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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 8 (February 1, 1931)

Cement a Quality Product

page 64

Cement a Quality Product

To appreciate the elaborate manufacturing processes that cement must go through, and the care required in all these processes, it is necessary to know something of the tests the finished cement must pass—and why it must pass them

You may never have thought of it, but the cement you purchase for a footpath or a farm feeding floor, might have gone into the foundations of Auckland's new station; into the beams of a warehouse, or the trusses of a great bridge.

For these great works, for office buildings, hotels, bridges, dams—on which the lives of thousands may depend—it is obviously necessary to have a product of known reliability. You must have cement that you can count on. And that is what you get.

Testing begins before the materials are out of the ground, taking samples as the drills go down for the blasting, and the last tests are not completed until the finished cement is in the ship or truck, ready to go out to the consumer.

The tests are for chemical content, fineness, strength, setting time, freedom from impurities—all points that are of concern to the user. Some are made every few minutes; some every hour; and the samples from which they are made are taken continuously.

The exact form of the more essential tests is prescribed by the British Engineering Standard Association, England. Whatever is necessary to ensure that the cement you get is dependable, is done.

The well-known brands of locally made Cement—“Wilsonite” Rapid Hardening Cement and “Star” Brand Portland Cement—which were used exclusively in the piles, foundations, platforms, roads, and in Auckland's magnificent new Railway Station, not only comply with the exacting British Standard Specifications for Portland Cement, but considerably exceed it.