Show HOW STEEL IS MADE in the two years since the end of hostilities in the world war the countries suffering most from the conflict have been importing steel to the extent that their finances will permit for this substance is needed to patch the industrial injuries inflicted by the war some of 0 the important melli employed in the making of steel are described in the following communication to the national geographic society by william joseph showalter an open hearth heart li furnace looks a good deal like ille an ordinary bake oven but when one looks la in through the water cooled door a last ast difference appears instead of pans of fragrant fat loaves of baking bread there is an imposing poul pool of fiery liquid as bright as the filament of a high power tungsten lump so dazzling that it can be examined with ith safety to the eyes only by those thoe tho e using colored glas glasses seq tinted here and there with streaks of soft blue and dainty pink it looks like melted stick candy in preparing a battery of open hearth furnaces for a charge finely ground dolomite Is shoveled in first this melts like glass and lills fills up all brachs and crannies caused by th poN powerful erful heat of the preceding charge then a little train rolls up before the battery and an electric crane dumps box after box of scrap metal from the cars into the furnaces olt off boine distance is a great steel tank lank lined with ond and full of liquid pig metal when the scroll scrap has bas melted and the flie contents of the couldren caul dron arp are cooked enough when aben tile lie hane hae been driven out r end nd tolled away the lie iery fiery broth Is seasoned as it were the proper amount of carbon spiegel sp legel ferromanganese feiro fer ro manganese fer con vanadium or n Is necessary to rive give the desired character to the resulting arteel then comes the tapping of the furnace ana electric crane lifts a great ladle into position a 1 arkman var kman janis jams a crowbar bar through a clay plugged hole at the base and out flows the frenzied stream into the ladle the slag rises to the top like oil on water and overflows congealing on the outside of the ladle then the big crane up the ladle indie swings it over to the pouring platform where it in its turn Is topped tapped and its purified fluid run oft off into molds great care lias has to be taken in ban citing alln these ladles for the lie presence of 0 a few dimps of moisture when tile the liot hot metal lg Is poured into 0 one might neof inight cause an explosion and loss s s of life just before they receive tile molten mollen luethal tile the ladles are heated nearly white hot in order thit 1 the steel or iron may not chill in them A 19 fust cast its they are or filled the ladles are swung out over the ingot molds anil and the hie liquid steel Is run into them ond and allowed all ocl to cool anil and take its solid form it Is as if water nater were poured into molda and bet in a refrigerating machine to freeze into blocks of ice the only difference is that the freezing point of steel Is fmay away above the lie boiling point of water there are two other oilier important types of steel furnaces the crucible furnace and tile the electric furnace in both of them the idea Is to keep all hurtful gases and other impurities out and to regulate the addition of alloys and oxygen destroyers to a nicety in a crucible furnace the metal is placed in graphite clay pots covers are put oer them and the pots subjected to great heat silica Is gradually absorbed out of the cloy clay in the pots and transformed into inlo silicon by coming coining into contact with the carbon in the steel the silicon in its turn absorbs the oxygen still and thus quiets the troth froth in lug foat ning contents of the kettle the electric furnace nets acts in much the same way vay its hent heat being so pure eliat there Is no necessity of putting the steel in covered pots to keep out gases and other impurities an electric are arc established beav between en huge electrodes and the surface L of the slog sing produces the heat I 1 in a such a 8 furnace by varying the materials used in the formation of the slag any impurity can be noised Noi ked off and the glowing steel left as pure as crystal the alloys are then mixed with the steel and it Is made fit it for any ally use desired it Is drawn ot off into info ladles indies an and poured into ingot molds here it hardens ready to be worked up into those things that constitute he last word in fine steel |