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This page is part of a website based
on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. Please email site controller Eric
Alexander with any comments or queries. |
PUDDLING AFTER HENRY CORT
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All the iron for ships, bridges,
railway rails, tyres and axles from the Workshop of the World and which made
possible the industrial revolution, was manhandled at the end of long bars
and poles of various kinds in great glowing balls of metal weighing about a
hundredweight a piece. From W.W. Jenkins, Death of the Puddler. |
The most reliable evidence about the spread
of puddling is that collected by Charles Hyde.
He reckons that only four works are
puddling when Cort's business collapses in 1789.
There is Cort's plant at Fontley, which is
puddling successfully using old cast iron recovered from the Navy.
At Rotherhithe, Cyfarthfa and Penydarren
they are trying to puddle coke-smelted pig.
Rotherhithe gives up shortly after the Cort collapse, while Samuel
Homfray at Penydarren isn't making much progress.
It is left to Richard Crawshay to get the
process established. He eventually
overcomes difficulties by a preliminary refining similar to the first stage of
the Wright & Jesson process.
Later research shows that this stage
removes impurities containing silicon.
Meanwhile two further establishments are
taking up the process.
The first is James
Cockshutt's family base at Wortley near Sheffield. Hyde says they install their puddling
furnace in 1790.
Doubtless they are following James's
advice. He returns to Wortley when
Crawshay breaks with him in 1792.
The other early puddlers are at Pentyrch,
north of Cardiff, where a furnace is installed at the end of 1792.
Hyde's story that Wilsontown
starts puddling in 1789 is refuted by other evidence.
Over
the period 1796-8 both John Wlkinson and William Reynolds introduce it at their works. Dowlais takes it
up in 1801.
It is disputable how much of the increase
in wrought iron production over this period is due to puddling. But it is deemed significant enough for
ironmasters to raise a subscription for Cort’s widow
in 1800.
The coming of the railway brings a big
boost to wrought iron production.
Cyfarthfa, Penydarren and Dowlais all benefit.
Meanwhile
Joseph Hall comes up with a significant improvement at
his Tipton works.
Called wet puddling or pig boiling, it adds
a new ingredient to the mixture in the furnace: iron coated with iron oxide,
which is more effective than air in removing the carbon impurity and does not
require the iron to be refined first.
By the middle of the century the Hall
process has been taken up by most works.
It is well covered in descriptions of puddling after this period (there
is a detailed one on the Sirhowy Valley
website).
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The largest ironworks had batteries
of blast-furnaces – up to 18 at Dowlais, where 6000 workpeople were employed,
in 1842 – and dozens of puddling furnaces.
From Crouzet, The First Industrialists: The problem of origins
(Cambridge 1985). |
In 1865 there were 2,116 puddling
furnaces in existence in the Black Country, with a potential output of 20,000
tons of finished iron a week.
From Gale, The Black Country Iron Industry, p104 (London 1966). |
In the second half of the eighteenth
century the forward march of puddling is thrown into reverse by new processes
for steelmaking.
These not only produce a more useful and versatile
output. They rely far less on the
skills of workmen.
Nevertheless puddling continues on a small
scale until the 1970s, and a relic of the last puddling works can be seen at
the Blists Hill site near Ironbridge.
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A puddler would normally be expected
to work six 12-hour shifts a week, during each of which he would be expected
to puddle six heats of 3¾ cwt of iron.
Puddlers were always in demand, and more than most skilled workers
they tended to migrate in search of higher wages. It was a particularly strenuous occupation and the puddler's
working life was normally reckoned to be over by the time he reached 40. From Barrie Trinder, The Industrial
Revolution in Shropshire, p167 (3rd Edition, Phillimore 2000.) |
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RELATED TOPICS Cort’s promotion
efforts 1783-6 Shropshire
and Staffordshire ironmasters Cumbrian
ironmasters: Wilkinson etc |
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