Handbook of Birmingham: Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886British Association for the Advancement of Science
History
Handbook of Birmingham: Prepared for the Members of the British Association, 1886
British Association for the Advancement of Science
Birmingham (England); Natural history -- England -- Birmingham
_Treatment of Waste._--The following facts are supplied by Mr. T. J.
Baker:--Sheet iron scrap and lathe turnings are worked up again into
sheet iron. Copper clippings and turnings are remelted. Copper scale is
resmelted, as also brass clippings and brass dust. Gold scrap of the
japanning department is sent to the gold refiners, and the leaf metal
scrap to the bronze powder manufacturers. Tin plate scrap, after the
larger pieces have been sold to the button makers, are “stripped”--that
is, the tin is removed by immersion in hydrochloric acid. The resulting
tin salt is used by calico printers. The iron scrap, after removal
of the tin, is used for precipitating copper by the wet process. Tin
oxide, known as “drop tin,” formed on the surface of the metal in the
tinning pot, is, after recovery of as much of the tin as possible, sent
to the tin smelter. Galvanizing dross, an alloy of zinc and iron, which
sinks to the bottom of the galvanizing bath, is removed by a perforated
ladle, and refined by distilling off the zinc. Zinc ashes, that is
cinders which have fallen on the molten metal and absorbed zinc, is
also refined by distillation. Flux skimmings, or that which is skimmed
off from the galvanizing bath, is an oxide and chloride of zinc. This
is put in a vat; stirred with hot water, the oxide falls to the bottom
of the vat, but the chloride dissolves. The clear solution is heated
with gas liquor, when zinc precipitates as carbonate, and the chloride
of ammonium, now in solution, is recovered by evaporation. The solid
residues are worked up in paint mills into zinc white.
=Tools (Heavy Edge).=--[A. WINKLER WILLS.]--(B. 656.) In addition to
edge tools proper, such as axes, adzes, hatchets, and other articles,
the trade includes pickaxes, spades, shovels, forks, hoes, augers,
trowels, shipscrapers, &c. The number of patterns regularly supplied
by the manufacturers of Birmingham and the neighbourhood is estimated
at several thousands, each nation and almost each district requiring
special patterns of its own. The character of the soil, habit of people
and other circumstances affect the form of tool though used for the
same purpose. The enormous hoe, with a blade nearly a foot wide and
of the same depth, which is in universal use in Guatemala, would be
useless in Valparaiso, because the soil is light in one country and
heavy in the other.
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