I worked in nearly every part of that blast furnace as a summer job when I was going to school at Pitt in the early '70s. The guide stood just where I worked, from the Larry Car, the Skip pit, the Highline, the slag trough, and as 2nd or 3rd Helper diverting the river of molten iron. You even paused at the Twears, where concrete water jackets would cool the nozzles for superheated gas. Sometimes a waterpipe would clog, and the concrete jacket would glow red. If nobody caught it, yelled like hell while they cooled it with a hose, and shut down the blast, molten iron could start spewing out of that hole and flood the casthouse. Dante's inferno on acid of a job.
Wow, Jeff. Just walking through the tour you can hear the descriptions of working there and processes and get some appreciation for the work, but I know it can never come close to what you experienced there. Thanks for you comment!
The whole thing really brought back memories. That now water-filled pit where the massive skip cars slammed down to be filled by the Larry Car was where I worked an absurdly dangerous job. With a pick & shovel we loosened the packed iron ore, coke & limestone that missed the car and got packed underneath. A spotter would yell when we were about to get squished and we'd flatten against the wall while this bucket weighing tons would slam in front of us. Then we were pelted from above with what missed the car from the fresh load of the Larry Car. It was appropriate your guide started talking about life insurance there. Even digging out the slag run was an adventure. Since it was like light gray lava-looking concrete like stuff when it cooled, we had to break it up with steel pikes while standing on it. Your foot could go through a just-crusted spot into molten iron at the bottom (that dripped when you threw it with a shovel), so we had to stand on a board to distribute our weight. The only problem was the damn board would catch fire, so your safety device was also your kindling. Long. Strange. Trip.
I grew up in Youngstown Ohio in the 1970's, my family and many of those in our small farm/mill town worked in mills or quarries that fed them. The dangers of the work was not lost on us youngsters. One of our school mates lost his father to ladle of molten steel ...vaporized him as I recall... something about a catwalk gave way. Tragedy for such a great family. R
"This is the only standing pre-WWII blast furnace left in the country." Tell that to the people who maintain the Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama.
I'm not sure if he's correct about that being that last standing WW2 blast furnace....i work at the rouge in Dearborn MI and we have a old furnace their from the 20s that's still standing
Good video. Thank you. A lot of nit picking comments about is the only surviving WW2 mill, did the owners die poor and sick, did the unions price the cost of producing steel out of business? How about instead of nit picking, learn and enjoy history, don’t change it, erase it, learn from it. Thank you.
.12 cents an hour. And they were happy to have the job. Today’s generation have no clue how hard things were for their grandparents and great grandparents.
So we bemoan the loss of jobs in many industries in this country. Here is an authority on this tour that places the blame where it belongs. Management and unions collaborating and milking an outdated business model where there was insufficient new investment.
I started working at Carri furnace in 1949 I worked there for 23 years my father worked there my grandfather worked in fact my grandfather was called iron Mike and he was the general foreman. I I am now 90 years old and the last of the Ryan family my grandfather worked there for 50 years. The video was great it brought back a lot of memories that I have I appreciate it. Jim M
