£25,000,000 Project.—New Steel Tube Works.—lndustrial Romance.

Otago Witness, Issue 2513, 14 May 1902, Page 78

£25,000,000 Project.— New Steel Tube Works.— lndustrial Romance.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, — A friend has sent me an English newspaper containing a marvellous invention which reduces the labour in the manufacture of steel tubes b} r about 75 per cent., as you will see by the description at foot. In the old system, a steel strip was made in the rolling mill from the " bloom " while it was 6till at a red heat. It then passed through three or four pairs of rolls. It was then sent to the tube mill, where it was heated in a furnace called . a skelp furnace and drawn through skelp rolls, which brought the edges together in a V shape, or, rather, in the shape of a kite. The skelps were then taken to the tube mill and heated to a proper heat, and finally drawn through three or four rolls to the finished circular shape. This is now all done away with, and tubes are made complete from the puddled ball with only two heats. — I am, etc., J. Wycliffe Batlie. Dunedin, May 9. The English interests in the gigantic industrial enterprise that is being swiftly built up on the shores of Lake Superior, at Sault Ste. Marie, are, as the Midland Express indicated yesterday, likely to be very considerable. This as particularly so in the case of the new steel tube works, a most important part of Mr Francis H. Clergue's important scheme. In all the most essential respects the manufacture of steel tubes will be English. For the process adopted, which is the very best, is an English patent ; the equipment and machinery now being laid down is of English design and make ; and the superintendent is an Englishman, Mr H. G. Waddie, of Liverpool. It is a complete triumph for English industry over every other competitor in the world. Itß story is an interesting chapter of industrial history. Some four years ago a Smethwick man named Harry Perrins was working as a roll turner in a Staffordshire mill. He possessed inventive genius, which he turned to remarkably good account in devising an entirely new process for the manufacture of iron and steel tubes. At first no one would look favourably upon his invention. It wa« hawked from manufacturer to manufacturer without success, and to the despair of Perrins. But his triumph, though tardy, came at last. Three men were found ready to finance him, and the outcome of the negotiations was that he disposed of his patent rights to a company registered as "Perrins (Limited)," in wnich some of the wealthiest men in the world of commerce are now interested. There was much still to be done to win success. Money was spent like water, and all the best brains for mechanical genius were heavily briefed in the interests of the new invention. Now the Perrins process of making step tubes is going to revolutionise this mam' facture. By it hollow tubes can be mad< and finished with only two heatings insteat of five, and the output is larger, better, am' cheaper. How it is done may be best described without technicality, by saying that by thiprocess the metal from the crude ore is t r worked that when finished it possesses thhollow shape required. This is, of course fundamentally different from the old wa; of first manufacturing the solid metal am then making it hollow, at a much greatei expenditure of money and labour. The process starts with the puddled ball but goes to work in a very different way This ball is first of afi shaped into two puddled bars of a trough shape. Four cf these bars — two inside ond two out — form the cross-Tiointed pile which, by one heating and in the space of 60 geconds, is rolled down into a perfectly finished tube. One eccnoniy wsulting from the manufacture of tubes by two heatings instead of five is that a ton of tubes can be made by an expenditure of Bcwt of coal instead of two tons. The output is l^cwt more for every 2*c\vt of puddled bar. and the labour reennred is reduced by three-fourths. But. after all. the best proof of the practical utility of the invention is in the demand for its adoption. No better example could be quoted than that supplied by the Clergue Works at Sault Ste. Marie. In this huge enterprise everything is planned to be of the very best for the production of wealth, and the wholesale mrlusion in it of the Perrins process endorcps the value of the method. Mr A. E. Beck, a director, has recently returned from a visit to America and Canada, where he has completed negotiations for the sale of the American and Canadian patent right, to Mr Clcr?ue and his colleagues for shares to the value of a million sterling. Sixteen, mills are to bo put down for manufacturing tubes at Sault Ste. Mane under tln^ process, and the working capital i> tr> be a million pounds sterling. The sncrial mpchinery required is being made in England, and uumarouß eon^igriHiEiiLj hays air-tidy iieea seat aut. Aa aoo»

as possible, operations, will bo connneneetLOne enormous' advantage 'of 'the new worts is that there is an unlimited supply of iron — a mountain of it, which, it is ?aid, Mr Clergue bought for the sum of just 500 dollars. This ore lias neither to be mined, quarried, nor blasted, but just shovelled up. It contains 63 per cent, of metallic iron, and has none of fhe objectionable constituents of many ores.

The jewellers report quite a phenomenal demand for greenstone ornaments and trinkets during the nast few weeks. They are being bought (writes the Lyttelton Times) by visitors to the Coronation celebrations in London and are intended as presents to their friends at Home.

A telegram from our Wellington correspondent, published elsewhere, referring to the scarcity of smart boys in Wellington, stated that telegraph messenger boys, if they learned operating, would get cadetship?. As the telegram made reference before this to boy 3of the Fourth Standard, it might be implied that they were eligible for cadetships. Such is not the case- Boys may join, aa messengers after passing the, Fourth Standard^ but it they desire promotion it is absolutely necessary "for them tcfjpass the Sixth Standard. without such pass they cannot fill any " position in the clerical division. „ . .