I am Rick Rowlands, founder and Executive Director of the Tod Engine Foundation in Youngstown, Ohio. I am building an industrial museum called the Tod Engine Heritage Park centered around a 260 ton rolling mill steam engine. Some of you may know that Youngstown was a large iron and steel producing area. Although most of that is now gone I hope to keep some of that heritage alive through our museum. One of the ways that we will do that is through demonstrations of iron and steelmaking processes. A few years ago I built a 10" cupola. This furnace will become the centerpiece of our iron smelting/melting demonstration. As time allows I want to experiment with small scale demonstrations of the Bessemer and open hearth processes. I've already gathered the equipment that I need to build a small steam powered blooming mill. Ultimately I would like to melt iron into pigs, convert that pig iron to steel (or wrought iron) and hammer and roll that iron or steel into bars.
Here I am with our rolling mill engine.
A 10" bar mil lstand which will become our blooming mill.
The first iteration of the 10" cupola. I'm looking to rebuild it. Keep the base and put on a new shell and lining with a different tuyere arrangement.
