MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Stanley]

Perfectly correct.... too easy wasn't it. Try this one....

[Gloria]

A multi diameter tube cutter?

[Marilyn]

Shrek's toenail clippers?

[Stanley]

Gloria got in before Tiz did! Yes, correct. For glass tubing......
Next one?

[Tizer]

The only glass tube cutting that I did was as a schoolboy and we had nothing as sophisticated as that.

[Stanley]

And there was me thinking that last time to cutter got an airing it was you that cracked it Tiz.....
Try this one.....

[Gloria]

The boarded up rear entrance to Sabden Treacle Mine?

[Stanley]

Witty Gloria and in many ways closer than you might think. Forget the actual mine but let your mind wander around the industry.

[Gloria]

Coal mine, where the trucks ran in on rails?

[Stanley]

Think about iron but forget the mine........

[Tizer]

Is it the base of an old stone built smelter or kiln?

[Stanley]

Dead right Tiz! It's the discharge arch on the charcoal smelter at Nibthwaite in the Lake District. The capstones on the walls around it were 'bears'. Anyone know what they are?

[Stanley]

Bears were the heavier dross that built up over time in the bottom of the smelter chamber. When they got too big the wall was broken through and they were extracted. They always have a flat top and a conical bottom and are very heavy making them ideal top stones on a dry stone wall.

[Stanley]

I wonder what was in the bears to make them heavier than molten iron?

Try this one....

[Tizer]

I wonder what was in the bears to make them heavier than molten iron?

The old bloomery smelters operated at a lower temperature than a blast furnace, too low for the iron to be molten. As the iron ore was reduced by the gases from the burning charcoal the resulting iron formed a porous spongy mass, or `bloom', and the slag was molten. The process was inefficient and more iron remained in the slag than was separated as bloom; which is why the slag was sometimes added later to another smelting. Likewise, the bloom contained residual slag. The bloom was removed from the furnace using tongs, often by reaching in through the top opening, and was then hammered by the smith to remove residual slag and gas, compacting it to make wrought iron. I guess that the slag `bear' collected in the base because (1) it still contained a lot of iron, (2) the bloom iron was light because it contained gas and slag, and (3) the spongy bloom may have attached itself to the sides of the smelter. I'm no expert on smelting but this is my guess at the reasons for the bear remaining below the iron bloom (in a blast furnace the iron is molten and lies above the molten slag, of course).

I remember reading that at the site of the Dark Hill furnaces in the Forest of Dean there are lumps of material lying round about in the bushes which have been identified as slag bears from their shape being that of the base of the furnace.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that explanation Tiz......
No takers for the glass object?

[chinatyke]

Spirit burner?

[Stanley]

Sorry no China and you usually have such a good memory for these things! On medium size shafts the cast iron bearing housings had a hole in the top for lubrication. You could just oil them once a week but a better solution was to fit one of these. It's an oil bottle and and when filled and inverted in the hole the steel stem touched the shaft and jiggled slightly as the shaft turned which encouraged drips of oil to fall down even though there was no way in for air in the sealed bottle. Another advantage was that you could see at a glance how much oil was left in the bottle.
Next one?

[Tizer]

I remember reading that at the site of the Dark Hill furnaces in the Forest of Dean there are lumps of material lying round about in the bushes which have been identified as slag bears from their shape being that of the base of the furnace.

A quick note on the `bears' again. I found my Dark Hill book and now realise the above comment was wrong. There are `bears in the woods' so to speak at the Dark Hill site but they were identified as such by texture, not be shape. They were randomly shaped because they'd been skimmed off from above molten iron in Robert Mushet's experimental blast furnace rather than taken from the base of a bloomery. I'd forgotten that Dark Hill was an early blast furnace. But the rest of my post on bloomery still stands.

As an aside, Mushet was very secretive and tried his best to hide his operations, information, materials and waste. He even had the bears rolled well away into bushes so they couldn't be easily found. Another consequence of him being so cautious is that instead of getting a man to help him with his blast furnace experiments his wife Mary acted as his assistant. She skimmed the slag off the molten iron, for example, and like Robert she would have been sweating profusely in the heat and absolutely exhausted at the end of the day.

And another aside. Keith Webb who wrote the Mushet Dark Hill book lived in a house alongside the furnace site. In about 1846 the family who then lived in his present house died when a 3-ton haystack boiler at the site exploded and was thrown into the air and everything around it scattered. It was a dangerous life in those days!
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Now what's this Mystery Object?

[Stanley]

Interesting stuff on Mushet Tiz...... right up my street!
The object looks like gunsmith's work, early 19th C or even earlier. The shape of the casing on the right suggests a coiled clock spring and the dark coloured shaped pieces on the other end like blades. But that's as far as I get. Maintenance gadget for a firearm?

[Tizer]

It's not related to firearms but you're spot on with the coiled spring and there's a blade at the opposite end as you suggest. Well done so far!

[Marilyn]

Lamp (wick) trimmer or cigar trimmer?

[Tizer]

Good attempts but neither of those, Maz. It's something you would probably be familiar with and might have used in your work if you'd lived a couple of centuries ago.

[chinatyke]

It looks like it was a device held in the palm of one hand and cut or sheared something tough, so I'm going to go for shears for leather. For a cobbler?

[Stanley]

For bleeding a patient?