Swatara Furnace Post # 12

Furnace Preservation and Repair

1923 Photo by A. W. Grumbine

We are going to skip the ledger book for this post and jump forward ninety three years to 1923, the above picture was taken and dated by my Dad, Arthur W. Grumbine. This is the side of the furnace that faces down the road towards the Outwood Lutheran Church. Number 1. is what is called "The Cast Arch", the cast arch is where the molten iron and slag flow out of the furnace "Crucible" and into the "Cast House", the cast house was a large wooden covered shed where "Pig Iron", Stove parts and other utensils" were cast. The area that is circled, number 2., was a base stone wall for the cast house, parts of this stone wall were still visible when work started in 1946 on the first City of Lebanon Water Supply Dam at Highbridge. The pipeline from Highbridge to Lebanon went directly behind the furnace stack; if you look at the back wall of the furnace stack you will see some sagging in the stone work, this sagging was caused by some settling of dirt over the pipeline. The pipeline was originally set to go right under the furnace stack; it was only because of the outcry of Township and County people that saved the furnace.  I myself, watched them dig most of the  the pipeline from Highbridge to just the other side of the small white house below the bridge for the road that led into The Big House and up to Outwood, at this time I was a student in seventh and eighth at the Pine Grove School.

The above picture is an enlargement of the picture at the start of this post. For some reason parts of the inner cast arch had started crumble, so, some time in the late 1920's, or 1930's Mr. George Boyer hired a stone mason to do some repair work, I was also told by my family, and the Stager family that Mr Boyer had gotten Boy Scouts, with the help of Mr. Dix to clear away small trees and brush away from the grounds and top of the furnace stack. Time for the next picture.

I took the above picture of the cast arch on Feb. 1st 1987, this was long after Mr. Boyer's stone mason had repaired the early 1900's damage. My last visit to the furnace was in September 2014 with my Son and Granddaughter, the  Cast Arch stonework should still look pretty good unless someone has damaged it.

I took the above picture in 2009; it appears that the front side of the stack is starting to bulge out, the cast arch looks like it is still stable; however, something is going to have to be done to keep stones from falling out, once one or two fall out it might fall like dominoes, would be very hard and costly to put back together.

Fortunately there is some help on the way, a group of area residents has gotten together to take down three trees that are a danger to the stack, remove the small trees and other growths from the top of the stack, clean up the area surrounding the stack and water wheel pit and tail race, and fence in the water wheel pit so nobody falls into it. Much of the work is being done by volunteers,  one grant has been secured to help start the work, however, heavy equipment, and operators will be needed to complete the first phase of the work, so, donations will be gladly accepted; later on engineers will be contacted to find out the best way to stabilize the stack itself, this will be a big and long project. 

I am having a color problem with the first paragraph, can't get rid of aqua background, sorry about that.