Topic: another ride

[Rocking-M]

My son's getting a few miles under his belt now.

The boy is hooked. I'm to blame. I hope he doesn't get hurt cause the missus would
blame who?

Stopped by the Boone Furnace, there are several furnaces of this type in the area. Some from since the Rev War when we sent the English Army back home. Some from the War of Northern Aggression when we were out numbered and were not as fortunate as the first war. (Some of us are still trying )

Here's a Picture, some of you old iron workers might get a kick out of how they use to make pig iron. Someone has just cleaned up a bit around the old furnace. I think I'll get as many pictures as I can at old furnace sites with the bikes in front.

The way it worked is, they'd layer up charcoal and then iron ore, several layers as I remember. (No, I'm not that old, I read it once). They'd then set it off and the iron would
run out the side doors you see at the base of the furnace. The molten iron would run out into a big trough, the sow. Off the sow were smaller branches of the trough and these were
the pigs. Hence the term, pig iron.

I swear, I think that boy is 6'8" now.

[seaweb11]

I have seen 2 of those furnaces in the bush and never knew what they were?  Thanks

[Hush]

Fine looking son you have there, I'm caught the same way, I'm putting a CB400RR back on the road for my son and even though I ride and my partner rides I'm more nervous about him on a bike!
We had some big furnaces like that here in New Zealand up Auckland way in the 1800's, they were used to make lime or something similar but there wasn't enough local basic product so the owners (good old Colonial settlers) offered the local Maoris a bounty for bones.
Expecting animal bones, they were surprised when the tribes started arriving with human skeletons by the wagon load.
Now our native Maori are fairly respective of death and go to great (7 day funerals) lengths to see their people off to the next life so the furnace owners were a bit mystified.
Turns out these were the losers of the last inter tribal wars and as they were of another tribe they didn't warrant a customary burial, and as the early Maori were cannibals (they all deny this  ) there were probably teeth marks on most of the bones.
Amazingly these skeletons arrived in their thousands according to the records of the time which is suprising as the Maori had pretty much made themselves extinct through war and famine just before the white man turned up.

[Rocking-M]

quite the history lesson there Hush. And very interesting! New Zealand looks to
be a beautiful place. The lime kilns must have been a success. 

[seaweb11]

Here's one I had seen 15 years ago, I just located on Google maps
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=48.518684,-123.1512&spn=0.000651,0.002029&t=h&z=20

oh...
The other one is here.  http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=49.746641,-124.512391&spn=0.010163,0.032465&z=16

[Rocking-M]

any lead mines nearby Derek? We've all sorts of lead mines in the area here.

[seaweb11]

Not that I know of.
Of course that's not something they would advertise

I believe the ones I linked to are lime / quarry pits. The 2nd link in my earlier post "in Canada" is still a working quarry all these years later.
They cover our local gravel roads with what turns into concrete when it gets wet!  "Texada Sludge" Too much lime!

Here's a good link for Lime furnace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_kiln  Amazing what I end up researching while here

[Rocking-M]

good lime kiln stuff!

here you go for pig iron production here in Virginia.

http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/vas_iron_furnaces_sparked_history_of_forest_abuse/issue/544