Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham Alabama 

Birmingham was one of the few places in the Confederacy where coal and iron ore are in close proximity to each other. During the war it was called "The Arsenal of the South.because It was the only furnace or smelter where they could cast cannons. The name "Birmingham" is in reference to the English industrial city of the same name. The Sloss Furnaces are to new to have been used in the Civil War but they were indispensable during WWI, WWII and the Korean War.

If walls could talk...... what an excellent video, and trip. Envious, lol.

i would recommend taking the class. I spent the first half of my life working in a foundry along with most of the men in my family it was a true feeling of Pride helping to build what made this country what it is today. great video thank you

Mills like this is what made America great.

I appreciate you showed this kind of stuff.

What a great tour of that place. Wonderful choices of music, too! I've heard about it all my life, but never got there. I grew up northwest of Gary, Indiana and worked at Inland Steel Mill one summer. Beside for scrap steel we used pig iron in the production of special grades of steel. That is hard, back-breaking work and you sweat so much you can hardly drink enough to keep hydrated. I imagine nowadays that most of that is automated, and it is a good thing. If you have a chance, read about James Sloss. He was a very interesting man, with little formal education, but a lot of savvy.

The wood working tools were great to see. That jointer beside the saw is a monster! it looks like it could handle some mean sized beams. The disc grinder and spindle sander combo was also really cool. The tool you're looking at at 28:54 is a thickness planer, belt drive!

Thank you, this was a special treat for me. I love the industrial stuff. I find myself thinking of the brick layers who helped make all of that magic happen. My dad was a locomotive engineer, beginning with shoveling coal as fireman and ending with diesel electric engines. I love anything big and old. Earl

I will have to state if nobody else has, even if they have... this is the coolest place you have traveled yet... (my opinion). I like to see old school and how it was, because old school is way better than how it is now... Then it took talent and skill... today its OMG that"s dangerous and don"t do it.. I am old school.... I work hands on.... I don"t have a lot of modern tools but try and produce and fabricate what clients want... Kudos Adam... nice job

Growing up in a steel mill town myself and not having the chance to see the works in person before they ripped them all down, this was just so cool to see. Great job on this, Adam...thanks for posting it up.

Awesome! Glad they had enough sense to save and preserve this piece of history!

Awesome tour!!

The wood working equipment was used in these old smelters to make patens (Patterns) for sand casting. Most of the old smelters made their own parts and pieces hence the need for woodworking and machining equipment. The piece of equipment with the large disc is a disc sander and a drum sander on the other end. I believe the machine that was not identified was actually a shaper for cutting continual profiles in wood. I have been to a zinc and copper smelter in Flin Flon Manitoba which was built around 1930 and was still in operation until 2010. They had much of the same kind of machinery shown here. Much of the smelter in Flin Flon is made of wood that was harvested from the local boreal forest as the mill was built. They hauled in two sawmills and cut the lumber to size on site. Some of the original posts and beams were 24" x 24". They were still using a couple of truckloads of oakum every year and had barrel coopers on site to oakum the seams in the tanks and chutes on site made out of 3" x 12" rough sawn spruce with barrel hoops. Some of the tanks were around 40' across and contained sulphuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acid used in the smelting process. The entire line was designed in stages that run down a shallow hill side so they can use gravity to move things through the process. There were two Millwrights hand lapping a bronze pump casting they had just cast to get it to fit the pump body. The pump was so old that replacement parts had to be made from scratch. One of the strange and somehow sad things about the place was in an area where they removed the zinc from the anodes that collected it in solution. There was a manpowered railroad that bought cart of the anodes to a worker at a table. He picked the anodes off the cart and hit them with a small hand sledge which broke the zinc off, flipped it over and did it again on the other side. The anode went on another cart while the zinc went to a third. There was a structural column directly behind the table and I noted some writing on it. It said, and I am paraphrasing here as I don't remember the exact dates, "first snowfall October 21 1947. First snowfall September 30 1948. First snowfall October 12 1949." This went on until 1989 when it suddenly stopped. I asked my guide what it was all about. He said, and I quote, "Well it's self explanatory isn't it. First snowfall in 1947 was October 21st. First snowfall in 48 was September 30th." I asked him why they had stopped doing it (I was there in 1992.) He said, and his exact words were, "Well he retired......" The same man had worked at that station for 42 years doing that mindless job day after day after day. You might want to think about that before you start complaining about how bad your job is.

Hands down your best short film yet! I could almost “feel” the history watching it. Thank you for taking the time to produce this.

A lot of people today would cringe at the sight of the industry that allowed them to exist, survive and thrive today. I only hope we continue with technological development into the future and leave behind our legacy of what we created to help future generations. Thanks for the video!

One of your best videos Adam, I don’t normally comment but this was sick!!!

The Fay and Egan woodworking tools are awesome. It was a jointer, combination disc and spindle sander and Planner. I'm originally from Bama and I have driven by there so many times and never knew anything about Sloss. Thanks for sharing!

What an interesting trip to this huge abandoned facility. I wonder if Hollywood has ever rented this place for a spooky type movie? I can just see a chase scene in one of those long alleys with the victim ducking into the wet underground tunnel to hide. The sound effects are just perfect.

Best of my favorite two things!! ABOM meets urban exploration!!! Awesome!!!!!

loosing all our steel factory's was bad enough but the day we lost Bethlehem steel was the day america died for me. it was the last of the big steel plants in the country and when it shut down it put a nail in our country's ability to be self sufficient . I remember working at the steel plant in my home town and when ever we got in Bethlehem steel the old boys would beam with pride working with it because a lot of them got started at Bethlehem steel and learned the trade on the shop floor there.

Very cool, I was the security manager at AK Steel (Ashland works), formerly Armco, until it closed and is now being demolished. Very reminiscent to what I used to work around just on a smaller scale. You're like me and find that old industrial stuff fascinating.

So much history behind all that place. Many tears too when that place closed. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Best regards.

Abom, you have a real special talent for this stuff. Your extreme humbleness, experience in your field, and methodical, thoughtful way of doing your work and explaining things is genuinely second to none. Your lack of pretentiousness, with your good old boy nature is a real pleasure to watch. Keep it up and you are assured MUCH deserved success not only in youtube land but with your own career and other endeavors. Thanks for the content. You are easily my favorite youtuber.

Another comment from me: The blast furnaces had a couple of bell shaped 'valves' at the top of the furnace. To charge the furnace, initially both bells would be closed by pulling them up to the seat; the material (hauled up by the skips) would then be loaded onto the top of the top bell. The bell would be dropped sufficiently to allow the material to be dropped on to the second bell. the first bell would be closed, and the second opened and the charge would drop in to the furnace. The bells acted like an air lock (long before NASA came along!). BHP in Wollongong, Australia (still going!) used these types of furnace and the bells eventually wore out and had to be resurfaced. They used a really big jig to set the side of the bell horizontally at the top and rotate it; a really big LPG burner heated up the bell and when hot enough, they had 2 x 1200 Amp Lincoln Submerged Arc welders in parallel and used quite thick wire (1/8" to 1/4"?) to go down in to the flux to reface the bells (sound familiar, Adam?). The leftover flux fell off the bottom as the bell rotated and was recycled to be used again. Fascinating stuff!

Imagine that place at it's peak. Hundreds of men around the clock stoking the fires, running the machinery, moving material. It's great they keep it around and at least do something with it. Nice music choice on the video too.

At 28 minutes you were in the pattern makers shop where they make wooden copies of the particular abom size castings required for anything great vid thanks

I worked on relining the stoves that heated the air for the blast furnace in New Boston, Ohio. They had insulation then a fire brick lining. After we got the lining so high we took up the platform we worked from and laid what we called checkers that had holes in them that had to be kept in line so air could pass through them as it was super heated. When the air reached the top it left the checkers and was directed in to a shaft we called the well and went down to large tubes that carried the hot air to the blast furnace. The air entered the furnace though water cooled nozzles called tweers (excuse the spelling). I got to work on sealing around those nozzles. It was very interesting to work on the stove walls, checkers, and the dome on top as well as around the blast furnace. Similar to what you were visiting, old style but was around here till the late 1900's. Thanks for the visit and sights, Greg.

They should be paying you for giving them the exposure!

Thank you Adam for taking us along with you for the tour of this amazing place.

Great music you choosed for this!

One of your best videos yet. Amazing rivets, rust ,and rain , tunnels and tools, and tubes, and of course, " This is nothing but industrial art!" Thanks

Hi Adam, that was a large disc sander which is very useful in pattern making as each surface needs the proper 2 degree "pattern draft" so that the pattern will pull out of the sand mold. Pattern makers love the disc sander because they can set the table for the 2 deg. angle and easily sand all sides of the pattern quickly. Thanks for the great video!

Awesome video Adam, you never know when that stuff is going to turn for the last time, it looks like it was a busy place at one time and fed alot of families.

Adam, Thanks a Million for sharing this! That site is awesome! Sadly most young people today have no idea what it took to build our great country. Out here on the west coast it's all laptops and lattes. Really nice to see a community that can appreciate the importance of industry and the work skill we once had. Great job capturing it on video. Thanks Again! -Dean

Adam....the first machine is a jointer with no fence, the next was a disc sander with tilting table. Next to it was a spindle sander, the last machine with the cover is a "square head" thickness planer. I'm betting on all this was for fabricating the wooden patterns for the sand casting molds. Many wooden patterns were made from mahogany. Thank you for sharing everything you do with your spare time. Tom

Awesome part of industrial history and showing an age before all the modern tech we are accustomed to. If only the walls could talk.Thanks for taking us for the ride Adam ;-)

This place would make a badass video game level.

Could you imagine the "noise" when this was fully operational !!!! ???

man that brings back memories. i spent 20 yrs in the pitts steel mills back in the 60's and 70's. watching them tap those furnaces was quite an experience. we used to pour iron into subs ,special built rail cars that looked like submarines and could gross out at around 800,000 lbs when full of molten iron. you havn't lived until you had to rerail one of those beasts. nice video adam.

Really good work on this video man. I really liked music selection, the rain and your commentary.

what an unbelievable journey thank you for taking me alone

Yes! What a great video. Awesome place. I can imagine that place going full steam with hundreds of people working. A wonderful monument of bygone days. Thanks for bring us along. And the rain, perfect.

great video! awesome choice of music at the end, really fitting to the mood of the place, thank you so much, your the man!

Great video Adam takes me back to when I worked at the Bilston Steel Works about 10 miles from Birmingham in the UK as a electrician I carried out repairs in any part of the works Blast Furnace ,Melting Shop, Rolling Mill etc. I worked on the Bilston blast furnace Elisabeth and did 2 furnace reline these happened about every 4 years were the top of the furnace was removed the brick work inside the furnace stripped out then reclined with new refractories 'bricks' the process took around 30 days not only was the furnace relined but all the associated plant was maintained as when the blast furnace was producing iron it did so 24/7 x 365 for 4 years !

Now I want to visit. I love places like this I have been into the old steam railroads and the machining sheds that built them. Thank you so much

Hi Adam Congratulations! You nailed this video big time!! The dramatic music, the historical content of site, letting viewers absorb the atmosphere---loved it. thank you for taking us with :-) warm regards vic

great photography set to very unique music.... Top Notch....! Thanks for taking us along....! Bill Berry

Its really cool that they let you roam around the plant without any real restrictions or guides.

My family moved to Birmingham in 1968. I BARELY remember those blast furnaces in operation when I was a little kid. My father was a professor at UAB downtown and I remember accompanying him to his genetics research lab many summer days. We often drove past SLOSS at my request to see the "smokestacks". They sure put out the smoke. I took a welding class there a few years ago (we made art projects). And, yes they do use it for concerts and events.

I agree great day to go there with the rain and the gloom of the day. So cool to imagine all those furnaces firing and all the heat and noise. So cool Adam. Thanks

Two comments: 1) You've got a gift for documentaries. Just you, your GoPro, and some well-selected music, and you created a segment as captivating as any I might see on Discovery Channel. 2) That looked like a great place to get attacked by zombies.

Love the old iron and the technology from our industrial past. Thanks Adam for sharing this piece of our national history ....

I love seeing all the vintage stuff within these buildings. My ventures while in a tow truck has taken me all over the nation, I have seen all sorts of stuff like this, my mind goes nuts to think that millions of men lived & died building this great nation in places just like this... Thank you for showing this, I will have to add this to the list for places to possibly make contacts in efforts to walk through in the future if a run comes my way for the Birmingham area... Powerful stuff...!!!

You deserve a Oscar for that video abom!!!! Thanks for sharing what you see !!!! Respect 👏👏👏👏👏

Wow. Thanks for the great tour. 👍👍👍

Great content, Great videography! The folks who worked for many generations in the industrial heartland of the south are still here, body and soul and still showing the world what talented people can do. Thanks for showing us part of the continuing story.

Watched every second of it. Wow .Great job. I may go visit it when Im down in Florida. Worth the drive over to Burmingham

Gives you a yearning for the past to come back - great video

Adam, I thank you. This video was just so awesome. The rain did contribute to the video. The music you chose enhanced it even more. You are and artist, it is plain to see. I see your passion in all you do. I admire you.

Very appropriate music - melancholy for a time past. I grew up in the great lakes area and there was seemingly a steel mill in every town. Now the blast furnaces have been replaced by parks. I understand that's been the same for Birmingham - a town once a synonym for steel. I'm glad they kept Sloss for a museum. Keep up the good work!

Adam, thank you so much for teaching, and educating "the youtube community". you are doing everyone a great service.

They used to have some great concerts there back in the 90's! Been to a many of them...really cool place!

Adam, as cool as that is (and it is VERY cool), if you're ever near the upper penninsula in Michigan, you HAVE (absolutely HAVE) to stop into Fayette State Park. It was a town that was built near the docks of Escanaba to produce pig iron. They had been shipping ore to lower Michigan to be smelted, but were losing 40% in volume during the smelting process. Was quite costly to ship that 40% that was worthless. So, with the abundance of hardwood and lime stone needed to smelt the ore into pig iron right there in the U.P., it was a natural choice to just build a smelting operation near the ore mines and only ship the pig iron south. It operated for 24 years, but in 1891 when the charcoal iron marked fell out, everyone just left. It is awesomely amazing to not only be able to walk around the smelter, ovens to turn wood to charcoal, etc., but they left a ghost town. You're able to walk through the houses and buildings and are able to find the equipment, machines, school, theatre, etc. Almost feels like they just turned the town off like a light switch. There are still boring bits stuck in the limestone where they broke off in the quarry. All throughout the town are plaques describing what you're looking at and explaining. To top that, it is set in what has to be the most beautiful harbor in all of michigan (IMO) with tall, tree-topped limestone cliffs poking out into the lake! In the fall, first couple weeks of October, it is absolutely stunning with fall colors! www.exploringthenorth.com/fayette/town.html (i'm not affiliated with that site or fayette or the state of michigan in any way, other than living here and loving it :)

Thanks Adam. My late wife and I lived just north of there in the early 70's and it was off limits. We so wanted to tour it just as you did. Thanks again, now I got my tour. Just as awe inspiring as I imagined back then.

Really enjoyed this exploration of yours, you just do it right. The more I see this old stuff the more I think everything that was poured into a casting those years ended up being art, pleasure to the eyes, from a wheel past a lathe to an old tractor, all of it.

upstairs in the power house you saw what was a drum sander and disk sander combination. You also saw patterns and core boxes used to make castings. I saw patterns for wheels, large pulleys and pipe bodies.

I work for the company that used to make all the no bake, and phenolic resins for big casting companies. We hardly make any of those resins anymore, what was once sold by the ton is now sold by the bucket. Our plant looks a lot like Sloss, old and tired, and we still have many of the testing equipment buried around that used to test the resins for QC. We are located in not far from Cincinnati, and its likely we supplied materials used to make many of these Cincinnati castings. It was cool to see all this old equipment, the connection it shared to the company I work for. Thanks for sharing!

The machine in the power house that you first referred to as a planer is called a jointer. The second "planer" is a thickness planer. The machine with the large disc and a drum sticking up through the table appears to be a combination disc/drum sander. the drum likely oscillates as it turns to wear the sandpaper more evenly. My guess they either used the power house as a pattern shop or they moved the contents of the pattern shop in their for safe keeping. I would love to have a wood shop outfitted with such wonderful machines. Loved it! All the best! Mike

Simply amazing. Thanks Adam!!!

I am glad I watched this. Industrial Art... perfectly describes the place

Holy shit this is the place I keep dreaming about, it's actually a place. Holy crap!!!!!!!

I was fortunate to take part in a tour of the USS Fairless works in the late 1970s as part of a boyscouts safety merit badge project. A member of our scout troop was a executive with USS and got us access. It was mind blowing to see the blast furnaces in operation. The coke ovens were another stand-out experience. Feeling the heat radiating from ingots on rail cars several hundred yard away was awe inspiring. The rolling mills were equally impressive. When I recently looked on google earth, it is pretty much all gone now. The site has been dismantled. Sad.

That was so awesome. Adam. Thank you. Coming down in May. Might stop there. Seeing my sister in Milton. Maybe we could meet up. Brad

Thank you very much.... Outstanding Video!

Boy, that is a neat place. Thanks for the tour.

Absolutely amazing place! I love old abandon factories, it blows my mind. Thanks for sharing Adam!

Thanks Adam! Grew up in South Chicago not too far from Wisconsin Steel Works so your tour was a trip down memory lane.

A BLAST from the PAST, you have to love it, the one looked like a spindle & disc sander. thanks for a great video.

Unreal! Fantastic video. The as tools were the pattern shop. The patterns were placed in the molds, and sand rammed around...then removed for the good to be filled with iron. The hooded machine was a thickness planer... rough lumber first went over the counter (flat bed machine) to flatten one side, then they the planer to come out with two parallel sides, of a desired thickness. The machine with the large disk was a disk sander, and an oscillating spindle sander beside it. The lathe was a ww pattern makers lathe. I think Keith still has a Faye & Scott

I've been around a bit, live in California now but I'm from Western Pennsylvania. I'm 66 now, but in the 1970's I actually worked in a steel mill for about 6 years. Most of that was working as a Quality Control Inspector. But I've worked a little bit in all the units, including on the 100 ton electric arc furnaces making 100 tons of steel every 6 hours. YES, they did allow women back then, but believe me, you worked just as hard as any man. So lots of familiar sights. And Adam, the woodworking tools you saw came from their pattern shop, part of maintenance. Places like these repaired and rebuilt everything in house.

I love this kind of stuff, Thanks for the video.

My wife and I love this place. We took one of the classes together there and it was an awesome experience. Super cool place, I definitely recommend it.

Awesome video, Adam! Yes, the rain and cloudy skies made for a very dramatic video. You're really getting this video stuff down! Great work! Thanks so much for sharing! Have a good one! Dave

Definitely a good representation of American Historic industrial might!

Very cool thanks for taking a tour and sharing it!

Great video! Its incredible to think of all the engineering that went into building all that machinery - no computers, CAD, CAM, CNC's - nothing! Paper, pencils, slide rules, and smart people!

G'day Adam, Many thanks for the great trip down memory lane. It takes me back to my time at the blast furnaces in Newcastle, New South Wales. Australia. It was originally built in 1913 and had similar technology to that shown here. Alas the place has been demolished after closing in 1999. I understand your delight in seeing all this. I used to enjoy seeing the derelict parts of the steelworks such as the old coke ovens. Great fun to explore and try and understand all the equipment. Keep up the great work!

AWESOME ...HISTORY IS SO COOL...THANKS FOR THE TOUR

What an amazing place! It's humbling to see what went into creating the infrastructure that made the pieces that made the world we enjoy today. How far we've come and what we've, lazily, left behind.

Wow.. That was very special for me,.My father and grandfather worked in the steel industry here in Birmingham during the 30s and 50s. and 70s.. I grew up only 3 miles away from Sloss , been there several times for concerts but never there for its history.. I have seen things there that I never knew was on the site,, I must go back and spend a few hours there and enjoy that moment in history..I work here as and Welder / Artist ,,,Thank you for sharing ..

That was frickin awesome Adam!!!! Thanks for sharing!!!!!!!!

the music... wow. really underscores the fact that these kinds of large-scale heavy industries are gone. great coverage! thanks!

As a lover of anything mechanical and old, all I can say is WOW !!!! Thanks so much for taking the time to film your tour and sharing it with us. My uncle worked in a pattern shop in the old GE foundry in my hometown of Elmira NY. I can remember riding with my dad as a kid in the '60's to go pick him up after work. Seeing all the towering iron brought back some cool memories. Thanks Adam!

Magic video Adam it would be supper cool to see that place working back in the day.. Thanks again..

That was an incredible trip! Thanks for taking us along

Absolutely fascinating! As a kid in the 1940s my family would drive past the steel mill in Pueblo, CO (Colorado Fuel and Iron). Around 1969 I was privileged to tour the Sparrows Point mill (Baltimore, MD) while it was operating. That was a lot of heat and noise. Unfortunately, it has been destroyed. Like the Roman Empire, we are destroying our country from the inside, making way for foreign influences to take over (Russia, China, etc.).

Adam i am from the Bessemer /Birmingham areas thank you so much for making this video it brings back so many fond and cherished memories

Love the time travel experience. This is a place to be preserved for future generations. Good to see they are still utilizing it for educational purposes.

Thanks for the trip! Made my living working in places that sometimes looked very much like that... only a bit newer. Great stuff !!

Really cool video, I love these giant behemoths of a bygone age, very atmospheric, and they helped build the world we live in now. Glad this is being preserved so people can see how things used to be done, I can only take my hat off to the folks who worked there(extremely hard !).