Download Feb. 1632 Report

___________________United States Europe Steel Corporation___________________
__________________________1 Schwarza Road_____________________________
__________________________ Saalfeld, Thuringea___________________________
___________________________ February 1, 1632____________________________
Interim report on Grantville Strategic steel plant Saalfeld 1 the Amelia furnace
We finished moving all our employees into local housing last month. USE Steel is
grateful to all the people in Grantville who keep us supplied with food and coal this
month. The weather greatly slowed construction. We had twenty-one days of
snow, with daily highs around 24 degrees Fahrenheit and lows around 13 degrees
Fahrenheit. The natural gas tractors have kept the roads passable by sled, so
some wood, brick, refractories and ore shipments have come from Rudolstadt and
Kamsdorf. Use of the frozen Saale river as a road has also improved
transportation. Shipments of coal and clay are coming from the Grantville coal
mine on schedule. Last months supply of wood was used to build housing for our
workers, wooden walkways around the plant and between it and the housing. We
have built roofed bins to hold ore, limestone, coal, brick, and coke.
We have also spent considerable time building a road up to the lake, as well as
covering the flume and insulating it with three feet of dirt to keep our supply of
water from freezing. We have started building an enlarged flume to the plant and
near by housing. USE Steel is looking for the owners of the lake to purchase
water rights or outright purchase if the price is reasonable. The arrival of all the
stonemasons has allowed us to place sandstone blocks around the northeast edge of
the lake and built a large sandstone spillway. We are looking in the future to
replace the sandstone with granite block. However the sandstone has eliminated
the erosion problem for this year. We thank Grantville for their help building a
road up to the lake, moving the dirt to form the spillway, and in transporting the
block and laying the large sandstone block. It was much easier to take care of this
task with the help of a tractor.
There has not been much interest shown in building a hydroelectric plant. USE
Steel thinks it may have been premature to suggest it’s construction at this time,
with everyone so busy on other projects. The new gas lamps are a big help; there is
still not enough light to work with in the dead of night, but it does give us the
twilight hours and more with a full moon. We plan to take the arc lighting issue
up at a later time. USE Steel’s need to operate twenty-four hours a day means the
long winter nights are sill a problem. We are in great need of better lighting in
order to operate twenty-four hours a day. Getting the limelights working is
proving more difficult than we hoped. The gas lights are putting out about half the
light we would like.
USE Steel is planning to meet with Grantville Glass next month about setting up
joint ventures. We will also meet with Grantville Glass and Ziegelhuette Schwarza
Refrakteknik und Feuerfest to discuss the spinoff of our brickworks. Some of the
people at the Geological Survey have expressed unhappiness about the fact that
Euro-Mining receives early information about the location of valuable ores. In
response to the complaints, Euro-Mining has suggested a system whereby the
Geological survey would be supported by subscriptions costing one thousand
guilders a month. All subscribers would receive the raw information as it is
discovered; all others would be able to purchase the information when published in
the annual Geological Survey Report.
Euro-Mining is still negotiating to obtain mineral rights to the site for maganite
located in Ilfeld, about 30 miles 50 kilometers west of Halle, with John George
Elector of Saxony. Not much progress has been made this month but Euro-Mining is
working on the issue. We hope to provide better information in March, but with
weather the way it is April or May are more likely.
As with last month, construction has been down in January. The poor weather and
short days have hindered our transportation and construction rate. We are
producing 25,000 fire bricks a month and another 10,000 quartzite brick, plus firing
5,000 interlocking brick. We are using them to construct the recuperative ovens this
month. We will continue this schedule as long as the supply of quartzite hold up.
We are having such good success with fire brick and quartzite brick, plus the brick
arriving from Rudolstadt, that we have not started production of limestone brick.
However, we are testing the composition of limestone brick and test firing limestone
lamps with the limestone kiln. We have started up construction of the four
recuperative ovens and are making some progress even with the bad weather.
Construction on the Amelia furnace is going very slowly. We are laying more
sandstone foundation and work area for casting and the coke oven complex. The
placing of the brick house next to the south side of the beehive ovens is proving to
be a good idea, because it means the brick house stays about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
With the addition of gas lighting we are able to work three shifts. We may need to
use the limestone kiln for Quartzite interlocking brick. There has been one
delivery of 20 tons of tar by sled from Halle. We are starting work on the Carbon
brick kiln, and will try producing some test brick. Our experience with limestone
brick has shown us that this may take time to get right. The ground limestone ball
mill production has increased with some tuning of the mechanism and is now about
five tons a day, which is still not satisfactory, but much better than last month.
Transportation is a problem that will not be solved until we can build a railroad to
Kamsdorf and improve navigation on the river Saale. The winter weather is
wearing the horses out, and there is now a problem getting enough forage for all of
them. The horses require four tons of food a day. The shipments of sandstone,
brick, limestone and quartzite have started to build back up even with the poor,
weather, and short winter days. Because of the road improvements provided by
the use of the tractors in grading and dumping gravel to form the road bed. USE
Steel received on average eight tons of sandstone per day, along with six wagons of
limestone and four of quartzite. We are receiving seven wagon-loads of construction
brick each day from Rudolstadt.
We have on hand over two tons of copper waiting for the completion of a copper and
brass works. USE Steel has started construction of a copper foundry and casting
building. The arrival of the metal workers has brought this back to the fore. They
are hard at work building molds to cast our copper parts using one of our barns.
The supply of copper remains a real concern. We have on hand only two of
thirty-three tons needed before June
The carpenters have converted three new barns into a work area for the Liege metal
workers and additional office and warehouse space. We have moved the personnel
operation on site. We have decided to leave the payroll department in Grantville
where electricity allows us to process payroll using the computers my grandchildren
Henry and daughter Dawn brought with them.
USE Steel has finalized the basic design of the blast furnace this month. The
furnace foundation is a fifty-foot square slab of sandstone six feet deep laid on a
gravel base two feet deep. The furnace will be nine feet in diameter at the hearth
and sixty-two feet tall at the top of the ring. The downcomer and various other parts
will extend some twenty five feet above the basic structure.
The copper and bronze casting situation is such that we have decided to make all
our castings. The Suhl armories supplying us with lamps are willing to help but are
busy making canon. Their earliest projected delivery date is months after we need
the copper castings.
The twenty ton shipment of tar we received from Halle over the frozen river, led us
to order two hundred tons of tar from Sweden for delivery late next spring or early
summer to our warehouse in Halle. We hope we will receive another shipment
later this month and one or two shipments next month before the spring thaw.
The blacksmiths continue to convert our salvaged steel into blast furnace parts.
USE Steel has been forced to reevaluate construction of a refractory furnace to
reheat iron and steel. The need for this type of furnace to build some of the parts
for the blast furnace made it necessary to start construction of a refractory furnace.
This furnace will be used to produce blast furnace containment walls. The layout
of the Bessemer converter plant is complete. As we said construction will not start
until the blast furnace construction is finished. Our construction cranes are helping
us in the construction of the ovens and kilns by allowing us to raise scaffolding and
heavy material. We would not be able to build this large a blast furnace without
them.
USE Steel just bought four farms with barns and is now looking for two more.
We are talking with MaidenFresh Laundries and the United Steel Workers about
turning the laundry bath house operation over to the wives auxiliary under license
from MaidenFresh Laundries. USE Steel ’s policy of paying an extra three pence
to every worker whose entire family has taken at least one bath that week has been
quite successful. So far USE Steel has only lost four workers and seven family
members to flu, strep throat, and pneumonia this month. We are worried about
outbreaks of measles in Suhl and mumps in Frankfurt, considering the number of
deaths in those towns. We believe the housing and sanitation improvements have
had something to do with this.
USE Steel continues to appreciate the upgrading of the transportation system.
The improved road system to Jena and Erfurt, with construction moving on toward
Halle and Suhl, make us believe it will be possible to transport material in the
amounts required. The bridge is useable across the Saale even though constriction
is not finished. We are in the process of covering it to keep off snow. USE Steel
once again recommends that the government look into upgrading the Saale River to
make it navigable at least as far as Jena, and hopefully to Rudolstadt. We are
still diligently searching for supplies of copper for use in our plant. Our
reconnaissance team made it to Lubeck, and Copenhagen this month, purchasing
another four tons of copper for delivery to our warehouse in Halle as weather
permits. They were trying to obtain passage to Stockholm in their last report to us.
They are still looking for more copper and hope to find a supply in Stockholm.
They plan to spend several months looking over the iron situation in Sweden. The
quality of Swedish iron ore makes it very likely the this will be our next plant
location.
Once again, both Duke Johann Philipp and Count Ludwig Guenther have been very
helpful both in writing letters of recommendation and having personal
representatives in our party.
Yours very truly,
Frederic Swisher VP
USE Steel