HANGING ROCK IRON REGION.



  It will be seen from the above table that, with the exception
of two furnaces, Hunnewell and Iron Hills. there is no very
great difference in the size or general details of construction.
Hunnewell Furnace is also built on the same model, but is
larger than usual.
  Iron Hills Furnace is, however, constructed on an altogether
different and more modern pattern, and one sufficiently novel
for this region to deserve a special description.
The furnace has an iron shell stack resting upon iron pillars,
fire-brick hearth and lining or inwall, closed top with bell and
hopper charging apparatus, and a gas flue for carrying the
waste gases to the boilers, which are situated on a bank about
twenty-five feet below the top of the furnace. The boilers
are situated upon the same level as the stock bank, and an
inclined plane elevator is used to hoist the charges to the fur-
nace throat from this level. The hot blast, which is of the-
Hoop patent, is situated at the end of the boilers. The fur-
nace was built to run upon the Lambert ore, which has been
already described. It started at a very inauspicious time for
a new enterprise of the kind, the winter of i873-'74, and was
compelled, through financial troubles, to cease operation in the
following spring, after having made only nine hundred and
sixty-two tons of iron. Since that time it has been idle, but
it is to be hoped that it will not long remain so.
  It has been freely charged that the lack of success of the
furnace was due to the novelties introduced in its construction:
notably the substitution of gas flues for taking the gases
down to the boilers instead of placing the boilers over the
throat of the furnace, in accordance with the time-honored
custom. There is certainly no reason why this plan, which has
been successful at other places. and which is being introduced
in the latest and most improved charcoal furnaces in other
regions, should not be successful here also. If it has not been,
it may possibly be due to defective construction, improper size
of flues, insufficient draft, or some other similar cause; but
there certainly is no reason why the gases from a charcoal fur-
nace cannot be taken down through flues and then consumed
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