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A fire iron is any metal instrument for tending a fire.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2017) |
A fire iron is any metal instrument for tending a fire.
There are three types of tools commonly used to tend a small fire, such as an indoor fireplace fire or yule log: the spade, the tongs and the poker itself. These tools make it possible to handle a fire without risk of burns or blisters.
A fireplace poker (also known as a fire iron) is a short, rigid rod made of fireproof material used to adjust coal and wood fuel burning in a fireplace, and can be used to stir up a fire. A fireplace poker is usually metal and has a point at one end for pushing burning materials (or a hook for pulling/raking, or a combination) and a handle at the opposite end, sometimes with an insulated grip. Iron is the most popular metal from which the pokers are wrought. Brass is a more expensive alternative for a home poker set. [1]
A slice bar has a flatter tip and can be used to stir up the fire or to clear the grates of ashes. Other fire irons include the fire rake (not to be confused with the firefighter's tool), fire tongs and fire shovel.
Many fireplace sets also include a small broom for sweeping up ash.
In Japan, traditional fire-tending device for a Japanese brazier ( hibachi ) is a pair of long metal chopsticks, called hibashi ( 火箸 , fire chopsticks), used to pick up and manipulate the charcoal.
As a steam locomotive runs, by-products are produced by the coal fire such as ash and clinker. If these waste products are allowed to build up in the fire, there would be an adverse effect on the performance of the locomotive. A fireman will employ various fire irons in order to clean the fire, whilst the locomotive stands. Below is a list of different types of fire iron that would typically be carried aboard a locomotive during operation. Note: not all the fire irons listed would be carried at once, only the ones needed:
The earliest and most primitive pokers were likely made from the same material as the fuel (that is, wood in the form of a hefty branch).[ citation needed ] This wooden tool may colloquially be called a poker or a "firestick". The first[ citation needed ] successful mass production of stokers as a part of a fireplace-set was designed and manufactured in Cape Girardeau, Missouri by the RL Hendrickson Manufacturing Corporation in 1898 at a price of US$1.[ citation needed ] Today, one of the sets in fair condition can fetch more than US$3500 at auction.[ citation needed ]
A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to the point at which work hardening no longer occurs. The metal is transported to and from the forge using tongs, which are also used to hold the workpiece on the smithy's anvil while the smith works it with a hammer. Sometimes, such as when hardening steel or cooling the work so that it may be handled with bare hands, the workpiece is transported to the slack tub, which rapidly cools the workpiece in a large body of water. However, depending on the metal type, it may require an oil quench or a salt brine instead; many metals require more than plain water hardening. The slack tub also provides water to control the fire in the forge.
A spade is a tool primarily for digging consisting of a long handle and blade, typically with the blade narrower and flatter than the common shovel. Early spades were made of riven wood or of animal bones. After the art of metalworking was developed, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the introduction of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth, with picks being required to break up the soil in addition to a spade for moving the dirt. With a metal tip, a spade can both break and move the earth in most situations, increasing efficiency. A classic spade, with a narrow body and flat tip is suited for digging post holes, and is not to be confused with a "roundpoint" shovel, which has a wider body and tapered tip.
A hair iron or hair tong is a tool used to change the arrangement of the hair using heat. There are three general kinds: curling irons, used to make the hair curly, straightening irons, commonly called straighteners or flat irons, used to straighten the hair, and crimping irons, used to create crimps of the desired size in the hair.
A fireplace or hearth is a structure made of brick, stone or metal designed to contain a fire. Fireplaces are used for the relaxing ambiance they create and for heating a room. Modern fireplaces vary in heat efficiency, depending on the design.
Main components found on a typical steam locomotive include:
In a steam engine, the firebox is the area where the fuel is burned, producing heat to boil the water in the boiler. Most are somewhat box-shaped, hence the name. The hot gases generated in the firebox are pulled through a rack of tubes running through the boiler.
The three L-1 0-8-8-0 Mallet-type steam locomotives of the Erie Railroad, built in July 1907 by ALCO, and numbered 2600, 2601 and 2602 ; were unique in that they were the only articulated camelback locomotives ever built.
The hibachi is a traditional Japanese heating device. It is a brazier which is a round, cylindrical, or box-shaped, open-topped container, made from or lined with a heatproof material and designed to hold burning charcoal. It is believed hibachi date back to the Heian period. It is filled with incombustible ash, and charcoal sits in the center of the ash. To handle the charcoal, a pair of metal chopsticks called hibashi is used, in a way similar to Western fire irons or tongs. Hibachi were used for heating, not for cooking. It heats by radiation, and is too weak to warm a whole room. Sometimes, people placed a tetsubin over the hibachi to boil water for tea. Later, by the 1900s, some cooking was also done over the hibachi.
A fireman, stoker or watertender is a person whose occupation it is to tend the fire for the running of a boiler, heating a building, or powering a steam engine. Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal, into the boiler's firebox. On steam locomotives the title fireman is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the title is usually stoker. The German word Heizer is equivalent and in Dutch the word stoker is mostly used too. The United States Navy referred to them as watertenders.
An andiron or firedog, fire-dog or fire dog is a bracket support, normally found in pairs, on which logs are laid for burning in an open fireplace, so that air may circulate under the firewood, allowing better burning and less smoke. They generally consist of a tall vertical element at the front, with at least two legs. This stops the logs from rolling out into the room, and may be highly decorative. The other element is one or more low horizontal pieces stretching back and serving to hold the logs off the bottom of the fireplace. An andiron is sometimes called a dog or dog-iron.
A pellet stove is a stove that burns compressed wood or biomass pellets to create a source of heat for residential and sometimes industrial spaces. By steadily feeding fuel from a storage container (hopper) into a burn pot area, it produces a constant flame that requires little to no physical adjustments. Today's central heating systems operated with wood pellets as a renewable energy source can reach an efficiency factor of more than 90%.
Bottom ash is part of the non-combustible residue of combustion in a power plant, boiler, furnace or incinerator. In an industrial context, it has traditionally referred to coal combustion and comprises traces of combustibles embedded in forming clinkers and sticking to hot side walls of a coal-burning furnace during its operation. The portion of the ash that escapes up the chimney or stack is, however, referred to as fly ash. The clinkers fall by themselves into the bottom hopper of a coal-burning furnace and are cooled. The above portion of the ash is also referred to as bottom ash.
White Portland cement or white ordinary Portland cement (WOPC) is similar to ordinary, gray Portland cement in all aspects except for its high degree of whiteness. Obtaining this color requires substantial modifications to the method of manufacturing. It requires a much lower content in colored impurities in the raw materials used to produce clinker: low levels of Cr2O3, Mn2O3, and Fe2O3), but above all, a higher temperature is needed for the final sintering step in the cement kiln because of the higher melting point of the mix depleted in iron oxides. Because of this, the process is more energy demanding and the white cement is somewhat more expensive than the gray product.
Coal combustion products (CCPs), also called coal combustion wastes (CCWs) or coal combustion residuals (CCRs), are categorized in four groups, each based on physical and chemical forms derived from coal combustion methods and emission controls:
A Bahnbetriebswerk is a German railway depot where the maintenance of locomotives and other rolling stock is carried out. It is roughly equivalent to a locomotive shed, running shed or motive power depot. These were of great importance during the steam locomotive era to ensure the smooth running of locomotive-hauled services. Bahnbetriebswerke had a large number of facilities in order to be able to carry out their various maintenance tasks. As a result, they needed a lot of staff and were often the largest employers in the area.
A shell or flued boiler is an early and relatively simple form of boiler used to make steam, usually for the purpose of driving a steam engine. The design marked a transitional stage in boiler development, between the early haystack boilers and the later multi-tube fire-tube boilers. A flued boiler is characterized by a large cylindrical boiler shell forming a tank of water, traversed by one or more large flues containing the furnace. These boilers appeared around the start of the 19th century and some forms remain in service today. Although mostly used for static steam plants, some were used in early steam vehicles, railway locomotives and ships.
Boilers for generating steam or hot water have been designed in countless shapes, sizes and configurations. An extensive terminology has evolved to describe their common features. This glossary provides definitions for these terms.
A launch-type, gunboat or horizontal multitubular boiler is a form of small steam boiler. It consists of a cylindrical horizontal shell with a cylindrical furnace and fire-tubes within this.
A coal shovel is a shovel designed for shoveling coal, coke or similar fuels, and on occasions does a double duty removing ash from the fireplace, firebox or furnace.