DESCRIPTION OF THE MACHINE PUDDLER.
"The ordinary puddling-tool, or `rabble,' is worked backward and forward in the puddling-furnace by a vertical arm outside the furnace, to which it is connected by a notch in the handle of the rabble, dropped loosely upon a pin at the bottom of the work ing arm. This arm is catered at the top into a horizontal square bar overhead, sliding longitudinally through two guide-sockets, and worked by connecting-rods from a long T-iron bar extending horizontally across a. whole row of puddling-furnaces, the T-bar being carried by anti-friction rollers. A longitudinal reciprocating motion is given the bar by a crank at one end driven by engine-power. The guide from, or sector carrying the guide-sockets of the sliding bar, is centred on a vertical pin immediately over the door of the puddling-furnace, and the outer end is moved transversely from side to side with a slow reciprocating traverse along a guiding quadrant by means of a connecting Irod from a crank which is driven through a. worm wheel and screw shaft extending over the furnaces alongside the reciprocating T-bar. This bar works at a speed of about fifty strokes per minute, and has a length of stroke of 2 feet 10 inches, carrying the rabble with the same length of stroke across the floor of the furnace. The traverse
motion given by the crank, which makes one revolution for every seventy strokes of the rabble, causes the direction of each stroke to change gradually between two extremes of the guiding quadrant, so that the end of the tool, instead of moving backward and forward always in the same line, is worked successively over every portion of the floor of the furnace, within certain limits, in lines radiating from the working hole in the door of the furnace, corresponding exactly to the action in hand-puddling.
"In the double furnace with a door on each side, two traversing cranks are set at right angles to each other, so that the two rabbles are always working in different parts of the furnace. The whole of the machinery is kept clear above the furnace outside, and completely protected from heat, and quite out of the way of the men,---nothing being exposed to the heat except the rabble or puddling-tool, the same as in hand-puddling.
" The double furnace is exactly the same in construction in all respects as the ordinary single puddling-furnaces, except that it is made with a working door at each side, and is one foot wider inside.