Day: September 7, 2014

Beckley is a State Park

FOBF_silver Administrative, Q & A, Resources , , , , 1 Comment

While Beckley is mainly the state’s Industrial Monument…

it’s also a park, and there are definitely park-like aspects to the place.

There are, for example, four picnic tables — and not so close to each other that one feels one is in a cafeteria.  Here’s one at the top of the dam:

Picnic table at Beckley Furnace
Here’s one of the four picnic tables at Beckley Furnace — this one overlooking the dam

 

There are two picnic tables in front of the furnace itself, in the area that once was the casting shed, and another on the lawn overlooking the new turbine house.

 

Dam and pool at Beckley
The dam — and the pool — are scenic attractions at the site

This section of the Blackberry River is also popular with anglers.  Frequently there are furnace site tours going on at the same time that people are actively fishing in the Blackberry just a few feet away.

Just on the other side of this wall, in fact:

Wall at Beckley Furnace
This attractive stone wall has separated the furnace complex from the Blackberry River for many years

Occasionally families take a dip in the pool below the dam — but the water is pretty cold, and there’s no lifeguard on duty.

However, it’s not always necessary to be doing something active.  Beckley today offers something that it most assuredly it did NOT offer back in the day when it was an active iron blast furnace, with all the noise, bustle, and confusion that accompanied it.  With the waterfall as background noise, the Beckley Furnace site is also a place to be contemplative — to be alone with your thoughts…

With the roar of the waterfall in the background, it's a place to be alone with your thoughts...
With the roar of the waterfall in the background, it’s a place to be alone with your thoughts…

What you will NOT find at Beckley Furnace:

Yes, Beckley is a State Park.  However, please be aware that:

  • there are no public rest rooms at the facility
  • mentioned above but worth saying again: there are no lifeguards on duty
  • while there is a good cellphone signal at the site, there are no public phones
  • during most hours there are no rangers or other park personnel on duty
  • BUT there are no admission fees or other charges for visiting the facility!

 

 

 

 

How did the turbine connect to the dam?

FOBF_silver How it worked, Iron History, Q & A , , , 0 Comment

Water needs to reach the turbine…

in order for it to operate.  In modern hydroelectric facilities today, one sees penstocks — huge iron or steel tubes that carry the water from the dam to the turbine.  There is still a penstock at Beckley Furnace, although it’s no longer operating:

Penstock at Beckley Furnace
The penstock takes water from the dam to the turbine

 

In the photo, you can see holes in the dam where this penstock connected — or did it?  Research — and old photographs — reveal that the penstock did NOT connect directly to the dam!

Instead, it connected to a wooden water chest that was mounted on the face of the dam.  (the water chest is long gone, and was long gone before the dam was reconstructed a few years ago).  While we don’t know exactly why the water chest was used, we suspect that it had to do with further controlling the flow of the water.  While there was a valve on the dam to control the flow through the pipe that ultimately fed the penstock, we think that possibly both holes in the dam could have fed the water chest, thus providing the ability to fill it more rapidly.

But the fact is that we don’t know!

 

 

Salamander? Furnace bear?

FOBF_silver How it worked, Iron History, Q & A , 0 Comment

I thought this was a blast furnace, not a zoo!

Different kinds of problems at a blast furnace leave different kinds of evidence.  Two of them — related, but not the same thing by far — are called by the imaginative names of furnace bear and salamander.

What was a furnace bear?

In the smelting process, occasionally a glob of molten iron would adhere to the inside of the stack.  There were ways to deal with the problem when one was detected (they involved men at the top, trying to pry the glob loose from the inside of the stack using 40 foot long iron poles — hazardous and difficult work).  However, they didn’t always work, and sometimes the glob hardened and was removed when the furnace was next shut down.

Furnace bear at Beckley Furnace
A furnace bear at Beckley Furnace

Here’s a furnace bear that was at some time removed from the stack at Beckley.  Does this look like a bear climbing a tree to you?  It did to the people who worked at the furnace over a century ago!

And how’s that different from a salamander?

Well, if you think of a salamander as the whole hearth of the furnace turning into a congealed disk of iron, unmelted ingredients, and a few bricks from the hearth itself, you would be pretty much correct.

They tended to happen on two different kinds of situations.  First, when a furnace was shut down for major maintenance.  There was always likely to be some molten iron left in the bottom of the furnace that solidified and created a salamander.  The second case was more serious.  It occurred when there was a failure somewhere in the smelting process and a whole mass of iron, unmelted/unburned ingredients, and pieces of the furnace floor and wall, congealed into a solid mass.

A salamander at Beckley Furnace
A salamander at Beckley Furnace

Here’s a particularly ugly one.  We’re told that the furnace had to be partially disassembled to remove a salamander, and that it would take several teams of oxen to pull it out.

No, it doesn’t look like any salamander we’ve ever seen, but evidently it did to the furnace workers of a century and more ago!