 |
Iron & Steel Preservation
|
|
.
|
Thanks for your interest in this newsletter. In today's communication revolution we are subjected to a barrage of media competing for our attention, colored brochures with finely crafted fonts fill our mail boxes, emails, text messages, and the old landline "Time Share" unsolicited calls now moved to our cell phones, so I appreciate you opening the ISP Newsletters.
Working with historic metals and the rivet process, I have a greater appreciation for the early craftsmen whose work in historic metals and their tools led to innovations in metals and industrial processes for the twenty first century. Industrial processes today are more advanced, and the men and women who aspire to the level of craftsmen must compete with automation and learn to master its complexities. One area where the skills of craftsmen will be needed is in the rehabilitation of the United States current infrastructure and the conversion of this infrastructure to twenty first century communication and transportation systems.
As you read the four pieces in this newsletter, I invite you to reflect on how knowledge of past innovations, whether in materials, processes or construction, can contribute to our capacity for innovation in the future.
Vern Mesler
Iron & Steel Preservation Coordinator
Lansing Community College
|
Wrought iron is a metal I had little knowledge of during my early years in steel fabrication, but as I began my work in the restoration of historic bridges for the Calhoun County Historic Bridge Park I learned to appreciate its uniqueness and that its history extends beyond recorded history. Today wrought iron has faded from academic and industrial memory and what is offered as fact is repeatedly a distortion of its important characteristics. A.M. Byers Company's handbook (1939) Wrought Iron: Its Manufacture, Characteristics and Applications lists several of these characteristics: resistance to corrosion, resistance to fatigue failure, the ability to take on and hold protective metallic and paint coatings, good machining and threading qualities and good forming and welding qualities.
I found that after polishing and etching wrought iron a distinctive grain structure appears. With a durable clear patina this feature could be part of an architecture design or a feature of a metal sculpture.
|
Wrought iron is not produced today, but if I were to find the funding I would build a puddling furnace and begin producing wrought iron.
Wrought iron in the early twentieth century was still considered to have a future because of its unique qualities. From the preface to the Byers handbook
:
"During the past decade there has been a rapidly growing demand for wrought iron in many different products. This demand has been accompanied by a need for information on the qualities of the material and their application to present day problems."
|
I wrote extensively on wrought iron in the June 2015 ISP Newsletter,
Wrought Iron
|
After over thirty years in steel fabrication and using the electric arc welding process for the fabrication of steel structures, I had my first experience driving rivets with a Boyer field rivet hammer in 1998. This historic industrial tool was used extensively for the restoration of the five historic riveted truss bridges in the Calhoun Historic Bridge Park and is currently used in the restoration and rehabilitation of riveted truss bridges elsewhere in the United States.
|
As with wrought iron, the rivet process has vanished from the minds of the academic and industrial communities, and I'm often baffled by what is offered as fact that seems to me contradictory after viewing many riveted structures.Traveling across the United States I've had the opportunity to walk and drive over many famous riveted bridges, among them some of the most well-known in New York City. My wife and I always enjoy our trips to New York and our walks across one of the most well known riveted bridges, the Brooklyn Bridge.
|
|
| New York City, a City of Rivets |
New York City, a city of order and chaos, of sights and sounds, sidewalks filled with people from every nationality, a constant flowing and ebbing of people walking, regulated only by the stop and go of the corner traffic light. Towering above all this activity are structures built across past centuries, riveted buildings and riveted bridges, alongside structures built in the twenty first century. Even beneath the sounds of the street other riveted structures exist.
On street corners, stairs lead to riveted structures unnoticed by commuters who stand on platforms amid the sound of braking steel wheels against rails and subway doors opening and closing, who step swiftly across the concrete platform into steel cars and hear "Stand clear of the closing door, please," with the drawn out sound of "closing" giving it a New York cadence. Minutes later the subway cars roll quickly to the hard sound of steel against steel, the passing subway car windows flicker rapidly then replaced with darken walls.
Stops are frequent, and at many stations as you leave the subway car you're surrounded by heavy riveted steel columns and beams. At the Brooklyn Bridge station, ornamental iron rails, terra cotta tiles, and mosaic tile signage lead to the Brooklyn Bridge.
|
|
Shop Fabrication of Steel for the Empire State Building
|
|
Across the narrow flange of a beam a surefooted ironworker treads, high above a busy street or the swift current of a river. With a spud wrench or a rivet hammer in hand they sculpted the structural steel of buildings and bridges. Whether it's the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or the Empire State Building in New York City, the skill of these 1930's craftsmen was on display for all to view. Rivets heated with a coal forge to the color of yellow, grasped with steel tongs and sent through the air to a catcher's can were promptly inserted in the hole of a connection plate and riveted in place with a pneumatic field rivet hammer. But for every field rivet driven by these skilled craftsmen on the construction site, hundreds of rivets were heated in a fabrication shop and compressed in place by giant shop pneumatic riveters suspended by a system of cranes and operated by a crew of four or five men. Assembling the massive steel columns for the Empire State Building in the fabrication shop required hard physical labor by craftsmen unseen by the general public and often unrecorded. When completed, these massive shop-riveted steel columns were shipped to the Empire State Building job site, lifted in place and field riveted with a pneumatic field rivet hammer weighing twelve to thirty pounds. Shop fabrication of the steel for the Empire State Building was done at the American Bridge Company and the McClintic-Marshall Company.
Shop riveting an Empire State Building fabricated steel column with a suspended pneumatic portable riveter (Photo: from the film Making A Skyscraper (Steel)-Empire State Bldg., Prelinger Archives, San Francisco)
|
Shop riveted column is set and ready for field riveting. (Photo: from the film Making A Skyscraper (Steel)-Empire State Bldg., Prelinger Archives, San Francisco)
|
|
|
Program Fund
Please consider contributing to the Iron and Steel Preservation Program Fund. This fund was established to support projects, research, conferences and scholarships related to the repair, rehabilitation, and restoration of metals. The Lansing Community College Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation.
Donate Here
|
|
|
|
Past Iron & Steel Preservation Newsletters
|
|
|
|
Sponsor
|
Want to become a sponsor?
|
|
Lansing Community College
5708 Cornerstone Drive
PO Box 40010
, MC 4100W
Lansing, MI 48917
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
