Sawing a Red-hot Steel Beam, Steel Works, Pittsburgh, P.A.

From the blooming mill, the sections of steel, still red-hot, are rushed into the sawing room. Here they are cut into the proper lengths. You must remember in this connection, that the blooming mill changes the ingots only in width and thickness. The length depends upon the amount of steel in the ingot and the thickness and width to which it is drawn in the mills. The thinner and narrower the strips, the longer the piece of steel will be. Here you see a bar of red-hot steel being cut crosswise by a circular saw. This saw is made of ordinary steel, but it travels at a high rate is speed. This is necessary to keep any part of the saw from becoming too hot. The teeth of the saw travel at the rate of 150 miles an hour. It takes only 3 or 4 seconds to saw a bar in two. In sawing rails to be used for trackage, three saws, placed at proper distances apart, are used at the same time to cut the bar into two rails. The two end saws cut off the ends of the rails, while the one in the middle cuts it in two. You will observe in the view the thousands of sparks the fly off the bars as the saw cuts them. Notice how distinctly these sparks are photographed. They look, and are, to all effects, tiny meteors. When steel has to be cut to exact lengths it must be allowed to cool before it is sawed. This is because the iron shrinks considerably as it cools. The cold saw must be made of very fine steel. It travels slowly so that the high friction will not heat it to too great a temperature. Even then, it must run through a through cooled with soapsuds to keep the teeth from losing their temper. Explain the two ways of sawing steel. Keystone ID: 6421 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.