cast iron products such as cookware, fireplace accessories, and radiators, a ROLLING MILL, in which bars of wrought iron are reheated and pressed between rollers to form metal sheets of uniform thickness, a SLITTING MILL, in which bars of heated wrought iron are sliced into rods, a STOCK HOUSE (barn or shed) for storing charcoal used to fuel the blast furnace and forge bloomeries, a SCALE large enough to weigh batches of raw materials and finished products, along with the vehicles carrying them, WORKSHOPS for blacksmiths, carpenters, tinsmiths, and other craftsmen responsible for maintaining the Works, a STABLE for housing, feeding, and grooming the horses and mules that provide animal power at an iron works, At its peak of production in the mid nineteenth century, Eagle Iron Works had all of these components., [Left illustration captions, top to bottom, read] , . A scale model of Eagle Forge on display at the State Museum of Pennsylvania has cutaway sections revealing the facility's interior during its century-plus career of refining pig iron into wrought iron. Controllable water channels (races) flow along either side of the main 55-by-85-foot forge building, turning a pair of waterwheels-one powering the triphammer, and the other working bloomery bellows., . A cutaway drawing of a cold blast charcoal iron furnace complex similar to Eagle Iron Works' illustrates the loading ("charging") of the furnace with batches of charcoal, iron ore, and limestone; the water-powered generation of air current ("cold blast") by means of a water wheel and bellows-fitted blowing tubs, stoking the furnace fire to smelting temperature; and the release of molten slag and iron from the furnace crucible ("tapping the furnace")., [Right photo captions, top to bottom, read] , . Ironmasters H.R. Curtin (center, with bowtie) and his cousin Andrew Gregg Curtin Jr. (rear, 4th from left) pose with Eagle Iron Works employees beside a charcoal shed around 1885. The group includes forgeman "Hen” Shultz (middle, 2nd from left), furnace worker Adam Gingher (middle, 4th from left), and blacksmith Miles Dukeman (rear, wielding a hammer)., . LEFT: In the Eagle Furnace casting house, a gutterman guides a "heat” of molten iron into pig molds, ca. 1910., . RIGHT: Covering the pit with leaves, charcoal dust, earth, and sod., . FAR RIGHT: A fired pit, near the end of a 10-14-day burn., . Laying in billets to form a charcoal pit 16 feet high and 30 feet in diameter.,