Discussion. The Treatment of Steel by Hydraulic Pressure, and the Plant Employed for the Purpose.

Abstract

said the Paper required a great deal of con-w. Ellis. sideration, for when looked a t it really amounted to this, that not only in England, but in the world, only two steel-makers were making steel upon the proper system. He thought that would hardly be admitted. Considering the splendid steel which had been produced for some years by English and foreign makerssuch makers as Messrs. Vickers, Messrs. Firths, Messrs. Cammell, and others in Sheffield, Messrs. Krupp, the Creusot Company, and others on the Continent, it could hardly be supposed that their working had been altogether wrong for so many years. No doubt the Author believed everything he had said to be absolutely correct, but there were several statements in the Paper which, as far as his own experience went, were not correct. The first complaint he had to make of the Paper was with regard to Fig. 2. If that represented anything like the ingots of which the steel-makers of England were making steel, the sooner they gave way to others who would make a more reliable material the better. But he contended that that did not represent the ingots that were being used in the trade. The Author had said that it was necessary to cut off one-third of the ingots made unless they were compressed. With that he entirely agreed, but he did not admit that this was altogether an evil. Those who had been in the habit of making large ingots were aware that if the metal was kept hot enough €or a sufficiently long time, the various impurities, always to be found in steel, would gradually coma to the top ; and when the top third of the ingot was cut off, the two-thirds remaining were really better than the original mass of the ingot. He was speaking of the ingots of steel, not poured into iron moulds, but into sand or other material. The samples exhibited, he presumed, had been poured into iron moulds, and that fact accounted for their unsoundness on the edge, referred to by the Author. But large ingots that had been poured into moulds made of composition did not show that inequality, or any appreciable objectionable portions. During the past few years he had cut through many ingots, and he was prepared to state that when the top third of an ingot was cut off, the other portion was absolutely sound, and there was not one ingot in twenty that had a speck in it as large as a pea. He was therefore justsed in saying that Fig. 2 did not represent the kind of ingot that steel-makers who were really making good steel [THE INST. C.E. VOL. CVIII.] L Downloaded by [] on [11/09/16].