Larry Jaques writes:

On Sun, 3 Feb 2019 13:54:17 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

New England has preserved some of that history. We took a school trip
to this place not long after it was restored and they demonstrated the
waterwheels and trip hammer and explained the tedious process of
squeezing the slag out of a bloom of iron, one of which they had on
display.
https://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/photos/photos_saugus.htm

The Saugus Ironworks is really cool. After the American Iron & Steel
Institute paid for the archaeology and restoration, they ran the
blast furnace and finery/chafery at least once. They made a docu
movie which has footage of the furnace running and operating the huge
helve hammer. (Sadly, only about 30 sec. of each.) Then they turned it
over to the US National Park Service which allowed everything to
deteriorate. When I visited, late 80s IIRC, the hammer could be run
but much of the works was inoperable. The water wheels run on water
pumped from the river below because the former mill pond is now a
heavily built up residential area. Big ol' pump concealed in the
restored "coal shed".

As intriguing as the actual site is, the it is equally so that they
could organize it at all when the England, the source of the money,
technology and skills was engaged in a furious and bloody civil war
over religion, politics, regicide and other unpleasantnesses.

In any event, they managed to bring the latest iron-making technology
to the wilderness, a technical success if not a capitalist one.

When I was little my father bought lumber to repair our 1830 house at
a water-powered sawmill.

Really cool.

Our 1860-1880 house has vertical 3" thick hemlock plank walls, cut on
an up-and-down saw. Allegedly there was such a saw in operation in a
nearby village until the 1930s. There is still an oar & handle mill
at the mill pond there. The present owner has hopes of restoring the
head race, repairing the gates and running it on water. The turbine
is still functional as it was in operation as recently as the late
70s. Turbines were far more common here than water wheels because
most mill ponds were in relatively flat country rather than having
numerous deep defiles with streams at the bottom -- low dams, low head
but plenty of head for a vertical shaft cast iron turbine.


--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada