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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Otago & Southland Provincial Districts]
The Otago Iron Rolling Mills Company, Limited
The Otago Iron Rolling Mills Company, Limited , Makers of Flat, Square, Round and Angle Iron, Burnside, Brands: “B.B.B.,” shoeing quality; “N.Z.,” for engineering work. Telegraphic address, “Iron Mills, Abbotsford”; telephone, 623: bankers. National Bank of New Zealand Managing Director: Hon. A. Lee Smith; works managers, Messrs Alexander H. Smellie and William O. Smellie; general manager, Mr. Herbert Stott. These mills were established in 1886, and are now the only industry of their kind in New Zealand, as the firm has recently acquired the plant of the late Iron Mills at Onehunga. The Otago Mills supply the New Zealand Government with bar iron at all the chief centres. The authorities have always been well pleased with the iron, which has stood all tests, and is far superior to the Home article imported into the colony. The English iron has not been through the number of processes required to make it fibrous, and is granular and brittle, while the Burnside rolled metal is exceedingly tough. As showing the direct bearing of this industry upon others, it may be mentioned that for the furnaces about fifty tons of Westport coal are used in a week, and for steaming purposes an equal amount of lignite, mined in the district, is consumed. The rolled metal is manufactured from scrap iron, not pig iron, and all around the works there are heaps upon heaps of the most heterogeneous collection imaginable, consisting of horse shoes, boiler plates, ship plates, old rails, engine scraps, and all kinds of broken culinary and agricultural implements, which, but for the existence of these mills, would have no commercial value whatever. The scraps are shipped to the mills from all parts of New Zealand, and even from New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, and New Caledonia. The firm cannot get sufficient old iron, and were a much larger supply available, the proprietors would be able to use it, and to extend their works so as to keep pace with their orders. Every description of square, angle, flat, rolled and standard iron is supplied to the wholesale merchants throughout the colony. In the process of manufacture the scraps are first of all cut up into handy sizes by a powerful machine called the “shears,” the cutting power of which is such that it will snip through a Victorian railway rail, which weighs seventy pounds to the yard. After the scraps are cut, they are packed up into heaps of about 140 pounds weight, and placed on small square boards. Eighteen or twenty of these heaps make a “charge” for each furnace, and are run on trollies or “bogeys” to the furnace, where they are shovelled in, in much the same manner as a baker puts bread in the oven. The boards on which the piles are placed burn away, and the iron is heated to a white-hot mass. The piles are then withdrawn from the furnace and rushed to a steam hammer, which, dealing a blow of twenty-five tons, quickly reduces the charge to the necessary size for putting through the rollers. After this it is cut up into weights suitable for making the various sizes page 591 of iron required, and the block of iron is again brought to a welding heat. It is then put through a series of grooved rollers made from the best chilled iron. The grooves vary according to the size of the iron required. If horse shoe iron be required, the heated mass is pressed into the revolving grooves, between two rollers. These grooves are graduated, descending in size, and the iron is pressed through again and again until the final groove is reached. After leaving this, the piece of iron contains the same number of cubic inches as before, only instead of being a square lump of metal it is a long thin rod of horse shoe-iron. It is interesting to watch the white hot iron being thrust through the rollers, which are driven by steam power, the engines having ponderous and immensely heavy fly-wheels. A man stands on one side, and with a special pair of tonga thrusts the bar into the revolving grooved rollers. By the time it is through it is drawn out to twice its original length, and as it emerges another workman seizes it with tongs and thrusts it back over the top of the rollers, to be again thrust back through a smaller groove. Eventually, after several journeys through the grooves, that which was originally a two-feet length of white-hot iron has been drawn out to about fifteen feet. If required in a shorter length the iron is cut by a circular saw, while it is yet at a red heat, and the process produces a veritable shower of blazing sparks. Night is the best time to witness the operations at the mills, for then the spectacle is a most fascinating one. As the doors of the furnace are opened a lurid light is shot forth, temporarily illuminating the premises and throwing a glare upon the faces and forms of the men and boys who are flitting about amidst the lights and shadows. When the furnace door is opened and the mass of iron is drawn forth the heat is intense, and the onlooker steps back, shrinking, and wonders how the workment stand it. That they do feel it is indicated by the quantity of water they drink, buckets of which are placed in a convenient position for the purpose of allaying their thirst. Altogether the scene, combined with the blackness of night, impresses the spectator with a feeling of having witnessed a picture of the imagination's ideal of an inferno.