It is difficult to make a comparison without
considering particular cases, but for intermittent heating petroleum
would probably be more economical, though for a steady fire coal holds
its own.
* * * * *
THE MANUFACTURE OF STEEL CASTINGS.
At the opening meeting for the winter session of the Iron and Steel
Works Managers' Institute, held at Dudley on September 12, Mr. R.
Smith-Casson in the chair, Mr. B.F. McCallem, of Glasgow, read a paper
on "Steel Castings," which developed an interesting discussion upon
steel casting practice. Mr. McCallem said that it was thirty years since
the first crucible steel castings were made in Sheffield in the general
way, and with one exception the method of manufacture was pretty much
the same now as at that early date. The improvement was the employment
of gas furnaces instead of the old coke holes for melting. Important
economies had resulted from this introduction. Where before it required
3 tons of coke to melt 1 ton of steel, the same thing was now done with
35 cwt. of very poor slack. Though it was apparently easy to make
crucible steel castings, it was not in reality easy to make a true
steel, that was to say, to make a metal that contained only the correct
proportions of carbon and silicon and manganese.
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