doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com A Brief History of Gunbarrel Iron & Steel

For those interested, this is a good source for the non-deep thinkin' internet version.
http://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2014/09/

http://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2014/10/

http://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2014/11/

The author, an engineer, has declined to reveal his identity but posted briefly on Shotgun World back in 2011 as BobS
https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=259371

He borrowed some of my Damascus Knowledge stuff when discussing Pattern Welded barrels, which is OK - nothing of mine is copyrighted
http://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/barrel-making-pattern-welded-or_06.html


Another essay is at the bottom here, courtesy of Doug Miller and used with his permission
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V-qkkHrs7yJakMkakxkiMx8FzJjGXUg0EDm8-_AQPiA/edit

�The Entire History of Iron and Steel�
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20722505/history-of-steel/

"A Brief History of Iron and Steel Production" PDF by Joseph S. Spoerl
https://www.academia.edu/31060927/A_Brief_History_of_Iron_and_Steel_Production

Thanks! Very interesting.

Thank you

Good reading Dr. Drew. Thankyou. I well-remember the almost rabid detractors I'd encounter when I was researching the practicality of shooting a braided-steel gun. Working around fine guns and learning how British Proof actually worked finally dispelled the last of my reservations on that subject. But...I'm sure lots of folks still have their concerns. The stuff I found the most interesting was the development of the very early steels and how quickly that technology evolved. Fascinating history, at least for me.

Lloyd, a lot of that fascinating history was made in your home county back in Pa. Yesterday, I posted this photo of Webster Furnace, not far from Rockland. (Rockland also has a very well preserved stone furnace near Freedom Falls) I shot my first buck with a flintlock off the top of this iron making cold blast furnace that was built in 1837-38. Years before your home county made history for becoming a center for petroleum production and the world's first drilled oil well, they were a top producer of iron in the state, with 25 of these furnaces built in relative wilderness. A couple years ago, a decision to hunt that area again led me to study the history of these stone furnaces, and the iron that was produced in them.

Keith:

Great picture. Thankyou for that!

Really triggers the memories for me. As a boy, growing up in the woods around Polk, Pennsylvania I explored (played!) around similar structures not far from the Mercer County line. The closest one wasn't a stones-throw from the intersection of US 62 and old 965, almost directy across Big Sandy Creek from the Miller farm (went to grade-school with one of the Miller girls). This was just a short bike-ride up the old F&C RR tracks (now long abandoned, with many of the trestles pulled out as well!) from my elementary school. The creamy green "clinkers" in the slag were a particular favorite of mine. Glass-like and sharp, I'm sure I wrecked lots of pockets with them. There was another particular favorite near a wonderful little brook trout stream called (appropriately) "Furnace" run, which is also near the remains of the ghost town known locally as "Slatertown". My paternal great-grandfather, with the somewhat unusual nickname of "Pedro" (his given name was Preston) killed lots of big whitetail deer near that furnace. There were reportedly more iron furnaces nearby, at the little hamlet of Raymilton. Raymilton was originally Ray's Mill town, as I understand it. I used to chase ruffed grouse out there with my grandfather's circa 1914 LC Smith, amongst other things. That field grade "Elsie" had the pushbutton forend release that infringed on the Deeley patent. It's the only one I've ever seen in a lifetime of looking at old Smith guns. It was the first big purchase of my grandfather's early life. Sadly, it went the way of all hard-used things.

Keith:

Got home late last night after 10-days on the road. Took a break from the action here for a bit and looked up those old iron furnaces near my boyhood home. The internet, as usual, is full of wondrous surprises (http://www.r2parks.net/IronIndex.html). The Reno (aka North Bend) furnace was the closer one to town. The other one was evidently the Castle Rock (aka Lytle's or Sandy) furnace which is on a more-remote State Game Lands. That one always included a drive to get to it. The old Hamilton farm house is now gone and is used as a parking lot for the State Game Lands (No.39). That was always a very snakey place in my youth. Big rattlesnakes!

You know...it would be fun to walk that ground again. Maybe in the Fall sometime when I can drag my old 16 along (& perhaps my boy as well?). There were always a few grouse in there too.

Lloyd, I have probably read every word on that http://www.r2parks.net/IronIndex.html website. You will want to check out the psu.edu PDF of "Old Stone Blast Furnaces of Western Pa." Another great website with lots of info on furnaces in Venango, Clarion, Butler, Armstrong, etc. counties is this one:

https://www.mindat.org/article.php/1931/22.+Iron+and+The+Old+Stone+Furnaces+of+Western+Pennsylvania

One great picture of the author standing under a tuyere arch gives you an idea of the size of these structures. Please don't hate me for getting you started down this rathole. I found it pretty addictive, and especially interesting because of how much time I have spent hunting near these areas. We're supposed to get snow tonight, so I'll be out after deer with the flintlock tomorrow.

I've seen several ruins of these old stone blast furnaces while hunting these various places, and didn't know what they were. Little remains of some of them. Others, like Rockland Furnace and Victory Furnace are pretty well preserved. There are some ruins that are under an archeological study at Springfield Falls in Leesburg, a short distance away in Mercer Co. There is a really nice waterfalls near the State Game Lands there, and I had always heard, until a few years ago, that the cut stone foundation and ruins were remains of a flour or grist mill. But it was actually an iron making cold blast furnace that had a 38 foot tall waterwheel to power the bellows. It boggles my mind to think how these structures were built and operated in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity, no gas or diesel powered equipment, nothing but men and horses. Now I know the origins of the abandoned sandstone quarry about a mile west, in the worst thicket of multiflora rose and wild blackberries I've ever fought through. The forests around them were consumed as over an acre of trees per day was cut and converted to charcoal... with no chain saws or log skidders. To look at many of these places today, you'd swear they were never developed. It's humbling to know that everything we build will be swallowed up by time and nature.

Keith: It really was the middle-of-nowhere then. Hell...it still is. I have a brand-new, handmade, left-handed, 42-inch swamped barrel, Siler-locked flintlock .45 long rifle I had hoped to hunt back there this year, but internecine family warfare has pretty well-ruined that one. Oh well.

I used to ride bikes in an abandoned quarry up on Palm Hill near to the Reno furnace and wonder what it had all been for. I guess I know now. Where did the ore come from to feed these units? It almost had to be fairly close. We clearly stand on the shoulders of giants.

Click on that one link I provided Lloyd, and you will see it was all around you. I've seen a million of those reddish rocks and didn't know our ancestors figured out how to melt them down to make iron. That was why they built those furnaces where they did. They had to be close to the raw materials. There are several types of iron ore of varying quality and percentage of iron content. They also needed some limestone, and of course wood for charcoal... lots of wood. Some later furnaces used coal, and we had lots of that too. My buddy and I used to dig buckets of coal to take to camp to feed the potbelly stove. I've learned that old surface seam was once used to feed one of these furnaces.

None of that stuff was easy to transport any distance back then, when the few roads were little more than dirt trails. It helped if they could put a furnace near a stream large enough to float a boat, to transport the iron to the Allegheny or other rivers to get it to market. Andrew McCaslin, the guy who built Rockland furnace, and his wife were drowned in the river when their little barge capsized in rapids a couple miles downstream as they were transporting pig iron to Pittsburgh.

I laughed when you said it is still the middle of nowhere. I remember the first time I took my Brother-in-law from California to the hunting camp near Tionesta. He was amazed at the amount of wilderness and wooded lands. He had always been under the impression that Pa. is nothing but urban sprawl and cities. Nothing could be further from the truth.