Ironworks

An ironworks or iron works is a building or site where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and/or steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.

Ironworks succeed bloomeries when blast furnaces replaced former methods. An integrated ironworks in the 19th century usually included one or more blast furnaces and a number of puddling furnaces and/or a foundry with or without other kinds of ironworks. After the invention of the Bessemer process, converters became widespread, and the appellation steelworks replaced ironworks.

The processes carried at ironworks are usually described as ferrous metallurgy, but the term siderurgy is also occasionally used. This is derived from the Greek words sideros - iron and ergon or ergos - work. This is an unusual term in English, and it is best regarded as an anglicisation of a term used in French, Spanish, and other Romance languages.

Varieties of ironworks

Primary ironmaking

Ironworks is used as an omnibus term covering works undertaking one or more iron-producing processes. Such processes or species of ironworks where they were undertaken include the following:

Tredegar Iron Works

The Tredegar Iron Works was a historic iron works in Richmond, the capital of the U.S. state of Virginia. Opened in 1837, by 1860 it was the third-largest iron manufacturer in the United States. During the American Civil War, the works served as the primary iron and artillery production facility of the Confederate States of America. The iron works avoided destruction during the Evacuation Fire of 1865, and continued production through the middle of the 20th century.

Today a National Historic Landmark District, the 22-acre site and remaining structures serve as the main visitor center for the Richmond National Battlefield Park of the National Park Service, as well as the location of a private museum, the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar.

History

Founding (1836–1841)

In 1836, a group of Richmond businessmen and industrialists led by Francis B. Deane, Jr. set about to capitalize on the growing railroad boom in the United States. The group hired Rhys Davies, then a young engineer, to construct a new facility, brought a number of his fellow iron workers from Tredegar, Wales, to construct the furnaces and rolling mills. The foundry was named in honor of the town of Tredegar, where iron works of the same name were constructed in the early 19th century. The new works opened in 1837, yet the Panic of 1837 and accompanying downturn resulted in hardship for the new company. Davies died in Richmond in September 1838 from stab wounds sustained in a fight with a workman and was buried on Belle Isle in the James River.

Iron Works

Iron Works may refer to:

Tredegar

Coordinates: 51°46′39″N 3°14′26″W / 51.77761°N 3.24069°W / 51.77761; -3.24069

Tredegar (pronounced /trɪˈdiːɡə/) is a town situated on the Sirhowy River in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent, in southeast Wales. Located within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire, it became an early centre of the Industrial Revolution in South Wales. The historic Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, United States was named in honour of the town.

History

Origin of the name

The name Tredegar can be explained as tref deg erw. Deg erw is Welsh for "ten acres" or "ten-acre"; tref means "town", although its original meaning was "farm" or "estate".

Pre-industrialisation

Tredegar grew as a developed town thanks to the natural resources it had within the Sirhowy Valley, namely:

Hence by the start of the 1700s, the upper Sirhowy Valley was a natural well wooded valley, consisting of a few farms and the occasional small iron works where iron ore and coal naturally had occurred together.

Volley gun

A volley gun is a gun with several barrels for firing a number of shots, either simultaneously or in sequence. They differ from modern machine guns in that they lack automatic loading and automatic fire and are limited by the number of barrels bundled together.

In practice the large ones were not particularly more useful than a cannon firing canister shot or grapeshot. Since they were still mounted on a carriage, they could be as hard to aim and move around as a cannon, and the many barrels took as long or longer to reload. They also tended to be relatively expensive since they were more complex than a cannon, due to all the barrels and ignition fuses, and each barrel had to be individually maintained and cleaned.

15th-century volley guns

The Ribauldequin was a medieval version of the volley gun. It had its barrels set up in parallel. This early version was first employed during the Hundred Years' War by the army of Edward III of England, in 1339. Later on, the late Swiss army employed it.