Slitting mill

A piece was cut off the end of the bar with shears powered by one of the water wheels and heated in a furnace.

He accordingly started for Sweden, but with so little money that it was exhausted on his arrival there, and he was left (not unlike Oliver Goldsmith in his travels in Holland) with the solitary but somewhat lively resource of a fiddle.

He was, however, an excellent musician, as well as a pleasant fellow, and he successfully begged and fiddled his way to the celebrated Dannemora Mines, near Uppsala.

He therefore returned to Stourbridge, full of hope that he had acquired the secret of the construction of a slitting-mill, by means of which plates of wrought iron could be slit into nail-rods.

It is pleasant and gratifying to record that while amassing wealth himself, he was not unmindful of the needs of others; for he invariably and generously aided all the plans of benevolence set on foot in his neighbourhood".How far this legend reflects what actually happened is doubtful.

However the earliest version was published by Stebbing Shaw,[5] quoting the manuscript history of Richard Wilkes of Willenhall,[6] About a mile above [Kinver] is a place called the Hide ...

His son Richard bought Hyde Mill and Farm in 1647, and it descended in the family until John Brindley became bankrupt in 1730.

The process is as follows: they take a large iron bar, and with a huge pair of shears, work'd by a water-wheel, cut it into lengths of about a foot each; these pieces are put into a furnace, and heated red-hot, then taken out and put between a couple of steel rollers, which draw them to the length of about four feet, and the breadth of about three inches; thence they are immediately put between two other rollers, which having a number of sharp edges fitting each other like scissors, cut the bar as it passes thro' into about eight square rods; after the rods are cold, they are tied up in bundles for the nailor's use.