Slag

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Dewfus

"Saving The Past So It Has A Future"
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It looks like the foam off of slag. Don't they add some kind of white colored stone to the iron ore or does the molten ore pick rocks and stones up when molten? I have a big piece with lots of iron and black and white stones. Looks like a meteorite but isn't.
ROBBYBOBBY64.
Is this something collected ? Where do I sign up I'll hunt slag lol ...
 

embe

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Is it magnetic? Looks like pieces of fire brick melted with...some type of metal. Could be residue from a casting.

If there was an industrial foundry in the area you'd probably be digging up examples like this by the truckload

**sorry, missed the part about being partially magnetic** Some type of alloy. Do you have access to an XRF gun? That would tell you exactly what material (but not the entire history behind it)
 

willong

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Don't they add some kind of white colored stone to the iron ore or does the molten ore pick rocks and stones up when molten?

Limestone was used as a flux if I am correctly recalling what my late father once told me.

My dad and his father both worked in steel mills. I think one or two of Dad's brothers also worked steel-making jobs in the eastern US for short stints.

After he was discharged from the army at the close of World War Two, Dad towed a house trailer ("mobile home" occurs much later in the etymology) from Pennsylvania, moving his parents, youngest brother and himself out to Redlands, CA. (I believe that Granddad and Dad both had jobs waiting for them at the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana--they were working there during my youth in any event.) Dad oft described the move as an ordeal resembling the cross-country journey of the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath. He hauled the trailer with a dilapidated old car that had mechanical, not even hydraulic, let alone power brakes. My father developed a lifelong hatred of trailer towing from the experience; but it was accompanied by an appreciation of The Salvation Army that lasted just as long. The charity bought the family some tires when they got stranded along the route by multiple tire failures.

From the age of eight through my junior year of high school, we lived within earshot of the Kaiser Steel Mill, the former site of which is now occupied by Auto Club Speedway, formerly California Speedway. Back then, it was a mostly rural area in a town of approximately 15,000 population. Other than the steel plant, the main feature of the neighborhood was "egg ranches" at the time. Now, the population is closing in on 220,000 and much of the region is unrecognizable to someone who has been away for decades. I used to hunt rabbits in abandoned vineyards--the businesses were killed by Prohibition--that are now covered by elbow-to-elbow apartment complexes.

Go to the following coordinates in Google Earth (or Maps) to see what overpopulation can do in less than one lifetime: 11SMT5357473123 That industrial yard was the field where my dad and I raised five beeves during 1959-1960. Zoom out and notice the densely-packed residential area to the north. That's where the weed strewn remnants of vineyards formerly lay. Once, Dad and I even found fresh cougar tracks in the dust by his parked truck when we returned from a short evening hunt, not more than one to two hours, in the area.

On the ridge farther north, near San Sevaine Flats in 1962, Dad and I walked up on a mature Nelson (Desert) Bighorn ram that was bedded on an edge overlooking a canyon. Facing into the wind, the ram never heard us as we approached with 15 or 20 feet of him.

One of the things I like about bottle collecting is the appreciation and preservation of history it inspires.

I apologize for taking off on a tangent. I was doing okay while reading through the general discussion of slag; but your question about a white stone additive brought on a flood of memories.

Returning, somewhat, to topic: I recall the entire south boundary of the Kaiser Steel facility as being a man-made ridge of slag. I have often wondered if the material was incorporated into the high banked turns of the racetrack.
 

sandchip

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Your dad was one of those real men, an increasingly rare breed nowadays. Don't apologize, I enjoyed the story. God help us if we are ever forced into another war like WWII. We'll play hell getting all the whineyass weenies to step up and be actual men to defend what previous generations died for. Now, I apologize for heading down that road nobody wants to take anymore.
 

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