The heavy rolling mill at the Grey River gorge operated at maximum water turbine gate opening. It shook the solid mountain stone with rhythmic, fiery fury.
Inside the reheating bay, twelve white-hot steel metal bars—each weighing two tons, cast from the morning’s Bessemer blow—sat in charcoal-fired soaking pits. It glowed with uniform, blazing bright lemon-yellow heat.
Master Borin Bronze-Lung directed the overhead crane with sharp chops of his hand.
“Hook the second bloom!” Borin bellowed through the smoke.
“Run it through the breakdown roughing rolls! Keep the water spray wide so the scale blows off the surface!”
Giles Croft stood on the raised check platform beside the rolling tables, his sight disappearing-filament fire gauge held to his eye.
“Heat is twenty-one hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” Giles called down. “Optimal plastic warping range.
Metal bar reduction must proceed by cross-rolling. Pass the bloom through the rolls twice longitudinally, then rotate ninety degrees on the turn-table and roll transversely.”
