Internal Fire Museum of Power

Bloomery iron making I am sure went out of fashion mid victorian or even earlier as puddling furnaces superseded the grossly enefficient charcoal fired proccess by using coal and coke and able to produce large qauntities or iron on a continual basis. They had little succsess as they didn't prepare the iron ore properly and to convert a "pebble" size bit on a small scale is ni impossible as the carbon needs to be in intimate contact to reuce the oxide back to metal, you can't melt iron in a bloomery (burn yes) as there isn't enough heat so you have to beat it to exude the molten slag. If you look at very old corroded iron parts they often show lines in the surface, this is wrought Iron. Blists Hill still work iron and a good example of an iron forge is Wortley Top Forge near Sheffield both have websites.
I thought they were going to mention "white coal" anyone heard of it?

same here!

I enjoyed the last programme, especially when they were harvesting with binder and Mogul - Hope to get our Binder going this summer.
They could have done better on the stationary engine front, but there 'impact' on farming was not really put across well.

All in all they done a great job on the series,it took alot of time and organising to make it happen i'd say!

Gentlemen,

Another excellent series finished, now we wait to see what follows, I mostly enjoyed the making of the weather cock.
Sat in a Hotel room in Reading.

Martin P

AFAIK Blists Hill no longer roll wrought iron commercially, only on the odd occasion. From talking to a chap working in the Blacksmiths, he said there were few people now with experience to work the rolling mill to the satifaction of H&S. I dont think pig iron is available now either as the mill recycled old ships chain.
Genuine Wrought Iron is so much better than steel and will last a lifetime. Even older steel seems better than the new stuff. A Railway Locomotive owning friend explained how rebuilding boilers with large amounts of new metal need careful maintenance, using a water treatment to help reduce the oxygen in the water and lessen the corrosion effect. New steel being that much purer apparently corrodes faster.

Your friend is partially correct, I worked metalurgicly in the stainless steel industry with some eminent metalurgists and they said that recycling was the cause. Most new steel is produced from scrap or a fair percentage, a lot of the srap has been recycled before and due to the proccesses involved the metal granular structure oxidised and polluted with alloys and others. This is why we can now all buy duplex and triplex melt quality steels. Interestingly especially to vehicle restorers if you obtain oil drums imported from places like Brazil, etc then you have virgin quality steel as scrap is not as readily available.