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 Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities
Series Editor: Gabrielle Hogan-Brun
An Ethnographic and Folk-Linguistic Exploration

Maria Rieder
Irish Traveller Language
Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages
and Communities

Series Editor
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun
University of Bristol
Bristol, UK
Worldwide migration and unprecedented economic, political and social
integration present serious challenges to the nature and position of lan-
guage minorities. Some communities receive protective legislation and
active support from states through policies that promote and sustain
cultural and linguistic diversity; others succumb to global homogeni-
sation and assimilation. At the same time, discourses on diversity and
emancipation have produced greater demands for the management of
difference.
This series publishes new research based on single or comparative case
studies on minority languages worldwide. We focus on their use, status
and prospects, and on linguistic pluralism in areas with immigrant or
traditional minority communities or with shifting borders. Each volume
is written in an accessible style for researchers and students in linguis-
tics, education, politics and anthropology, and for practitioners inter-
ested in language minorities and diversity. We welcome submissions in
either monograph or Pivot format.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14611
 Maria Rieder

Irish Traveller
Language
An Ethnographic and Folk-Linguistic
Exploration
Maria Rieder
Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics
University of Limerick
Limerick, Ireland

Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities

ISBN 978-3-319-76713-0 ISBN 978-3-319-76714-7 (eBook)
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 Preface

Introduction
When I first came to Ireland in the early 2000s, my first acquaintance
with Irish Travellers was not by personal contact, but indirectly, through
the massive boulders that lined residential roadsides and hard shoulders
around towns and cities. These were explained to me as a measure to
keep Travellers from setting up camp.
It was not until several years later that I first personally met a
­member of the Traveller community. Working at the local tourist hostel,
a colleague of mine, whom I will call Rose, mentioned in passing that
she was a Traveller. This was after several weeks working side by side
with her. She was reluctant to answer my questions about the commu-
nity and culture, saying that she had left all of this behind. One thing,
however, that she proudly referred to as part of her culture, is that the
community had their own language, Cant.
Wondering what it was about this community to whom other Irish
people felt the need to keep a distance and where Rose’s reluctance to
speak about her community came from, the acquaintance with this lady
gave me the first impetus to start exploring. Talking about language

v
vi   Preface

seemed to be a good—and with Rose apparently the only—entry point

into a conversation about the community, and so I started asking ques-
tions about Cant. She explained that Cant was used to speak privately
amongst Travellers in the presence of “settled” bystanders. She taught
me a few words and a sentence that I remember to be my first Cant
sentence and that I still use today when asked to illustrate the use of
Cant to interested people: “I’m crushing down the thobar”—I’m ­walking
down the street. From the way she explained the workings of Cant,
I figured that the language is—put in a very simplified way as I would
later find out—the Travellers’ own lexicon inserted into the English
grammar. For any further information, however, she referred me to
other people, “experts” in the Traveller language and culture. One of
these experts, the late Willie Cauley from Limerick, a painter, poet,
and author of the most recent Cant dictionary (Cauley and Ó hAodha
2006), agreed to see us, and so Rose and myself went to visit him and
his family. I kept wondering, however, why this community had the
need for a language that they described as a sort of a secret code, stand-
ing as a communicative barrier between the Irish Travellers and the rest
of the population.
This book embarks on a journey that explores possible answers to this
question, answers that tell us much more than “just” about language,
but that I take as a lens into the world of the community and their per-
ceived position in wider Irish society. Before starting the journey, the
following lines describe how I came across these answers and my history
of interpreting and reinterpreting them.
In a first, smaller research project, I sought out more experts like
Willie Cauley: Oein DeBhairduin, now manager of the Clondalking
Traveller Training Centre and extremely knowledgeable of Irish and
Irish Traveller history, Mícheál Ó hAodha, an expert on Irish and Cant
and author of many Irish and Irish Traveller related publications work-
ing and lecturing at the University of Limerick, and many more. The
local town library gave me access to their archive and I could review
a lot of newspaper material with a mention of Irish Travellers. The
University College Dublin Folklore Collection Archive was h ­ elpful in
making available historical, cultural, and linguistic materials on the
Irish Travellers. Lastly, Traveller organisations such as the Irish Traveller
 Preface   vii

Movement and Pavee Point in Dublin, and the Traveller Training

Centre in Tullamore furnished me with a lot of material and publi-
cations written by members of the community. The variety of these
materials gave me a first insight into multiple perspectives on this
indigenously Irish and traditionally nomadic community: the general
population’s perspective through the (mostly hostile) news coverage
of Travellers occupying road sides, researchers’ attempts to document
Cant, and Travellers’ own accounts of past and present-day life.
Sharing a long history with the general Irish population, Irish
Travellers are living in an enclave within wider Irish society and iden-
tify as a distinct cultural and linguistic group. The majority of non-
Travellers I have spoken to over the years played this distinctiveness
down and were, however, unaware of cultural features such as the
existence of a Traveller language—a finding quite decisive in itself in
terms of cross-cultural interaction. Travellers’ attitudes to the language,
referred to as Shelta, Gammon, or Cant, were diverse and its value a
contested matter: some described it as symbolic of their identity and in
need to be documented and revitalised, while others (seemingly indif-
ferently) said that it is almost lost and a thing of the past. Of course,
there were many opinions in between these two poles. Furthermore,
the former group proudly upholding the language as a symbol of iden-
tity had many different experiences of and opinions on the use, vitality,
authenticity, and most importantly the spreading of the language. This
diversity of views is very similar to discourses witnessed in other com-
munities where ownership, cultural expertise, and authenticity are con-
tested (see, for instance, Pietikäinen 2013 for the Sámi in the Finnish
context, and Coupland 2010).
Different discourses about language are often an indication of com-
munity internal struggles. These struggles are very evident today, 15
years after I started my journey and just after the Irish state recognised
the community as an ethnic minority community on 1 March 2017,
after a 20-year-long campaign. Different people reacted in different
ways to the recognition. Many feared that it would stigmatise them
more and lead to more discrimination against them. However, the rec-
ognition has also had positive effects on many: Old friends and partici-
pants in my studies who before may have needed to be pushed to speak
viii   Preface

about their community, culture, and language, now do so more openly

and proudly. Many are engaging not only in discussions on how pride
in Traveller identity could be strengthened or how the community could
implement support structures to alleviate problems such as depression
and suicide. Also more open challenges of Irish state policies are more
frequent, as public housing, education, and health services have for
decades put the Irish Traveller community at a disadvantage (e.g. Bond
2006; Watson et al. 2017). Social media groups facilitate the organisa-
tion and reach of talks, peaceful gatherings, and demonstrations.
Language, again, is a setting where these changes, brought about by
the recognition and by the campaign going before that, are becoming
highly visible. Where before the term ‘language’ may have been used
with some apprehension for Cant (see Chapter 4), it is now very often
referred to as ‘the Traveller language’. Rising cultural awareness has led
to Cant revitalisation projects initiated by Travellers.1 As part of some
projects, social media provide valuable opportunities for sharing Cant
material online, which is criticised by some and welcomed by others.
Lying beneath these community movements, and, for many to a cer-
tain degree, reinterpretations and reidentifications with Traveller cul-
ture, is a long history of experienced hardship and disadvantage. To
name only the most recent developments (see Chapter 1 for a more
detailed history of the Irish Travellers), financial budget cuts during
the austerity period and beyond have removed services that were put
in place in the 80s and 90s to facilitate integration, causing a lack of
support across all social sectors. Traveller education and cultural cen-
tres were closed all over the country and support teachers at schools
withdrawn, a massive loss to the community, who were very suddenly
expected to move into mainstream education programmes without fur-
ther support. Travellers are suffering more than non-Travellers from
the public housing shortage, as well as from cuts in health services and
employment programmes.2
This is, very briefly, the context in which my further, extended
research is set. Between 2010 and 2012 I was lucky to experience
the last two years of a Traveller Education Centre and a Traveller
Homework Club in the West of Ireland, where many young and
adult members of the local Traveller community had for decades been
 Preface   ix

gathering, sharing stories, coming together to learn and complete school

leaving and other certificates under the guidance of non-Traveller staff
members. I joined the centre as a staff member and learner, as a partic-
ipant and observer, in order to meet more community members and to
get first-hand stories about the Traveller culture and language. I ended
up staying for two years, talking to people, taking notes, and record-
ing people’s stories. This centre is the primary location on which this
research rests and where the majority of data were gathered. A total
of 37 learners, 16 females and 21 males, were registered at the centre
during the time of the research. The age of these students ranged from
18 to approximately 70 and they had enrolled in the centre in order
to learn how to read and write, obtain Further Education and Training
Awards (FETAC) in Graphics and Construction Studies, Craft and
Design, Visual Art, Engineering, Social Studies, Hair and Beauty,
Information and Communication Technology, Irish, Mathematics,
and Leisure Studies, or in order to do the Leaving Certificate Applied
(LCA).
Similar to Wenger’s (1998) point on communities of practice, I see
the study of a limited number of participants as highly beneficial to
get a picture of the inner workings of the community. A small group
of people who regularly meet and interact is the setting where we can
actually observe the concrete effects of and reactions to what is going
on in the wider community, of the influences of institutions on indi-
viduals’ lives and subgroups, of how individuals see themselves in wider
Irish society and how all of these influences are mediated and negotiated
in interactions between individuals. In addition, individual people bring
their own personal stories to the setting: they are part of a wider, mul-
ti-layered community whose boundaries are both internally and exter-
nally defined by a shared history and core cultural and linguistic values.
However, they are heterogeneous in the way they have their own histo-
ries and identify to various degrees with the wider speech community
and their practices. It is both the shared aspects as well as the diversity
of answers on language and community that I explore in this book.
Reflecting the diversity within the wider community, the group of par-
ticipants I worked closest with includes a total of 15 women and men of
all age groups as well as different social backgrounds: The majority were
x   Preface

accommodated in Traveller halting sites around the town, several lived in

social housing estates, and others lived in caravans parked in sites or on the
roadside. Most of the Travellers had large families, but some also had cho-
sen to do their leaving certificate first and then plan a family or look for
employment. Some of the male students had been in previous wage labour
employment. A small number of families were said to be very wealthy
and to possess several horses and big caravans, while others appeared to be
very poor. As regards education, all learners had dropped out of school at
any time before the second year of secondary school. Most of the young
Travellers aged between 18 and 25 were able to read and write, while most
of the Travellers over 40 had no or very low literacy skills.
The Centre was a place where cultural values, traditions, and cus-
toms of Travellers were cherished and promoted, while the learners were
also motivated to enhance their interaction with modern Irish society,
not only by being provided educational opportunities, but also by the
practical advice they were given. The centre was also a valuable point of
contact between Travellers and the local council. Providing a comforting
environment for Travellers for whom an educational setting is normally
associated with difficult childhood experiences, the centre was extremely
valuable for this research. The participants were relaxed both among
themselves and with teachers and this together with my lengthy and con-
stant presence over a period of two years was beneficial for forming close
relationships, particularly with the women I spent most time with, and
allowed near-natural conversations about many quite sensitive topics.

Studying a Language and a Community

A number of studies exist on the Irish Travellers and on Cant in par-
ticular, for instance on its history (e.g. Ní Shuinéar 2002), its syntactic
structure (e.g. Browne 2002), the sociolinguistic situation (e.g. Binchy
1994, 2002, 2006; Browne 2004), and also on its debated linguistic
status and classification (e.g. Grant 1994; Ó Baoill 1994; Ó hAodha
2002). However, the cultural side and speaker-perspective of Cant and
the role it plays in everyday life has never been explored systematically
and in detail. This book presents community members’ stories of past
 Preface   xi

and present-day life intertwined with stories of past and present-day

language use, and the value that Cant had and has for the speakers in
difference to English.
As Makoni and Pennycook (2007) have pointed out, there are
strong “relationships between what people believe about their language
(or other people’s languages), the situated forms of talk they deploy, and
the material effects—social, economic, environmental—of such views
and use” (p. 22). In other words, views regarding use and functions of
Cant as well as stories about its use in context not only paint a vivid and
dynamic picture of active language use in interaction and in society, but
they can tell us so much more about the community: Through people’s
accounts, Cant comes alive as a social practice that is interwoven and
interdependent with material social and cultural experiences. Stories
about language are then always carried by the narrators’ conscious and
unconscious feelings and perceptions of themselves in their own com-
munity, their position in wider society, and their relationships beyond
community boundaries.
Exploring people’s language stories and their many meanings put
this work in the field of folk-linguistic study, the study of lay people’s,
i.e. non-linguists’ and ordinary speakers’ knowledge, attitudes, and ide-
ological beliefs about their own and other languages (see Preston 1994,
1996, 1999, 2004, 2011; Niedzielski and Preston 2000). Ethnographic
insights derived from my years of observation of and reading about the
history and present-day situation of the community contextualise these
folk stories. Linguistic ethnographic research developed in the 1960s
and endeavours to find out not only what is going on in language and
society, but also why things are as they are, why languages are spoken the
way they are spoken, or, in the case of folk-linguistic research, why peo-
ple describe language the way they do. Using different methods to make
sense of the social reality in which a speech form is used and comments
about language are made,3 ethnography is a process of discovery and
benefits from immersion of some form in a community. The Traveller
Education Centre provided me with a setting in which I could mingle
with community members on a daily basis for two years.
The students at the centre were taught in five different groups, two of
which were all female and three all male. Each group consisted of about
xii   Preface

eight students. One female and one male group were registered for the
Leaving Certificate Applied Course, while the remaining groups were
enrolled in different courses within FETAC. In the first two months of
contact-making, I visited all classes, male and female, equally. However,
in the course of the first weeks I noticed discomfort on the side of the
men caused by my presence, which manifested in competitive behav-
iour or temporary withdrawing from the group. Natural conversation
was rarely witnessed in the men’s classes. Also from the side of the
women it seemed to be viewed with some suspicion that I spent a cer-
tain amount of time in the men’s classes, sometimes as the only female.
After weighing the advantages and disadvantages of limiting participa-
tion to all-female classes, I decided that the risk of losing the women’s
trust was too high, and that getting well-acquainted with the women
first may open doors to the men’s world at a later stage of the research.
I therefore restricted participation to the women’s classes, and mainly
to the women’s FETAC group. This group counted eight women, three
under 27 and five over 40. I found that my regular presence in this
group made it possible to get to know each other on a deeper level as
confidence grew and more and more personal stories were shared. In the
classes, I took up an intermediary position between student and staff
member: a student among the Traveller students in practical classes
such as cookery, sewing, leisure, and health and beauty on the one side,
and on the other a member of staff organising social events or helping
out in literacy classes. As the literacy levels of the two age groups were
very different, the group was often divided in two groups, and I looked
after the older women’s group engaging in the practice of reading and
writing. But even if they accepted me as another student in their group
after a while I was aware that I would never be regarded as an insider.
What I believe I was able to achieve during this time is that the image
of a stranger and intruder was no longer attached to me.
In the beginning, some people seemed very alerted when I men-
tioned that I was interested in their language and expressed their worry
that I was just there to find out about the Cant, learn it myself and pub-
lish it in books. I got suspicious comments in this direction quite often
during those first weeks. Their very noticeable discomfort made the
necessity of building a relationship of trust and confidence very obvious.
 Preface   xiii

Over the course of six months I therefore just participated in their

classes and events, talked about their and my life during knitting, cook-
ing, hairdressing, and arts classes and tried to develop a feeling for their
boundaries, for what is acceptable, unacceptable and why, and which
questions are ok to ask. Other activities helping this confidence-build-
ing included the attendance of county council committee meetings on
accommodation, health, and education, which are central concerns to
the community. Taking some of the people of the centre with me to the
committee meetings I sometimes acted as a mediator between the two
parties’ needs.
I learned a lot from the community during these first six months,
very much in the sense that Charles Briggs (1985) and Agar (1996)
described in their own work: I was an apprentice, a student of a culture,
who gradually learned about cultural themes, language use, and atti-
tudes, and whose research methods adapted to the situation, the rela-
tionship, and the characteristics of the participants. Learning about the
reasons for why Cant is protected I discarded my plans to document
Cant. Instead, I came to understand how rich their stories about cul-
ture and language were in themselves. I came to appreciate the meaning
that Cant has in their lives, why it was protected by some and reduced
to unimportance by others. And I decided that this in itself was worth
exploring more: their stories about Cant.
For these reasons, this book is not an analysis of Cant. Apart from
previously published work it does not contain any linguistic data in
the form of word lists or recordings of actual Cant, but focuses on the
speakers’ views about language, about the functions, structure, and his-
tory of Cant. Any recordings of Cant utterances that were triggered by
conversations in which participants remembered situations of use hap-
pened spontaneously and voluntarily. Cant words that appear in tran-
scripts stemming from these conversations are words that have already
appeared in previous publications and were described by the partici-
pants as old Cant words which have been replaced by newer words.
Recording conversations about culture and language was a major step
after the first six months of participation and observation. However, I
had the feeling that our relationship was now on stable enough grounds
and that I had, as Wax (1971) expressed, shared enough meaning with
xiv   Preface

the people I was working with, i.e. knew them well enough that I could
leave the observation and participation role and select appropriate
explicit methods of research and question-making. This was the point
when I gathered everybody for a meeting in which I explained to them
what I had learned in the past months and how I felt that their stories
were very rich. I asked them if they would be willing to spend some
more time on story-telling, making clear that this would not include
revealing Cant words to me. Everybody was happy to do so and they
were also happy to let me record these group conversations.
The nine focus group interviews that followed revolved around cul-
tural, historical, and language-related topics such as how Cant is used,
in which contexts, frequency of use, beliefs about, and attitudes towards
culture and language more generally, attitudes towards non-­Travellers,
and Traveller identity and language in wider Irish society. Most of
the focus groups were recorded with the group of eight women. The
interviews held with the men were less successful in terms of content,
as it was very hard to get them to speak about language and culture.
However, apart from the fact that this may have to do with myself being
a female, this in itself is a valuable finding and attitudes of the men will
be explored in more detail in Chapter 6.

My Own Role
While a folk-linguistic approach puts the views of speakers at the cen-
tre of attention, this may misleadingly insinuate an impartial, o­ bjective
stance that seeks to reveal thoughts, motivations, and intentions of
the participants. What I have got are, however, outwardly expressed
thoughts, motivations, and intentions, a fraction of the myriad expla-
nations that exist, and filtered by the fact that they were uttered in a
certain context, the Traveller Training Centre, and in conversation
with a researcher and outsider. In addition, the stories in this book are
told through the lens of my own ways of making sense of what I wit-
nessed, and therefore tainted by my cultural background, personality,
experiences, and worldviews. This book means to give an honest and
reflective account of an outsiders’ personal learning process, a process of
 Preface   xv

‘making sense’, by using folk-linguistic and ethnographic tools to limit

subjectivity. This learning process and making sense has led to the devel-
opment of thematic chapters which are carried by and titled as ques-
tions of inquiry in relation to Cant and the community. While being
an attempt to get at the worldview of a community as told by the par-
ticipants, the book does not in any way claim to truthfully represent the
diverse views that exist on Cant in Ireland and beyond and the diverse
ways of Travellers’ lives. Both lenses, my own as well as contextual and
situational features influencing the stories, are always considered from
the interpretive stance of ‘Travellers talking to an outsider’. This stance,
rather than seen as distorting the actual truth, is used as a layer that
adds value to the book in that it reveals much about communication
patterns and attitudes towards outsiders—which lie at the heart of the
question why Irish Travellers need Cant—as well as allowing certain
interpretations about power structures and historical and societal causes
of these patterns and attitudes.

Limerick, Ireland Maria Rieder

Notes
1. See The Irish Traveller Language Project on facebook (https://www.face-
book.com/theirishtravellerlanguageproject/) and twitter (@travlanguage).
2. For the scale of the impact, and level of disinvestment on the Irish
Traveller Community during the austerity period see Pavee Point (2013).
3. See, e.g. Hymes (1974), Cameron (2009), Coupland and Jaworski
(2009), Wolfram (2009), Duranti (2001), Woolard and Schieffelin
(1994).
xvi   Preface

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 Preface   xvii

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xviii   Preface

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 Acknowledgements

It would not have been possible to write this book without the help and
support of friends and colleagues who have accompanied me on the
way.
First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to the many
members of the Irish Traveller Community who not only welcomed me
among them, but also gave their time to this project and provided the
valuable data on which this book rests. I am especially indebted to the
students and staff of a Traveller Training Centre and Traveller Children’s
Afterschool Club in the West of Ireland who opened their doors to me
to carry out this research. Many of them have over time become friends
and I am extremely grateful for the rich experience at the centre, and
for the friendship and trust I received. Also community members and
community workers outside the centre have greatly helped me on the
way and provided invaluable input. I would particularly like to thank
the late Willie Cauley, Sylvia O’Leary, Oein DeBhairduin, Jeaic Ó
Dubhsláine, Hannagh McGinley, Lesley Hamilton, Helen O’Sullivan,
and Rita Kilroy. I very much appreciate the knowledge they shared with
me, their inspiration and encouragement.

xix
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 CHAPTER VII
CEMENTATION AND CRUCIBLE STEELS

In the early days practically the only steels recognized—certainly

the only ones desired—were of the high carbon or hardening variety.
These were required for the manufacture of swords and other
implements of war, for tools, etc., most of which had to have hard
and sharp cutting edges.
When softer and less brittle metal was desired, wrought iron was
available, but in all probability high carbon steel was the material
most largely used.
Having but the two iron alloys and these of very different
properties, it was not difficult to distinguish between them. A piece
of metal could be heated to redness and plunged into cold water. If it
became glass hard when cooled in this way it was thereby proved to
be steel; if still soft, it was iron.
But the problem is not so simple to-day. Medium, mild and yet
softer steels, and other alloys which have steel characteristics have
appeared and are used in immense quantities. Their advent
introduced considerable complication.
It will be well, therefore, before taking up our subject,
“Cementation and Crucible Steel,” and the several steels which are to
follow, to make sure that we all understand, as well as we may, what
is “steel” as defined to-day, what are the best known varieties, and
what are their characteristics?
For a rough classification it is safe for us to divide the steel world
into four general divisions as follows:
1. The harder, high carbon steels used for tools, dies, etc.
2. The mild and medium steels of which wire, rod, bar, plate, pipe
and structural shapes for bridges, ships and “sky scrapers” are made.
 3. Alloy steels, to which some metal
such as nickel, manganese or
chromium gives definite properties
and the name.
4. Those other modern materials
which are known as “self-hardening”
and “high-speed steels.”
The
two
classes
last
named
are not Hardening a Piece of
Bowknot Made from
simple Tool Steel. Ready to
Piece of Steel Pipe
iron- Quench
carbon
alloys and their properties are less
directly derived from and do not so plainly depend upon carbon.
Metallurgically, then, they are not steels in the exact former sense of
the word; but as they do require carbon—though perhaps in lesser
amount, are made by regular steel processes, have most of the
characteristics of steel and are used for the same general purposes,
they are undoubtedly entitled to the appellation “steel.” However, to
distinguish, they are usually termed “alloy steels.”
We are just now concerned only with the steels of classes one and
two—the carbon steels. As explained in a previous chapter, these are
alloys of iron with not more than 2 per cent of carbon.
Carbon is the element the
presence of which confers upon
iron the ability to harden when
cooled suddenly from a cherry-
red heat, as by quenching in
water or oil. If the steel contains
less than four-tenths of one per
cent of carbon it has little or no
hardening power under this
treatment; but steel with six-
tenths of one per cent or more of
High Carbon Tool Steel (1.25
Per Cent C) as Cast
(Magnification 70 diameters)
leads a dual life, so to speak.
At any time, hardened steel
may be returned to its former
condition of softness by the well
known process of annealing,
wherein it is reheated to the same
cherry-red heat and slowly
cooled.
At the will of the blacksmith or
metal worker alternate hardening
and softening may be repeated a
great many times without
apparent deterioration.
Various degrees of hardness
also, may be obtained according
to (1), the percentage of carbon in
Low Carbon Tool Steel (.50
Per Cent C) as Cast
(Magnification 70 diameters)
the element, has the wonderful
property of being slightly
malleable when in the annealed
state, but extremely hard and
brittle after this sudden cooling—
Low Carbon Tool Steel (.50
Per Cent C) Annealed
(Magnification 70 diameters)
the steel, and (2), the
completeness and suddenness of
the cooling.
As considerable brittleness and
internal strain in the metal
necessarily follow hardening, the
hardness is usually “tempered” or
“let down” by a careful reheating
to a much lower temperature,
usually 425 to 550 degrees
Fahrenheit. From this
temperature a second quenching
“fastens” the temper at whatever
of the original hardness the steel
retains at the temperature chosen
by the smith for the second
quenching. Much of the
brittleness is in this way relieved.
The smith calls it “toughening”
the steel. Tools so treated are
much less liable to break.
The steels that will harden (we
will call them “carbon tool
steels”), range ordinarily from
the .60 per cent carbon variety,
used for hammers, cold chisels,
etc., to those containing 1.50 per
cent of carbon which are selected
Medium Carbon Tool Steel
for razors, scalpels, and other (.86 Per Cent C) as Cast
tools requiring high temper. Each
one of these many grades is (Magnification 400 diameters)
susceptible of a wide variety of
temper in the hands of a capable
man, who must select his steel and give
to it the most desirable temper for the
work for which the tool is designed.
Blacks
miths
and
other
tool
makers
become
extremel Low Carbon Tool Steel
y (.50 Per Cent C)
proficien Hardened
Mild Steel Pipe (.10 Per t in
Cent C) judging (Magnification 100
steels diameters)
(Magnification 70 and the
diameters) proper
temperature at which each should be
hardened and “drawn” (tempered).
They judge temperatures solely by the color of the steel when heated.
Every five or ten degree change imparts a slightly different shade as
the steel grows hotter in the forge fire or cooler when about to
quench.
Observation of a good blacksmith at work and a few minutes’
conversation with him about his “art” will give one greater
knowledge and appreciation of the carbon tool steels than volumes of
writings concerning them. Along with it will come more respect for
the skill of these clever men whose handiwork is never exhibited in
salons and about whom the world hears little, though indebted to
them for a great measure of its civilization and prosperity.

High Carbon Tool Steel Is Extremely Brittle When Hardened and Has Very
Little Malleability When Annealed

What and how much would be possible without machines and

proper tools?
About sixty years ago steels of much lower carbon content
appeared. They have been made softer and softer until we have what
we now know as the “mild” steels and even the almost or practically
carbonless material which we called “open-hearth iron” or “ingot
iron” in a former chapter. These have not the hardening property but
they possess softness, ductility and freedom from brittleness which
the higher carbon steels always lack. For such real evidences of our
 Twentieth Century civilization as the
great bridges, ships, buildings, etc.,
they are indispensable, for they are
easily cut, bent and otherwise worked
into shape, and they combine pliability
with sufficient strength for the service
intended. Such steels are desirable, for
when overloaded they bend before they
break, thus giving warning of the
Quarter-inch Mild Steel danger.
Plate with Double Fold. These mild and medium steels are of
Folded Cold Without immense importance industrially. Of
Slightest Crack the 31,000,000 tons of steel made in
the United States during 1912 probably
99 per cent was of the soft and medium varieties.

It has been said that “the exception proves the rule.” Cementation
steel is the exception to the rule which we gave in Chapter VI that
steel is always melted during its manufacture.
If a thin piece of bar iron be packed in powdered charcoal and
heated at low red heat for some time, the metal, after cooling, will be
found to have acquired the hardening property. In other words by
absorption of carbon it will have become steel with all of the
characteristics of that material. Neither the iron nor the carbon by
which it was surrounded have melted, yet in some way carbon has
penetrated into the iron and if the heating has been sufficiently long,
carbon will be found at the center of the bar. But always there will be
more carbon in the outer layers of the bar than in those farther
inside, i. e., it will be found in diminishing amounts as we approach
the center.
Just how and when the cementation process for making steel, to be
now described, was discovered is not known. It may have been the
result of the non-uniform working of the larger blast furnaces which
were developing in Continental Europe during the Thirteenth
century. From the German “natural steel” which was probably the
steely product too rich in carbon for the wrought iron which they
intended to make and much too poor in carbon to be the fluid cast
iron which with the growing height
and heat of the blast furnace they later
did make, may have come the idea.
More likely, a piece of thin wrought
iron was accidentally left imbedded in
glowing charcoal until it had absorbed
some carbon.
 Shelby Seamless Steel
Tubing Crushed Endwise

A Crucible Melting Room. “Melting Holes” Are Beneath the Square Covers
on the Floor at the Left. Note the New Crucibles Drying on the Shelves,
and the Ingot Molds at the Right

The first mention of cementation steel appears to have been by an

Italian metallurgist, Vannuccio Biringuccio, who, in 1540, described
the making of steel by heating billets of soft iron for a long time in
molten cast iron. The modern method, the heating of wrought iron in
powdered charcoal, was certainly known in the sixteenth century and
this method of cementation has been practiced in France, England,
Belgium and Germany since the seventeenth century.
Reaumur, the Frenchman, whose process of making cast iron soft
by annealing bears his name and is still used in Europe, was the first
to study and understand to any extent the cementation process.
Publication, about 1722, of his complete directions for cementing
iron gave great impetus to the manufacture of steel by this process.
Fate, however, was unkind and his
own nation, France, by reason of her
small production of suitable iron for
the work, was unable to profit greatly
through his discoveries. Sweden,
England and Germany were benefited
to a much greater extent.
During the early years many were
the secret and wonderful mixtures and
compounds offered for this work, but
of them all carbon in some form was
the only necessary element. A Sheffield (England)
Finely divided or powdered charcoal Cementation Furnace
or bone dust has been mostly used.
Sheffie
ld,
England,
steel
makers,
have
been
very
successf
ul in the
manufac
Huntsman Crucible ture of
Furnace—Original Type cementat One Type of Oil-Fired
ion steel. Crucible Furnace
Their
usual method is to pack flat strips of
best Swedish Walloon iron in charcoal in rectangular stone boxes
about four feet wide, three feet high and fourteen feet long. Alternate
layers of small-sized charcoal and thin iron bars are piled in these
boxes until they are filled, the bars not being allowed to touch one
another. When full, top slabs are luted on to the boxes to make them
airtight.
Fire is kindled in the firebox below and the heat gradually raised
until furnace and boxes are cherry-red in color. This heat is
maintained for seven to eleven or more days, depending upon the
hardness desired, i.e., the amount of carbon they desire absorbed.
The furnace is closed and allowed to cool slowly, which requires
another seven or more days.
Upon unpacking the furnace the bars are found to be brittle and of
a steely fracture instead of the soft malleable material which was put
in. They have become high carbon steel.
Expert workmen are able to judge very closely the hardness of the
steel by looking at the fracture and they sort the bars in this way,
piling bars of similar hardness together.
Bars thus made show many blisters
on the surface and the steel became
known as “blister steel” on this
account. The reason for these blisters
was not discovered until along about
1864, when the well-known English
metallurgist, Percy, proved that the
blisters were caused by the chemical
action of carbon on the slag contained
in the wrought iron. The gases formed
produced the blistering of the bar. That
this is the explanation is proved by the
fact that bars of mild steel or iron
without slag do not blister.
Blister bars heated to a forging heat
Huntsman Coke-Fired and drawn out under the hammer or
Crucible Furnace— rolled into bar steel are known as
Modern Type “spring steel”, or “plated bars.”
As in wrought iron manufacture, a
cutting to length, repiling, heating,
welding and again drawing down by hammering or rolling produces
much more homogeneous and reliable steel. Piled and reworked steel
of this sort became known as “shear” steel because blades of shears
for cropping woolen cloth were always made in this way.
Many of us will recognize in the cementation process an extended
“case hardening.” Case hardening is very largely resorted to by iron
and steel workers, who in a few hours can give a hardened and long-
wearing thin outer layer of steel to a piece of iron or soft steel after it
has been forged or machined into the desired shape.
This shear steel was largely made
and was quite satisfactory, until, as
described before, Huntsman, a
Sheffield clock maker, conceived the
idea of melting together in a pot or
crucible blister bars or bars of shear
steel. This he did to equalize the
carbon content and give uniformity of
product which had never been Siemen’s
attainable through the cementation Gas-Fired
process alone. Crucible
From that date (1740) to this the Furnace—
crucible process has undergone only Regenerativ
minor alterations and to-day it e System
produces the highest grades of steel
which we have. Practically all of the
high grade tool steels are produced by One pair of Checker-work
this process. Chambers, k. h., is being
Nor has Huntsman’s form of furnace heated by the hot outgoing
been greatly changed, as the flame and waste gases
illustrations prove. Though gas and oil while the other pair is
as well as coal are, in many cases, used heating incoming gas and
as the fuel, the general design of the air. They are worked
furnace has remained the same. alternately.
For a century crucibles were made
from clay molded to form, slowly dried and very carefully burned.
Usually each steel maker made his own crucibles. They could be used
but three times, becoming so thin and tender after use for three
batches of steel that they were not safe for a fourth. Graphite
crucibles are now very largely used. They withstand the severe heat
much better and can be used five or six times. The expense item for
either clay or graphite crucibles is a large one.
After filling with small pieces of blister or shear steel the crucibles
are entirely surrounded by coal or coke in the furnace pit. The fire is
so regulated that the steel is not too quickly melted. Fresh coal or
coke must be put in around the crucibles two or even three times.
 When he thinks the steel should be
molten, the expert attendant known as
the “melter” quickly removes the tight
fitting cover of the crucible and with an
iron rod determines whether any
unmelted pieces remain.
After complete melting the steel
must be “killed,” else it will boil up in
the mold upon pouring and leave a
spongy or insufficiently solid “ingot” or
block of steel. This “killing” of steel is a
The Stalwart Melters rather peculiar phenomenon. It is
accomplished by allowing the steel to
remain quiet in the furnace for another
half hour or so. Undoubtedly the quieting is the result of the escape
of the gases or impurities which are contained in the charge, and
absorption of the chemical element, silicon, from the walls of the
crucible.
We have met this element, silicon, before in our metallurgical
journey and we will likely meet it several times again. To the
metallurgist it is secondary in importance only to carbon.
When the steel has been properly
melted and killed it is ready to pour.
An assistant lifts the cover from the
melting hole, the “puller-out” seizes
the crucible just below the bulge with
circular tongs and pulls it from the
coke which surrounds it. The slag is
skimmed off the top and the steel
poured into iron molds forming small
“ingots,” usually from 2 to 4 inches
square and two feet or more long. Pulling the Crucible
Every part of the process, even the
pouring, must be done with extreme skill and care or the product
suffers.
After liberation from their molds, the ingots are heated and either
rolled or hammered down to the sizes desired for tools, etc.
 As stated before, crucible steel necessarily is an expensive material
both on account of high labor and crucible costs. For this reason,
many have resorted to the process used in the very small way
mentioned for the manufacture of Wootz steel—the melting of
wrought iron bar or soft steel in a crucible with carbon.
In the Wootz process chopped wood and green leaves were used.
Nowadays charcoal is substituted or there is added the proper
amount of cast iron to give the desired amount of carbon to the
wrought iron or soft steel charged. During the melting the iron takes
up the charcoal and alloys with it.
Proper amounts of silicon,
manganese, and other beneficial
materials are also charged, which
become either part of the alloy itself or
have a cleaning or fluxing action upon
it.
Steels made in this way are
practically, though perhaps not quite,
as good as steels made by melting
“Teeming” or Pouring together the properly selected
into Ingots. The Ingots cementation bars. The method has
Later Are Forged or come to be very generally used on
Rolled into Bars from account of its directness and because it
Which the Tools Are eliminates the long and expensive
Made preliminary cementation process.
When Bessemer and open-hearth
steels made their appearance in the
market an attempt was made to use them instead of wrought iron as
the base for high grade crucible steels. Though seemingly pure
enough, apparently purer even than wrought iron, these metals were
not able to compete with wrought iron for this purpose. For some
reason, not yet satisfactorily explained, these new materials which
are made in 15, 35 and 50–ton batches, when used as a base, do not
give as high quality tool steel as puddled wrought iron, which is
slowly and laboriously made in 500–pound lots. Considerable of
these materials are utilized but it is for a somewhat lower grade of
crucible steel.
 For many years mild steels for castings have been quite largely
made by the crucible process. They are among the best but the
crucible and labor costs are usually too great to allow crucible steel
castings to compete in present markets.
 CHAPTER VIII
BESSEMER STEEL

The “Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel” was the startling
title of a scientific paper read in 1856 before the British Association for the
Advancement of Science. This was the announcement to the world of Henry
Bessemer’s invention of the process for making iron and steel which led to the
greatest commercial development the world has seen.
To those of us who have had little or no experience along manufacturing lines
the announcement seems strange enough, but metallurgists, engineers and
manufacturers who know how serious is the matter of fuel bills realize at once
how revolutionary the claim of Bessemer must have seemed to men of those
days.
As occurs with so many new things the idea was scoffed at; Bessemer’s
scheme was one purporting to give “something for nothing” and—well, it could
not be.
It was ridiculous!
And why should it not have seemed strange when we consider that up to that
time fuel had been required in all metallurgical processes. In the old Catalan
furnace and the types that preceded it, in the Finery Fire, the Walloon and the
several other refining furnaces fuel had to be provided without stint. The lowest
proportion that seventy years of experiment and practice had brought about in
Cort’s puddling process was one ton of coal per ton of iron, while the blast
furnace required at the least four-fifths of a ton of coke for each ton of pig iron
produced.
Whether Bessemer, an Englishman of French descent, or William Kelly, an
American of Irish descent, of Eddyville, Ky., first conceived the idea of the
“pneumatic” process is a moot question. Considerable evidence substantiates
the claim that the latter first hit upon the scheme and during the ten years
between 1846 and 1856 had considerable success with its development. Perhaps
Bessemer had heard of Kelly’s experiments. There is no proof that he did.
Whether he did or not, the fact remains that he quite independently and very
fully developed the process in England, and with great business sagacity and
energy made it the success that it is.
As fortune has withheld from Kelly and from this country credit which was
deserved, it is desirable to tell briefly the part which he had in the development
of this process that with a single furnace
converts pig iron into steel at the rate of a
thousand tons in 24 hours and first made
mild steel available as a building material.
In 1846 Kelly, with a brother, bought the
Suwanee Iron Works, near Eddyville, Ky.
After about a year they encountered the same
difficulty that charcoal iron manufacturers
usually have encountered—the failure of the
supply of fuel. This difficulty Kelly, a better
inventor than business man, apparently had
not foreseen. His business was threatened
unless some other way of refining his iron
was found.
One day
while
watching Kelly’s First Tilting
the Converter
operation
of his
Finery Fire he noticed that the blast of air
from the tuyère made the molten iron where
it impinged very much whiter and apparently
hotter than the rest. Like other iron makers,
he had always supposed that a blast of cold
air chilled molten iron.
It appears that Kelly was not long in
surmising the truth. In a few days he had
rigged up a crude apparatus and made soft
iron from which a horseshoe and a horseshoe
nail were fashioned by a blacksmith.
Crucible with Which Being conservatives, Kelly’s customers
Bessemer’s First Experiments were not slow in informing him that they did
Were Conducted not want iron made by anything other than
the “good old process” and he was obliged to
accede to their demands or lose their trade.
Like Galileo, however, he had not really surrendered. In the woods near by he
built and experimented with seven successive “converters,” as the furnaces are
called in which Bessemer steel is made.
Upon learning that Bessemer of England had been granted a United States
patent (1856), Kelly came before the patent office and proved that he had
several years before used the same process. The priority of his invention was
acknowledged, and a patent was granted to him also (1857).
 Financia
l troubles
and finally
bankruptcy
handicapp
ed him.
However,
the
Cambria
Bottom Blowing Tilting Steel Co.,
Converter
of
Johnstown
, Pa., became interested and let him
experiment with his process at the company’s
plant. Here in 1857 he built his first “tilting”
converter. His first public demonstration
resulted in failure and ridicule, but a few days
later he was successful. Steel makers bought Fixed Converter of 1856 with
interests in his patent, which at its expiration Six Tuyères About the Sides
in 1870 was renewed by the United States
Patent Office, while renewal of Bessemer’s
patent was refused.
The Kelly Pneumatic Process Company,
which was organized to operate under Kelly’s
patents, built a converter at an iron works at
Wyandotte, Michigan. Here the first
pneumatic process steel ever made in this
country in other than an experimental way
was “blown” in 1864.
Meanwhile Alexander L. Holley, an
American engineer, had obtained for another
American company the right to manufacture
steel here under Bessemer’s patents. He built
a plant at Troy, New York, which began In 1858 Bessemer Erected His
making steel in 1865. First Converter of the Form
It was soon decided to merge the interests Generally Used To-Day
of the two companies and in 1866 this was
done, the process thereafter being known as
the Bessemer Process. During the early years of the process here Holley became
very well known. As consulting engineer he designed practically all of the
Bessemer plants which were built during the first ten or fifteen years.
To the majority of the people of the United States to-day Kelly and his parallel
part in the great invention are practically unknown, and thus not only he but the
United States is without credit which should be ours.
 Fortunately Kelly did not entirely fail to
profit financially as so many times is the case
with inventors. He received a total of about
$500,000. Bessemer’s return from his
process is said to have approximated
$10,000,000 and he was knighted by the
British sovereign.
More intimate details regarding Kelly and
his work may be found in Munsey’s Magazine
for April, 1906, where H. Casson gives
information which he received direct from
several of the men who knew and worked
with Kelly.
While apparently not the originator of the
process, Bessemer is without any doubt
entitled to most of the credit he received.
There is no proof that he had heard of Kelly’s
experiments when he began his own or that
he was aided by Kelly’s discoveries. He
worked out the details of the process
independently, as had Kelly, and it was
Bessemer who put it on a commercial basis.
As has occurred with other new processes
Even the Detachable Bottom Bessemer’s first licensees were not
—to Facilitate Repairs—Was particularly successful. When those who had
Thought of and Patented by bought the right to use his process had failed
Bessemer—1863 in their efforts to use it, and become
discouraged as most of them did, he quietly
bought back their rights and went ahead with
his development of the process. Perhaps no man ever exhibited more
perseverance in continuing experiments and development under very
discouraging conditions than did Henry Bessemer. He had faith.
He had a genius for invention and was thorough in his experimental work.
Practically no type of converter has since been brought out that he did not think
of and try, and the process has been modified in but one or two important
particulars in the years that have passed.
The essential part of the Bessemer process is the blowing of air through
molten cast iron to remove the metalloids by which cast iron differs from steel
and wrought iron, as has been explained before.
This being the essential point, and at first thought the lack of fuel seeming so
peculiar, we must describe what happens during the Bessemer “blow.”
 Sectional View of a Modern
Converter Showing Air Duct
and Tuyères

Pouring Charge of Molten Pig Iron into Converter

Technically speaking, the metalloids are “oxidized.” Oxidation is the chemical

uniting of oxygen, generally from the air, which has 21 per cent of this element,
with another element or material such as iron, silicon, carbon, wood, coal, etc. If
the oxidation is slow as in the “rusting” of iron, the resulting heat dissipates as
fast as it is generated and the change is hardly noticeable. If, however, the
reaction occurs rapidly and with vigor enough, we say that the material “burns.”
The latter sort of oxidation is what we call “combustion.”
The affinity between the metalloids and oxygen has been noted by us before,
but in those cases most of the oxygen came from a different source.
In the wrought iron process most of it was furnished by the iron ore or scale
which was stirred into the metal, or by the slag which covered the “bath.” In the
Bessemer, or as it was first known in America, “Kelly’s air blowing process,” the
oxygen of the air blown through the molten metal directly oxidizes or burns out
the carbon, silicon, and manganese. The extremely rapid oxidation of these
furnishes the heat.
The iron, then, furnishes its own fuel and no outside combustible is needed.
How can this be?
In every ton of molten cast iron there are approximately 70 pounds of carbon,
25 pounds of silicon, and 15 pounds of manganese or a total of about 2000
pounds of these metalloids in the fifteen-ton charge of molten metal which goes
into the ordinary steel plant converter.
We know that if burned in a furnace this ton of high grade fuel would generate
much heat. Burned inside of the mass of molten metal it generates exactly that
same amount of heat and the heat is applied with such rapidity, directness and
efficiency that the molten iron which had a temperature of 2300° F., say, when
charged, in nine or ten minutes has become steel with a temperature of about
3000° F. simply through this rapid oxidation of its 4 to 6 per cent of metalloids.
How the blast under 15 to 30 pounds per square inch is applied through little
nozzles in the bottom of the modern “converter” and the several types of vessels
with which Bessemer experimented in the course of his investigations are shown
in the illustrations.
Nor is it necessary that the air be blown through the metal. Air blown upon its
surface accomplishes practically the same purpose, and in many of the steel
foundries of to-day smaller converters of this “surface-blown” type are used for
producing steel for castings. The large steel plants, however, use the larger
“bottom-blown” converter. Two or three of these vessels, working with proper
metal from the “mixer,” produce an immense tonnage of steel each 24 hours.
The “mixer” is quite necessary. It is a large vessel or furnace holding and
keeping hot from 75 to 300 or more tons of metal from the blast furnace. It
mixes and equalizes irons of various compositions, so that the converters have
the advantage of uniform and hot metal with which to work.
In addition it is made to perform a “refining” service. By mixing into the metal
a quantity of manganese, considerable of the sulphur present (a deleterious
substance) is removed.
The fifteen or twenty minute blowing of 15 tons of metal in the big egg-shaped
converters of a steel plant presents a spectacle which, when once observed, will
never be forgotten.