Martinsburg Daily Gazette

The Decay of Iron.

Mr. David Stiles, of Riddleton, who has been a practical worker in iron with his own hands for more than fifty years, has written an interesting letter to The Salem Gazette, in which he shows by observation that iron rots from wear. He says that the continual jar has the effect to weaken the tensile strength of iron, which statement he illustrates by saying that the step of a carriage when new may be bent back and forth without breaking, but after a few years' service it will break, no matter how well preserved. The same loss of tensile strength is noted in carriage springs. The poorest may be safely warranted for a year, but even after that short time they begin to break, and those of the best quality will break after years of constant and trying service. The writer has found that old crowbars, made of the best Swedish iron and used by the early settlers of New England, have become so rotten that they could not be welded when broken and had an offensive smell when the welding heat was applied.

Formerly all iron was wrought by the trip hammer, which scattered all the brittle and worthless material, but the substitution of the rollers makes it possible to run bars through which contain the poorest stock. Iron made from newly mined ore, even if of poorer quality, is safer than that into the manufacture of which scrap iron is introduced, which is now imported in large quantities. The writer, as a practical iron worker, expresses the opinion that, as this scrap iron may be the old English bar iron, which sixty years ago was of little value except for heavy ties, it is unfit for truss or suspension bridges. The matter to which this man of long experience calls attention is a very important one and should be made the subject of general investigation--Boston Journal.