Casting Pigs

At Sloss, the technology of casting molten iron into bars called pigs changed dramatically over the years. Before 1931, casting took place inside the cast shed, where men cut molds into the sand floor so molten iron could pour through channels into individual molds. The arrangement of molds feeding from troughs gave rise to the term pig because workers thought the molds looked like pigs suckling at a sow. After 1931, casting was mechanized: iron flowed from the furnace down a curved runner into a ladle car outside the shed, and the ladle car moved along tracks to the pig casting machine. The men who broke up and carried out the iron from the sand casting beds were called iron carriers. Edward Uehling, inventor of the mechanical pig casting machine, said they covered the red-hot pigs with sand, wore shoes with thick wooden soles, walked on the hot iron, and used crowbars and sledge hammers to break the pigs from the sow and the sow into pieces. He called it as hot a job as a man could stand, said the work had to be done before the iron got cold so the sand could be prepared for the next cast, and argued that only a few men were physically fit for it and that the task was not fit for human beings.

Birmingham, Alabama · United States