Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — CAR WHEELS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CAR WHEELS.

Proceaa of Their Manufacture at the Present Time. Among the new things exhibited at the annual convention of the Master Car-Builders, held at Thousand islands, Alexandria bay, was a solid forged steel car wheel, the invention of James A. Facer, of Germantown, Pa., a practical steel worker of many years’ experience, he having been one of the first men employed at the Midvale steel works to make steel tire, a quarter of a century ago. The patentees of this new wheel are James A. Facer and Horace F. McCann. The process of making these wheels Is as follows: Cheese-shaped steel ingots weighing about 775 to 800 pounds are put into a furnace, and when properly heated are placed under an eight or ten ton hammer, in which are adjusted the first set of patented dies. After the ingot has been thoroughly hammered on the circular side, or what afterward becomes the tread and flange of the finished wheel, it is reduced to a thickness of about six Inches, which is somewhat greater than the wheel will be when finished. Then the bloom, as it is now termed, Is placed in a V-shaped die on the front face of the lower die, and the circular piece of steel is shaped to represent a portion of the tread and flange of a finished wheel, which works in combination with a projection on the upper die. The wheel blank, as It is now termed, is turned slowly and the flange Is hammered on. The piece of steel Is passed to a second hammer,

which makes the hub and spreads the metal between.the hub and tire for the plate. The finishing process drives the metal up against the barrel of the die, leaving the wheel round and true, all that remains to be done being the boring of the hub for the axle. Forty years ago it took seven men ind four boys twelve hours to make two locomotive tires; twenty years afterward, with improved machinery and the assistance of Bessemer steel, fifty tires a day were made, and ten years ago one hundred tires were turned out a day with the same force. It is expected that one hundred solid steel wheels will be made with about the same force that it now takes to make the same number of steel tires.

TURNING OUT A CAR WHEEL.