Specification of William Purnell : manufacture of iron.

  • Purnell, William.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of William Purnell : manufacture of iron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Purnell's Improvements in Preparing, Shingling, and Welding Iron. is to be performed, to be inrolled in His Majesty’s High Court of Chancery within one calendar month after the date of the said recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same (relation being thereunto had) may more fully and at large appear. NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said 5 William Purnell, do hereby declare that the said Invention, and manner of performing the same, is described and ascertained in manner following (that is to say):— For the preparing, manufacturing, and working of iron from the ore, as well as from sow and pig metal, and also from every other sort of cast iron, I 10 use the common air or reverberatory furnace in manner as is practised at the common iron foundaries, in which the metal must be brought into the most equable and perfect state of fusion, by being agitated here and there in the fire, so that every part may receive such effect from it that not the smallest particle may remain unmelted or in an unfused state; and after that is compleated, 15 the heat must be abated by slow degrees (still keeping it stirred and separated), so that as it cools gradually it may be taken from the furnace in lumps, loops, or pieces of about the weight of fourteen pounds, more or less, (as it may happen, or as the power of the rollers, herein-after described, may best overcome,) on shovels, made light, with their edges turned up and rather dished in the middle, 20 the better to prevent the hot metal falling olf whilst conveying from the furnace mouth to a cast-iron plate placed on the floor between the furnace mouth and rollers, on which it must be laid down to receive a few blows from a common sledge hammer by a labourer, placed ready for that purpose, to bring it into somewhat of the shape of a wedge; when it must with all possible 25 dispatch be taken up by a man, who must attend before the rollers with a like shovel, or other such tool or instrument to that before described, and conveyed to an iron plate, placed nearly in a direct line with the center of a pair of iron rollers, sixteen inches long by fifteen inches in diameter, or of such other dimensions as the force of the machinery used may render it necessary, to be 30 worked by steam, fire, or water, on which plate it is laid, and a blow or blows must be instantly given it by the edge of the said shovel or other such tool against the thickest edge or side, the better to force it to enter betwixt the rollers (always observing that the thin edge of the lump or loop be presented to pass first); and whilst this first lump or loop is passing betwixt the rollers 35 and falling into a cistern through which a continual stream of water is made to pass, another such lump or loop must be prepared and brought forward in regular succession, till the whole charge of one furnace be rolled, which in
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