Travelled to South Carolina

[Jammer]

We went to SC last week to visit my son, daughter-in-law and grandkids. Had a great time and then messed around on the way home. Waterfalls, scenery, old plantations and, of course, and Iron furnace. There were several furnaces around, but we didn't have time to check them out. There was also a Mill and a falls where they used to have a powerhouse. I don't think it was electric, something much older. An old homestead that was a small farm where 3 generations lived. They had barns and a Forge. Went to a Gem Mine and checked out the old equipment. Played in the dirt and found a small Emerald and lots of quartz. And It was my Birthday while we were there... The big 70!

[Jammer]

A few more Pictures.

[Jammer]

More Pics and Cabela's, with its huge bronze of bears and eagles.

Happy Birthday

[latzanimal]

Happy Belated Birthday!

Nice pictures.

[cae2100]

Happy birthday man, and you looked like you had as much as fun as a pig in a mud puddle, lol.

Those big tall furnaces are pretty cool, Ive only seen pics of them but they're old steel/carburizing furnaces for converting wrought to steel/carbon steel/tool steels. You would put crucibles in there with wrought iron, your alloying metals, and some cast iron for carbon content, then cap them off and put them in those furnaces and just keep them glowing bright orange/yellow hot for a few days till it all melted together and became homoginized together, creating what they called "crucible steel" that they used for cutting edges on old tools.

[Jammer]

Thanks for the Birthday Wishes. Getting old isn't for sissies. I'm finding out I'm kind of a sissy.

These big furnaces are actually smelting furnaces, they take Iron ore, Charcoal, and Lime, Fire it up and the pig iron is tapped from the bottom.

[cae2100]

Oh ok, I thought it was the crucible type ones since the bottom was so wide open. I always saw the type in that diagram have small bottoms so that the bottom would fill up with the molten iron, and cause more of the stuff to funnel down to a tighter and tighter area so more air could be blown up through it to make it more effecient. The pic looks like it's pretty massive at the bottom, like you could walk into it.

[Jammer]

I'm trying to figure out what kind of steam engines these are.
One looks like the bottle engine that one of the guys was working on.

[cae2100]

No idea on the bottom one, just a simple vertical bottle engine really, but the top one is a steam hoist/winch, which were pretty common, or also could have come out of an old steam shovel or something too. Ive seen a few steam winches before and they're pretty cool. Pat may know more about them, if he hasnt already put a bid in to buy them already, lol.

[Jammer]

The hoist has an engine on both sides. There is a shovel up in the trees, but I couldn't get a picture of it.