ON ROLL-TURNING FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF IRON. By PETER TUNNER, MEMBER OF AUSTRIAN MINISTRY OF MINES, ETC., ETC. TRANSLATED AND ADAPTED BY JOHN B. PEARSE, METALLURGIST, ENGINEER, AND MANAGER AT THE WORKS OF THE ILLUSTRATED BY 34 WOOD-CUT ENGRAVINGS, TOGETHER WITH A FOLIO NEW YORK: D. VAN NOSTRAND, Publisher, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. MEM AOKK AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE use of rolls for the manufacture of iron is unquestionably an English invention. The first grooved rolls were constructed in the year 1783 by Henry Cort, who thereby laid the foundations of a magnificent industry, but suffered grievous ill-usage, and died a miserable death. The subject of roll-turning has been so scantily treated in all the books which have described the manufacture of iron, that very little that is useful can be gleaned from their pages. None of the late books on the subject contain more information than was given by Karsten in 1841, though since that time extraordinary progress has been made in the art. The chief ground of this neglect of this vital branch of the industry is, in my opinion, to be found in the fact that those who have lately written on Iron Metallurgy have not, as a rule, been practical metallurgists, but only metallurgical chemists, and, therefore, they have neglected as trivial such things as passes, or, perhaps, have even held it beneath their dignity to write about them; they have, however, accomplished a great deal in their own branch. Eduard Maürer published in 1865 a work, or rather atlas, containing the finished sections of many different kinds of iron; but there was nothing in his work which treated of roll-turning except a few ideal drawings, in which the finishing passes of many sections were drawn on the same pair of rolls. Some years ago, Mr. Biederman, a true metallurgical engineer, proposed to publish a work on roll-turning, illustrated with correct drawings, which, together with the corresponding manuscript, I have seen, but the publication of which was given up for reasons unknown to me. These facts show that there must be some great difficulty in publishing such a work, which is, indeed, actually the case. This difficulty is caused by two circumstances: by the fact that the art rests not on theory, but on wide experience the men of experience being seldom able, and rarely willing, to publish their knowledge for the benefit of others; and by the fact that if such a work shall really serve a useful purpose, so many drawings are necessary that the cost of the work becomes excessive, and the labor of the author unremunerative. The first circumstance, rather than the latter, has therefore prevented me from writing any complete treatise on roll-turning, though I have often treated of special points, and in 1838 furnished the text and drawings for a small work on rail-making, which was published by Industry and Trade Society of Inner Austria. For some 25 years I have felt the necessity of such a work as the present, and felt it the more deeply when I observed, as I often had the opportunity of doing, that many men, and especially those from abroad, regarded themselves as indispensable to this or that mill merely |