Iron Tube: Butt-Welded by Drawing Through Dies on a Draw Bench (Whitehouse, 1825)

Cornelius Whitehouse's way of making welded iron tubes, the basis of butt-weld pipe ever since: a strip of flat iron is turned up into a tube with its edges meeting, heated nearly to fusion in a hollow fire, and pulled by the chain of a draw bench through a pair of dies, which press the hot edges together and weld them. The tube is welded in two halves, one end at a time. Whitehouse made tubes 2 to 8 ft long in one piece, smooth inside and out. Unknown: plate thickness, width and tube sizes. The source does not give them. Source: Whitehouse's specification of 1825, quoted in C. D. Terry, Butt Weld Pipe (1907). Picture: Terry's Figs. 4 and 5.