Genealogy Chat

Hi All Searching the 1861 census, I found an ancestors occupation was given as Puddler. Can anyone tell me what this means. Thanks Carole

One suggestion is that a puddler was responsible for puddling the clay ( basically walking up and down on it ) to seal canals to stop them leaking. Clay was also puddled to seal the interior of dew ponds. Louise

Because of the high chimney and the damper, you can vary the heat. The fire and the hearth are separate, so the fire never touches the charge - that way you don't have nasties like sulphur and phosphorus from the coal getting into the iron. The roof of the furnace is that funny shape so that the heat bounces, reflects down into the charge. Anyway the pig iron in the hearth melts. Close the damper and lower the heat. Now the puddler opens that door and he stirs the iron with an iron rake or rabble. As he stirs it, the air gets to it and burns the carbon out. As the carbon burns the iron gets purer - it is turning into wrought. Now notice a funny thing. Mixtures have a lower melting point than pure things - that's why we put salt on the roads in winter. Cast iron melts at 1200°C; steel, with far less carbon, at 1600°C - and pure iron takes about 1800°C before it melts. The iron can't stay molten as the carbon burns-out, and it goes to dust, like a heap of sand or sawdust. Then 'the iron has come to nature'. It is ready. The puddler opens the damper, the iron comes up to white, or welding, heat and so it balls together. The puddler gets this ball of iron out of the furnace, and it is given a few blows of a hammer to squeeze it up. Then it is ready for part two of the process - rolling. The rolls can be water or steam powered. They work on the metal, compressing and elongating it as if it were being hammered. So once again, you get that beautiful fibre we find in wrought iron. But there is another big advantage. You can make the grooves in the rollers any shape-you like. They can be L or T or square or round. You can make long bars of lovely wrought iron to any section an engineer might need. You could never have had the railways without it. They tried making cast iron rails, but they were too brittle - they just would not stand up to a bump from the truck. Wrought iron might bend under impact but it doesn't break - it is tough. This rolled iron also meant that you could build iron ships like the Great Britain and Great Eastern with rolled sheets and frame members. Suspension bridges too, are a consequence of puddling and rolling. Those great chains the deck hangs from have to be wrought iron.' You could never use cast for that. Puddling and rolling went on at Bottom Forge, a few hundred yards away from the other side of the bridge. In those days you couldn't build a huge factory - there wasn't enough power in a little river. Wortley belongs to the age when man-still had to co-operate with nature. Nowadays we have so much steel and concrete and power that we impose our will upon her. The bars from Bottom Forge came up here [Top Forge], and they were fitted together with an iron ring to hold them. Then they were heated up to welding temperature in reheating furnaces. The cranes swing them nicely across to the hammer, which the water wheel turns and the noggins will lift and drop the hammer as they turn. you are forming the bars of wrought iron into one consolidated mass, a tough single piece of metal that will stand up to the impacts and strains that a railway axle is subjected to. Cast iron would never do for this. They said that Wortley axles never broke. To test one, they would drop a two ton weight on it. It bent, but it did not snap. Lastly, we come to steel. Steel comes between cast iron and wrought cast iron has too much carbon - 2% or more; wrought iron has practically none. Steel has less than 2%; even at that it is 'hard and brittle, though they made razors from it. But there were many grades of carbon steel, each with its own task. To make it, they used big stone chests set in a beehive shaped furnace. Here at Wortley, we found some odd looking remains a few years ago at the other end of the foundry, and Ken Barraclough - the steel historian - twigged that they were like the drawings of a cementation furnace that a Swedish visitor to England had drawn. Anyway, this is how it worked. A layer of wrought. iron bars is placed in a stone chest and then packed round with charcoal. There were all sorts of magic mixtures, but the essential thing was the Carbon. Then another layer of bars, more charcoal, more bars and so on. Top in all off with a layer of stone dust from the grinding wheel. Then cook it for seven days or a fortnight. The iron never melted but it got hot enough for the carbon to soak in - and turn, it in to steel. They left a hole to pull one of the bars out now and again to see how it was doing. When it was ready the gases made lumps - blisters - hence the name, blister steel. It wasn't very good - all hard on the outside 'and softer inside where the carbon hadn't penetrated so they heated it and folded it over, hammered, heated and folded, welding it together till it was in fine layers like puff pastry. It wasn't good for very little things like watch springs - it still had layers of slag in it but it was fine for cartspring, swords and big stuff like that Pippa

Yes we have had this one before. Now one idea was someone who was employed on canal work, puddling down the soil to make it firm. The other was to do with the metal smelting industry.Puddler Wrought iron or clay worker. Depends on where your chap is - look at what his neighbours do for a living, that will give you a clue which he is.

The basic product of early ironmaking was 'pig iron'. Pig iron was brittle in quality due to impurities and the nature of its molecular structure and had to be converted into ' wrought iron ' by re-heating and beating with heavy hammers to impart the strength and tensile qualities required for more robust use. An improved method of achieving this was ' puddling ' - the iron was heated in a reverberatory furnace which was normally top heated, the heat source not being in direct contact with the metal thus reducing contamination. In charge of this furnace was the ' Puddler ', a highly skilled and dangerous occupation which required physical strength, stamina and sustained concentration.

Thanks for your replies. Gt-Grandad was living in Little Wenlock, Shropshire. Is there a canal near here? The other occupants of the house were all labourers. He later married a master brickmakers daughter. Thanks Carole