Old Industry

[Jammer]

I've been studying at the library and online about some old industries. Mainly Iron Furnaces from the 1800's. There were 69 furnaces in Ohio's Hanging Rock Iron Region and Kentucky had several also.

http://www.oldindustry.org/iron.html

We stopped at a few of these when we drove down through Kentucky and Tenn. Here are some pictures of 4 that I've been to so far.
Central Furnace is in western Kentucky and isn't in the Hanging Rock region. It had a small Hematite mine nearby along with the limestone and heavy woodlands needed to make Iron. The trees are cut and stacked in huge piles, covered with dirt and burned slowly to make charcoal. Not much of this one left.


Mt Olive Furnace in Southeastern Ohio is covered in heavy brush. This is as close as I could get to it. I still foound some slag pieces in the small stream that ran in front of it. Behind the tree on the right it has an arch that was part of the Charging Ramp.


Vesuvius Furnace is in a state park just down the road from Mt Olive. It's a very nice site with a lake and it's easy to get to. This furnace operated for over 70 years and there was lots of slag and some iron scattered around the grounds and in the stream. The second picture is a large piece of Iron they found when digging around the area, probably weighs 500 to 800 lbs not counting the rock and slag on the bottom.




Fitchburg Furnace is in central Kentucky and is, by far, the best Iron furnace built in it's time. It's actually 2 furnace stacks in one called Blackstone and Chandler. It only ran for 4 years because of poor planning, greed and an economic downturn, along with large Iron deposits found in Alabama and Minn. The second picture has me standing in front of the furnace so you can see just how massive this thing is. It's down several winding roads about 40 minutes off I-75.






This one had some repair in 2009 and looked pretty good for it's age.

http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOC ... 282334.pdf

[Harry]

Those are awesome and thanks for the scale offered by you in the picture, wow... no way would you ever think it was that big. Did they run those continuously for the life of the furnace? Seems like they would not want to have to keep heating that much rock back up.

[Nudge]

That is cool Jammer, Yes that thing is huge it is a shame that there is not more of it left. I love looking at things like that

[Jammer]

They usually ran 24/7, and go down about once a year to clean it out and do a reline. I'm not real sure where they got the firebrick from. There were a few in the bottom of the furnace and they were pretty big, about 12 X 6 X 4 inches.
They made about 10 tons of pig iron a day. We get upset at the mill if we don't get 1400 tons a day.

[Nudge]

They made about 10 tons of pig iron a day. We get upset at the mill if we don't get 1400 tons a day.

How the times have changed I bet you also have a roof over your head and you dont need a horse to lug the ore for you

I read in the link you gave that they found the place where the brick came from, it was said to be quite close to the site.

Did you think the brick was a heavy one or did it look quite light?

[Jammer]

I believe that was talking about the sandstone for the structure. I was curious about where the Firebrick came from. I know there is a Magnasite mine in southern Ohio and one in York Pa. I don't know if these were used back in the 1800's. They brought masons from Italy to built the original furnace so I guess they could have gotten firebrick from about anywhere.
The funny thing about the restoration project, they got $670,000 from government stimulis money and it was tagged as one of the top 10 biggest waste of money. Looking at the site it's hard to tell where they spent it all. I think for that amount it should be making Iron now.

[Nudge]

I think so I bet it cost a LOT less to build in the first place, with that amount of money it should have been totaly re built

[Harry]

Well they got that nice split rail fence and a sign. There is just way too much greed, waste and personal gain going on in government for it to function properly. It is sad... Really something like this needs no restoration, it will probably last as long as the pyramids just sitting there minding its own business. Cut the forest back from time to time and call it good.

[_FL_]

Nice pictures! I guess you can live in that furnace...

[dallen]

if you ever get up around Mt Hope in New Jersey, theres a big Tilcon Materials Quarry there, inside the Quarry property is an Iron Mine, I belive there is a plaque at the entrance to the quarry (been a while since I was there) that says the Iron Mine was one of the ones where they mined the ore that the cannons that George Washington used in the Revoltionary War were made from. The mine operated up untill a sometime back when it was closed due to economics.

I wasn't lucky enough to get to sneek into the processing houses when I was there,

I will have to look and see if I took any pictures while I was there, can't remember if I did or not.

David