Sketch of the Gearing and Roller Slitter Line
In the early 1800Õs rolling and slitting iron was dirty and dangerous hard physical labor. The mill was dark and filled with smoke and noise all day. The iron bars were heavy and red hot and the slitted iron strips were hard to handle. Workmen wore heavy leather aprons and high boots to protect themselves, but they often suffered burns and bruises as hot metal chips and cinders flew off the bars as they ran through the heavy rumbling rollers and slitters.
The Dover Union mill produced barrel hoops, nail plates and rods and bar and strap stock for blacksmith shops.
Barrels were used to ship just about everything in those days so there was a steady demand for hoops, and newly developed nail machines were producing more and more nails to satisfy the demands for new construction in and around Dover.
Joseph Clark and his company were major share holders in the Dover Iron Company and operated a nail factory in Medfield on Mill Brook (Tubwreck Brook in Dover) just south of present County street. The Dover Union mill probably shipped nail plates to ClarkÕs ready for shearing into nails. They would have been rolled and slit plates that looked much like barrel hoops except wider and heavier*.
At the Dover Union Mill the main gear wheel turned on the same shaft as the
waterwheel. It was about seven feet in diameter and ran a much smaller cast
iron pinion gear and a huge flywheel on a secondary iron shaft. The flywheel
powered the lower drive shaft on the roller and slitter machines. The lower
drive shaft was geared directly to the upper shaft to turn it in the opposite
direction to pull the bars through.
Sketch of the Gearing and Roller Slitter Line
Mill workers controlled the waterwheel and the rollers and slitters with a lever that closed the gate in the flume. This cut the flow of water and stopped the waterwheel and the machines; but the wheel kept turning until all the buckets had emptied. When the control lever moved the flume gate back up, the water flowed again to start the waterwheel and machines.
The wheel pit walls probably extended above the ground and the mill floor to prevent soil and debris from washing or falling in. There also would have been a partition inside the building to protect the gearpit.
The rollers and slitters were cooled by water that came from the flume over the water wheel in a wooden trough or pipe. It flowed by gravity to a tub mounted a few feet higher than the top of the rollers and slitters. Smaller conduits then led the water to a smaller trough or pan at each set of machines, from which the water dripped onto the machines as they rolled and slit the hot iron.
Iron billets and bars were heated in the furnace and oven. They burned wood and probably some charcoal and fed the fire chambers from the north side. Firewood was hauled to the mill from the local area and probably was stacked in a log yard east of the mill. It was cut to length and split for easy handling and carted to the roofed area north of the ovens. It had to be dry before they burned it because any steam created in the fire chamber degraded the iron bar stock as it heated. Charcoal was produced by burning wood in kiln pits in nearby woodlands and carted to the mill site. Since it was generally free of moisture it might have been used in the furnace or to heat bar stock in ther oven to produce better quality rolled and slit iron.
A heavy shear cutter was used to cut the heat softened bars so the rolled iron strips and hoops would finish out at the desired lengths. The shears cutter worked much like a giant paper cutter. It had a heavy steel blade on a long pull bar activated by an eccentric cam turning on the secondary shaft. The shear cutter block was anchored down by two heavy eye bolts embedded in a large rectangular stone buried under the floor [visible at the site]. The top was about two feet above the floor surface.
Finished barrel hoops were bundled in the area at the back of the mill near the dam. They probably were put up in bundles of fifty or a hundred pounds on a specially constructed bench made of wooden planks. In those days they used a bench that was about eighteen to twenty feet long and two or three feet wide with V shaped wrought iron stands on top spaced three or four feet apart. After a batch of hoops was selected and placed in the stands a short lever bar at each stand was forced down and locked in place to press the bundle together. The bundle then was bound using thin iron tie strips. Sometimes the binder strips were heated so they would tighten around the bundle when they cooled.**
They would have had a ladder to the millrace and a roof hatch to the top of the dam so they could service the screens and gates.
Dover Union Iron Works Site c.1820
A separate warehouse building stood just to the north of the mill building on the millyard parcel. It was built into the side of the hill. Its westerly wall was a retaining wall where the hill had been cut back to make level land around it. Workers used small wheeled carts to move bar stock and finished bundles across the millyard between the warehouse to the mill.
The Company built their Mill House on the side of the hill west of the iron mill. It was a two story building with a clear view of mill operations. Mill superintendent Barden and his family lived there along with some of the mill workers. But Dover farmers provided much of the mill labor, working in early spring and winter when there was plenty of water flowing in Noanet Brook to operate the wheel and a time when they could not do much regular farmwork.
Workers carted the iron products on wagons and sleds drawn by oxen so the Company built a barn on the side of a hill south of the mill house. Ox teams were yoked together for especially heavy loads or for long hauls but usually were used in pairs so teams could be alternated day to day***.
To help promote the mill the town built a new road from Dedham Street for easier access. Following is an excerpt from ÒAnnals of the Dover WoodlotÓ, by J. W. Worthington, 1935:
'..The entrance road from Dedham Street to the mill was laid out by the Dover Selectmen by vote of February 21, 1816, [L.C.12133 or 2133?] and named by them the ÒUnion Company Mill Road,Ó but the name 'New Mill Road' or 'New Mill Street' was that commonly applied to it. The new road was accepted by the town at its meeting of April 7, 1817. As laid out, it extended only to the mill yard near the dam, but a continuation crossed the brook and ran to an extension of Strawberry Hill Street, passing near the location of the Jake house, [fn?] the cellar hole ... Jake was a negro whose white wife is said to have married him to spite her 'folks'. New Mill Street was discontinued as a town way by vote of the town March 4, 1878, and at the same time so much of Strawberry Hill Street as lay south of the Clancy house was also discontinued....'
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8/9/00
* - Robbins found no evidence of manufactured nails at the site but formal documents incorporating the Dover Union Iron Company specifed that the mill would manufacture nails.
** - ÒManufacture of Iron..Ó by Frederick Overman, 1849
*** - Frank Smith refers to the iron used at the Dover Union mill as 'Norway Iron'. It is not clear if it was imported from Norway , but if it was, it probably arrived at docks existing in Roxbury at that time. From there it would have to be hauled to Dover in ox drawn sleds and wagons. It took a whole day to go one way so teamsters would have had to stay overnight, probably at Dover Street.