Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Science
Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Lead -- Metallurgy; Lead mines and mining
Each furnace had two flues at the throat, 16 × 18 in. in size, each
flue being provided with a separate damper. Each furnace had an
iron chimney approximately 55 ft. high, of which 13 ft. was a brick
pedestal (64 × 64 in.) and the remaining 42 ft. sheet steel, guyed. The
chimneys were 42 in. in diameter. The distance from the outside end
of the furnace to the chimney was approximately 6 ft., and there was
consequently but little opportunity for flue dust to collect in the
flue. About once a month, however, the chimney was opened at the base
and about two wheelbarrows (say 600 lb.) of flue dust, assaying about
50 per cent. lead, was recovered per furnace.
The furnace house was a frame building 45 ft. wide, with boarded sides
and a corrugated-iron pitch roof, supported by steel trusses. The
furnaces were set in this house, side by side, their longitudinal axes
being at right angles to the longitudinal axis of the building. The
distance from the outside of the fire-box end of the furnace to the
side of the building was 10 ft. The coal was unloaded from a railway
track alongside of the building and was wheeled to the furnace in
barrows. Some of the furnaces were placed 18 ft. apart; others 22 ft.
apart. The men much preferred the greater distance, which made their
work easier, an important consideration in this method of smelting.
The hight from the floor to the working door of the furnace was
approximately 36 in. The working doors were formed with cast-iron
frames, making openings 7 × 11 in. on the inside and 15 × 28 in. on
the outside. On the side of the furnace opposite the middle working
door was placed a cast-iron hemispherical pot, set partially below the
floor-line. This pot was 16 in. deep and 24 in. in diameter; the metal
was ¼ in. thick. The distance from the top of the pot to the line of
the working door was 31 in.; from the top of the pot to the bottom of
the tap-door was 7 in. The tap-door was 4 in. wide and 9 in. high,
opening through a cast-iron plate 1½ in. thick. Below the tap-door
and on a line with the upper rim of the pot was a tap-hole 3½ in. in
diameter. The frames of the working doors had lugs in front, against
which the buckstaves bore, to hold the frames in position. All other
parts of the sides of the furnace, including the fire-box, were cased
with ⅝ in. cast-iron plates, which were obviously too light, being
badly cracked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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