Page 17 - Jimmy Hines: A View from the Open Hearth

ISSUE : Issue 27

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1980/12/1

probably have to shovel by hand. If the test came in any ways close. Whether he did or not, I don't know to this day. He said he had the ore charged. And he got a dose of high-silica iron. After supper I came back, started in the whole process-- and after the test, we had to shovel 4 more boxes of ore, about another 10 tons. And I got home that morning and my mother said, "Get rid of that job. Don't go back." But I liked it. I liked the work. (Liked it? It was hot....) Yes, went through hell. But it was interesting to me. And I really loved it. Anyhow, you continue on putting in the ore until you get the carbon down to where you think it's ready--then you send the test into the lab. Say you were making 18 to 23 carbon--ordinary soft steel--you could make anything with it--nails, wire, rods-- you get her down to about 20 carbon, you're ready to tap out. And when the foreman'd tap it, it would all go out into this great big ladle, which would be dropped underneath the spout of the furnace by an overhead crane-- a ladle holding 50 ton of steel--you can imagine the size. Pour that metal, and the crane would pick it up and carry it over to the molds. And they'd fill those molds as long as the metal was there to fill them. And then a little narrow-gauge en? gine would come down and hook up on that string of molds with metal in them and take them up to the mills for rolling. End up in the hands of a guy like Wally Chand? ler in the rolling mill. From the time it leaves the open hearth, it goes to the blooming mill first. Those ingots would be cold by the time they got up there. They would have to be put in what they call the soaking pits, to re-heat the ingots up to the proper temperature before they could roll them. A big crane would drop tongs down, like ice tongs, and bring them up and lay them on the rolling grid in the blooming mill. They would roll that big ingot down to what they call a bloom. That would be about 10 inch square and 3 or 4 times the length of the ingot. And that bloom, it would go through another mill-- the billet mill--which would roll it down smaller, and yes, about 3 times the length of the bloom. And then it would go from there to the rod and bar mill. This is soft steel, now. Remember that. This is noj; the steel that would become rails. 56't steel is made into wire for nails or wire itself or rods and bars for rein? forcing concrete. (Now if it had been high carbon steel, the harder steel....) It'd be a bloom in the blooming mill, rolling it from an ingot to a bloom, for rails. And that bloom will go down to the rail mill. It will come in here as a square bloom and go through an? other set of rollers. They keep rolling it back and forth--red hot--until it gets shaped into a rail. Teeming a ladle of steel into ingot molds;stripping the molds from glowing ingots. "E KEN'S KITCHEN SPECIALIZING IN Ponzos A" ? Pizza 429 Prince Street, Sydney, 562-5538 • C. B. Shopping Plaza, Sydney River. 539-3983 20 Regent Street, North Sydney, 794-8248 • 611 Grand Lake Road, 539-3368 Reeves Street, Port Hawkesbury, 625-2230 Ponzo Originated in Cape Breton (17)

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