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Bread&steel

Bread&steel

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Okay, we all know what a bessemer converter is. We can manage to scratch build one but the bessemer in full blow has always been an unsolvable problem.
Well I have been investigating the patent office records and just sneaking around and I think I just might have the solution to the bessemer problem. As soon as I can I will start some experimentation.

Does anyone else have any ideas on the problem?
 
Bessemers were long gone in the era I model (early 1990's), but I had toyed with the idea making a vessel out of clay (for heat resistance) and filling it with magneseum or some other bright-burning substance. I'd have had to stage it outdoors, for obvious reasons. When I casually mentioned this idea to my wife, she said it's obvious I have way too much time on my hands!

I do, however, model a distant 'grandchild' of the bessemer - a basic oxygen furnace. A 40-watt light bulb and some fiberglas insulation batting was all I needed to achieve the following effect (scroll down to view each of the pix in order):

01_BOF_clay_vessel_in_place.jpg


02_fiberglas_insulation_batting.jpg


03_BOF_w_fiberglas.jpg


04_BOF_lit_up.jpg


15_hot_metal_charge.jpg
 
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Boy, I don't know anything about Bessemer converters except the ones I used to see blow at a distance from the mills in Cleveland. It use seems like you could upscale what Ken has and come off with a pretty good representation of one, especially after dark.
 
Awesome! It reminds me of the scene in the novel Atlas Shrugges when Ms. Taggart rides one of her trains next to the Rearden steel mills.

Once concern is: will the fiberglass be ok next to the lightbulb? (flammability?!)
 
Ken L That reminds me of when my Father worked at Vanadium . We wolud pick him up from work and see those babys glowing from the parking lot !!!!
 
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