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2023’s summer intern, Enrico DePetris, gives a thumbs-up after his first blacksmithing workshop.

The William Miller Summer Internship at the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop

By Lynne Squilla, Contributing Writer

The future of our region’s industrial history will be in the hands of the next generation.

That is a reality Rivers of Steel understands. Between its workforce development initiatives, public tours, demonstrations, and educational programs, Rivers of Steel is actively engaged in making sure that coming generations will be both interested and prepared for the challenges of preservation and interpretation at all of its historic sites. One of the most recent efforts is a unique internship at the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop in Greene County, a site Rivers of Steel has overseen since 2008.

T.J. Porfeli and George “Bly” Blystone, who help run and care for the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop.

“I am currently the youngest worker here,” says 42-year-old T.J. Porfeli, historic site coordinator for Young & Sons, which received National Historic Landmark status in 2017. “It was always my goal to bring younger generations in here to learn the historical aspects of this shop. If that means a 22-year-old takes my place who knows everything about it—that’s what I’d like to see!”

Porfeli’s vision got a boost in 2022 through a chance encounter with a local businessman, William Miller, who visited the machine shop for a tour.

“I was just telling him at one point that we’d like to keep the place alive by teaching younger people about it,” explains Porfeli. “This really struck a chord with him, and he said he also wants the place to continue to be here. So he asked what we hoped to accomplish and how he could help.”

The exterior of the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop, Rices Landing, PA. Photo by Richard Kelly Photography.

Soon after, Miller reached out to Rivers of Steel to brainstorm, and the result was a $50,000 endowment for an ongoing internship program to train Greene County youths in the machines, operations, history, and programs surrounding the foundry and machine shop.

Ron Baraff, Rivers of Steel’s director of historic resources and facilities recalled, “When Mr. Miller approached us about setting up a scholarship at the machine shop, we were ecstatic. He saw this as an opportunity to give back to the community in which he grew up and a fantastic opportunity to bring a new generation into the story—and we are so thankful for his generous donation.”

2023 saw the first student awarded the aptly named William Miller Summer Internship at the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop. Enrico DePetris, who goes by Ricky, was a 16-year-old student learning welding at Greene County Career & Technology Center, and he took the opportunity with energy and enthusiasm. Porfeli recalled a remarkable coincidence that occurred toward the end of the summer internship: “In August, Ricky was shadowing the tour guide and keeping an eye on the site. A guy shows up wanting a tour, so Ricky started explaining the machines and the history. And it was Bill Miller himself that wanted the tour! He got to see right there the fruits of his contribution.”

Ricky DePetris at the forge on a recent Sunday afternoon.

Porfeli continued, “I always said, if an intern walks in with the same feeling I have for this place, then that’s really what we’re looking for.”

Ricky remains involved at the site, returning to help with tours and special events.

The W.A. Young & Sons shop is located in the historic district of Rices Landing on the Monongahela River. It is a nearly 124-year-old facility where time stood still and its vintage machines remained intact. Its original owners, the Young family, and their workers kept the twenty-five belt-driven machines, such as lathes, drill presses, milling machines, and pipe and bolt threaders, running smoothly for decades, with few updates except replacing the power source, from steam to Bessemer gas to electricity. Currently, it’s powered by a tractor engine. The building also houses a small foundry with a blacksmithing forge.

The interior of the front shop, featuring the machines and the line shaft system. Image by Richard Kelly Photography.

Over the years, the shop’s talented machinists and pattern makers crafted parts to repair local factory and mine equipment as well as pieces for the paddleboats and steamboats that once docked along the banks of the nearby Monongahela River. When the doors were closed in 1965, local residents and volunteers watched over the site. For a while, it was stewarded by the Greene County Historical Society—that is, until Rivers of Steel took charge of it in 2008 and began securing funding for improvements. Restorations to the building and refurbishments to the machinery have since occurred. Regular tours and public events, like the annual Hammer-In Festival that features area blacksmiths, are becoming increasingly popular.

The site is a true industrial heritage gem and the only one of its kind in the nation, so it also provides an unmatched training ground for students who want to learn more about traditional machining, metal casting, and blacksmithing.

Kiera, the 2024 summer intern, works on a machine with Steve, a dedicated volunteer at W.A. Young & Sons.

This year’s summer intern, fifteen-year-old Kiera, is learning to become a machinist in trade school. Porfeli was impressed by her intense interest in everything: “Her very first day, she watched a volunteer oiling one of the machines and said, ‘Can I do that?’ Then she jumped in to learn how to cut and help install a damaged machine belt.”

Among the variety of machines these interns become familiar with are three different lathes, a milling machine, a shaper, a planer, a radial-arm drill press, belt-driven hacksaws, and a keyway cutter. The internship program teaches what each of these machines was used for and the kinds of parts they made. Interns also assist during the blacksmithing and small aluminum-casting demonstrations. Kiera will suit up and help pour molten aluminum, as well as learn how to hammer an iron hook, or hairpin.

Equally important to learning the nuts and bolts of the time-honored equipment and metalworking skills is the ability to tell the stories—to interact with the public and make history come alive.

Rivers of Steel’s director of education, Suzi Bloom, helped refine the application process and got the word out about the scholarship to high schools, trade-training centers, and youth groups, such as the Boy / Girl Scouts and 4-H clubs, across Greene County.

She described the additional benefits of this internship: “There’s a big focus now on career readiness, and this is a great opportunity for students to get those kinds of hands-on skills. That’s something not always thought of when you hear ‘preservation internship.’ They also get to do the tours, learning those ‘soft skills,’ like how to greet people, face them when you’re talking, projecting your voice in a room, and how to break down and explain the complex machines to anyone who walks in. Those are hard-to-get skills. Public speaking can be nerve wracking, so this is a nice small environment to learn those things.”

To apply for the internship, students are asked to share their personal interest in machinery and historic preservation, to describe why local history is important to them, and to relate how what they learn in this internship could benefit their education.

“It’s a good resume-builder,” said Bloom. “I have my position because someone gave me an opportunity to work and learn. It is important for us to reach into this rural community, which may not have as many experiences available for young people. It’s also important for them to learn about the ingenuity at W.A. Young & Sons. Some of what was done there was genius. There were no hardware stores to run to, so they had to make parts for whatever needed to be repaired.”

Rivers of Steel’s CEO August Carlino recognized Ricky DePetris at the 2024 Hammer-In Festival.

Porfeli is involved on a daily basis with the interns, and he believes that by the end of their internship, they will understand even more strongly how important it is to save these sites and traditional skills. “I want the legacy to be for future generations to come experience this site—there is not another like it without any modern-day machines at all. It was an art form what people did here. It will be lost—it’s going to be gone if new generations are not engaged to learn about it, care about it, and share the passion of it.”

Ron Baraff added, “We are always looking for ways to get people excited about our region and its rich history, especially at such a gem as the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop. Through projects such as the Miller internship, I feel confident that we can move the site into the future in capable and motivated hands!”

Lynne Squilla is a skilled and creative storyteller. She honed her craft as a writer and producer / director of original scripts, documentaries, articles, web content, stage, and other live presentations. While her work has taken her across the globe, she’s rooted in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and has a passion for sharing stories about our region’s past.

Check out Lynne’s previous article on Rivers of Steel’s new workforce development program.

Norma Ryan, a Remembrance—1931 – 2024

By Julie Silverman, Contributing Writer

Augie Carlino’s first encounter with Norma Marcolini Ryan was through food, which is not surprising if you’re of Italian heritage.

“Norma found out I was Italian,” said Augie, president and CEO of Rivers of Steel, “which isn’t hard to discover with my last name. So she invited me down to Brownsville for lunch. She made polenta for me in the old-school—the traditional—way, the way my grandmother used to make it. I hadn’t had it for years, since my grandmother passed away, and Norma wasn’t sure if I would like her version. It was just like my grandmother had made the polenta! That’s how spot on it was. I was just blown away. And that’s how I met Norma.”

In the early 1990s, the Mon Valley Initiative (MVI) was housing the Steel Industry Heritage Task Force, as Rivers of Steel had yet to become its own nonprofit. At that time, many of the MVI communities were working together to create a heritage area in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Brownsville, a former industrial town, was legendary. In the 1700s and 1800s, it was a booming and bustling hub of transportation and industry. Starting as a trading post along a well-worn Native American trail, its location on the Monongahela River made it advantageous to steamboat and barge building. When George Washington and Thomas Jefferson planned for the National Road to go through ninety miles of western Pennsylvania, Brownsville’s status as a hub for western expansion was sealed. Anyone heading into the western frontier of early America headed through Brownsville.

For those who knew her, Norma Ryan was the modern-day heart and soul of Brownsville. When she was growing up, Brownsville was lively and energetic. The town was still the intersection of railroad traffic, coal and coke transportation, barge making, and the National Road. Later in life, Norma would tell stories of the downtown sidewalks being so crowded that you had to step into the street to get around people.

Then things changed. As the steel mills and coal mines in the region put people out of work, stores began to close, and as it is in so many industrial towns, properties became neglected. Norma stepped slightly away from her long career as a beautician at Norma’s Beauty Salon to become a founding member of Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp (BARC), whose mission it is to achieve economic development through historic preservation, heritage tourism, outdoor recreation, community stewardship, education, youth advancement, and the arts.

Joe Barantovich, a community advocate for Brownsville and a collaborator with Norma, said, “She wanted to save every building. She thought they all could be saved, and she wanted the town to be the town she remembered.”

It wasn’t only the industry downturn that blighted Brownsville. In the early 1990s, Pennsylvania was considering riverboat gambling. A developer who wanted to capitalize on the idea bought more than 100 properties—some for only a dollar that were still in good condition. Riverboat gambling gave way to land-based casinos, and the developer’s plans for the buildings were scuttled.

Barantovich said, “The train station, which is called Union Station, was purchased. One day people were working there, and the next day the doors were locked. That’s how quick it was. Family photographs are still on the desks. The developer bought basically the whole downtown and then just let it sit. Norma was adamant about saving the unique architecture of every building.”

Barantovich leads Brownsville’s Perennial Project, a successful effort of planting flowers around the downtown area and creating an annual community project of beautification events and art installation (a project that has been supported by Rivers of Steel’s Mini-Grant program). But it was the Perennial Project’s Portals collaboration with local students that captured Norma’s memories of traveling to Kennywood via Union Station, combining that recollection with virtual reality.

“We kind of butted heads sometimes,” Barantovich laughed. “You can’t save all of the buildings, and we did lose a couple of really nice ones. But Norma was bound and determined to get things done. She had her vision.”

Carlino said, “Sure, she and Joe often disagreed, but they worked together for the betterment of the town. Norma wasn’t the type of person to hold a grudge. She always wanted to find a way to work with you.”

When the MVI and BARC were working on the renovations of the Flatiron Building, Rivers of Steel helped with interpretive planning and exhibits. It was more than a ten-year process to restore the building. Currently, the Flatiron Building also houses a museum for Frank Melega, a local artist and good friend of Norma’s. Melega was a coal miner’s son, and Norma was a coal miner’s daughter. His portrayals of life in southwestern Pennsylvania in the height of the coal and coke era became nationally famous.

Norma once said, “I’ve always been civic minded, always interested in people.” Add to that her drive and determination to revitalize Brownsville, and it might have seemed a natural progression for someone to suggest that Norma run for mayor. She was serving on the borough council and overseeing restoration of the Flatiron Building when the advice propelled her into history. In 2002, Norma Jean Ryan became Brownsville’s first and only (to this day) female mayor.

After her years as mayor, she again worked with BARC, giving tours in the historic St. Peter’s Church. It was the church of her childhood and where, as a devout Catholic, she attended mass as an adult. Her nephew Keith Ryan said, “She was a tour guide in our church. She studied the stained-glass history and the Irish coal-mine towns. ‘Patch town’ history was a big interest of hers. Any research she could do for the old history of the town she would try to preserve.”

Norma’s nephew Timmy Ryan shared: “Nobody’s ever been more positive than her. One of her sayings was, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. She lived by that, and her faith in God and her family and friends and keeping everybody together in a positive manner.”

Norma Ryan taking pleasure in serving her food to others. Photo courtesy of Augie Carlino.

Her house was the place to gather, and the place to eat. Along with restoring Brownsville, cooking was one of her great passions. “She baked every day. Her life was in the kitchen. You never left her house hungry. She always had cinnamon rolls, pies, cookies, chicken, homemade pasta. If she wasn’t cutting hair, she was cooking,” Barantovich said.

Carlino said, “The last time I saw her, I was taking a group of people from Carnegie Mellon University through a tour of the Valley, and one of the stops was Brownsville. We were touring the Flatiron Building, and she showed up with all these cookies—I mean, a big, big tray of cookies! Then she came over to me and gave me a big hug and said, ‘I’m sorry it’s only cookies.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And she said, ‘I wanted to make a gnocchi or polenta for you, but I didn’t have the time nor the energy to do it.’ She was really, really regretful about that. There’s not enough words in my vocabulary to describe her. She was just an amazing person.”

When Carlino went to Brownsville for his first lunch with Norma, he returned to his coworkers complaining. In the staff meeting, they lamented that in all the years of working in Brownsville, Norma never invited them to lunch.

“I come in,” Carlino said, “and I’m on the job literally a month or two, and not only do I get invited down there by her, but she’s serving me polenta. Polenta! Homemade sausage. Homemade bread. And I realized my coworkers were joking with me . . . I’m so thankful that she shared a number of years in my life with me. We just had a great time together!”

During the past year, in her role as Coordinator of Rivers of Steel’s Creative Leadership Program, Ashley Kyber had weekly—sometimes daily—conversations with Norma. She spoke fondly of her: “Benevolent in her love of Brownsville, Norma Ryan was a wealth of cultural history and a visionary optimist for the future of her community.”

Norma embraced a joie de vivre. Even with her boundless energy and countless hours of research, Barantovich said, “She always made the time. Her saying was, ’Stop and smell the roses’ and enjoy life. That was how she answered her phone on her message—it’s still on there. If she didn’t answer the phone, she would say, ‘I’ll call you back, and take time to smell the roses.’ She was a good people person. Great smile. She was a lot like a rose—beautiful, but she could be prickly if she wasn’t getting her way. She was bound and determined to see the way she wanted to get things done.”

Keith said, “One funny story: She was always looking for volunteers for any work everywhere. She finally got a volunteer one time to do some job like pulling weeds or pulling up poison ivy—things like that, and she called me wanting me to give him some advice on how to go a little bit faster. And I said, ‘Aunt Norma, he’s a volunteer! He’s working for nothing! If it takes him all week or all month, what’s the hurry?’ She figured that if he was going to volunteer, he should be up to her speed. We talked her out of that.”

There was Norma time, and there was everyone else’s time. But even Norma slowed down. Eventually, she spent winters in Florida, from late fall to late spring; however, no distance could keep her from calling to make sure things got done in Brownsville. Her heart, her smile, her determination—and perhaps a wafting aroma of homemade sauce—continue to weave their way through the town Norma loved so much.

“Brownsville has lost its greatest spokesperson,” said Dick Wallace, Rivers of Steel’s Board Chair.

Born in a time when Brownsville was the place to be, Norma passed away on April 30, 2024. Brownsville has reclaimed much of its former glory because of Norma and the people she brought together. Her life was celebrated on Saturday, June 1, at her beloved St. Peter’s Church by the people she loved and who loved her.

Read more about Norma Ryan in this article from the Observer-Reporter.

Julie Silverman is a museum educator, tour facilitator, and storyteller of astronomy and history for various Pittsburgh area organizations, including Rivers of Steel.  A Chatham University 2020 MFA graduate, her writing is most often found under the by-line of JL Silverman. Occasionally, under the name of Julia, she has been seen on TV.

A blacksmith demonstration at the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop for the Hammer-In Festival.

The 2024 Hammer-In Festival

By Lynne Squilla, Contributing Writer

Step back in time to the age of blacksmiths and local machine shops at the annual Hammer-In Festival in Greene County, about an hour south of Pittsburgh. Set in the charming town of Rices Landing, overlooking a rural stretch of the Monongahela River, the festival takes place in and around the wonderfully restored W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop. The event traditionally happens the third Saturday of April and promises something for everyone.

The interior of the front shop, featuring the machines and the line shaft system. Image by Richard Kelly Photography.

“This is a must-see attraction! And it’s surprising in this quiet neighborhood to have this amazing marker of our industrial heritage,” says Greene County Tourism Director JoAnne Marshall.

Approaching the 123-year-old shop with its red-barn clapboard exterior, the clang of hammers on anvils greets the ears. Tristate area blacksmiths will be demonstrating their artistry for the public to enjoy inside this National Historic Landmark. Metal casting, copper working, and a tour of the facility and its machines are also part of the experience, along with an auction, food, and a first-ever local crafts market.

“The Hammer-In has been going for 36 years (with two years off during COVID times),” T.J. Porfeli, Rivers of Steel’s historic site coordinator, explained. “It’s a rare chance to have access to blacksmiths. Here you’re surrounded by multiple blacksmiths with a variety of skill sets.”

Blacksmiths from Pittsburgh Area Artist Blacksmiths Association (PAABA) and the Appalachian Blacksmiths Association (ABA) will be crafting things such as hooks, kitchen utensils, animal and botanical forms, and more. A different smith will demonstrate every hour, taking questions, and describing this age-old process of heating and hammering iron into versatile, attractive, and functional items. It is a chance for craftsmen to meet and collaborate with one another, as well as to offer their skills for public hire. The event has become an immersive and educational way to keep the trade of blacksmithing alive and evolving.

A small crowd observes a blacksmithing demonstration during the 2023 Hammer-In Festival.

Chris Holt, secretary and editor of PAABA, who is also a blacksmith, describes the fascination of watching her fellow artisans at work: “Instead of mass-produced stuff, people like to see the beauty of hand-crafted items. And if we don’t teach and use this skill, we’re going to lose it.”

The blacksmiths will also present some of their original craftworks that day at a public auction during the festival.

“There will be hooting and hollering as the auctioneer engages the public to open up their wallets to benefit the site,” says Porfeli. “There’s always amazing stuff there.”

Proceeds of the auction will go to PAABA and ABA and toward the continuing restoration of this local treasure—efforts led by Rivers of Steel after taking ownership of the unique facility in 2008. Funds from Save America’s Treasures and four Keystone Historic Preservation Construction grants helped restore the building itself.

The restored exterior of the W.A. Young & Sons Foundry and Machine Shop, Rices Landing, PA. Photo by Richard Kelly Photography.

Ron Baraff, director of historic resources and facilities for Rivers of Steel, elaborates: “We have been able to replace the roof and repair the gutters and clapboard walls and windows and stabilize the building. If you lose that shell, you lose everything.”

“There is no other site like it, in terms of beauty of place and being completely untouched, and that’s largely because—and this is a good thing—it’s on the way to nowhere, in this cute little hamlet where time stood still,” Baraff shares. He goes on to say that the machines themselves were well maintained by the Young family and subsequent owners while the shop was open. “It’s also fortunate that it had and will continue to have neighbors and volunteers who are really interested in preserving and protecting this site. They’ve kept an eye on it for many years.”

Young & Sons is the nation’s last of the “small job” machine and metal-working shops that once supported local communities and industry. Before the early twentieth-century move to mass-production machining facilities, workers at Young & Sons would repair and make replacement parts for anything from bikes and automobiles to steamboat, coal mine, and small factory equipment. Unlike other such shops around the country, Young’s did not upgrade its late-1800s technology, except to switch its power sources over the decades—from steam to Bessemer gas to electricity. A period-accurate Bessemer engine will be on display at the event.

“This place is the epitome of being like the workers went to lunch and never came back,” according to Baraff. “Everything is just like it was when the last machine was turned off and more: every invoice was there, every chewed pencil. Everything was preserved, even the hardware store upstairs with all the little drawers and screws and bolts.”

A family tours the Machine Shop during the 2023 Hammer-In.

The Young & Sons interior is both quaint and impressive, with its twenty-five line shaft-driven machines that fill the front shop, animated by a web of pulleys and belts that whirl and dance when switched on to run the old drill presses, lathes, pipe and bolt threaders, and milling machines. Currently, a lawnmower engine powers the entire system of functional machines.

Chris Holt reflects: “To see it all oiled and moving and gracefully doing its task . . . it’s amazing.  It’s a whole ballet of machines happening in unison!”

The floor of the forge room is earthen, to prevent fire from flying metal sparks and the small smithing furnaces in the past. It makes a perfect setting for modern-day blacksmiths to ply their old-time trade.

The fact that time has not touched this gem of a workshop, which opened in 1900 and shut down in 1965, has been an asset for Greene County and all those who love industrial history and nostalgia in general. It has become a meaningful backdrop for the visiting blacksmiths, too.

“Other than how people are dressed, it could all be seventy, eighty years ago. The sounds, the sights, the smells. The volunteers and blacksmiths—they’ve breathed new life into this intimate space,” observes Baraff.

Chris Holt agrees: “The whole environment, the river, the machines. You can just imagine a paddle wheeler coming up the river, docking to get parts repaired. It’s this amazing frozen spot in time. It has to be seen to be believed!”

A moment from an aluminum pour demonstration during the 2023 Hammer-In Festival.

Rounding out the Hammer-In experience will be a first for the festival: a copper raising demonstration (hammering flat sheets of metal to create a vessel or tools) paired with the popular molten aluminum pour demonstration. Spearheaded by T.J. Porfeli, there will also be a first-ever makers’ marketplace, where local craftspeople will display their goods for sale to the public. The Boy Scouts will be selling food, and proceeds will benefit their organization.

“This place contributed to the economy of the region, and it’s still here and doing that,” says JoAnne Marshall. “I make sure I attend every year. You just never see blacksmithing like this. And then the crafts and the people . . . it just makes for a wonderful day.”

This family-friendly event happens on April 20, 2024. It is free to the public, and donations are always appreciated. Festivities begin at 9:00 a.m., with a welcoming ceremony at noon, followed by the auction at 1:00 p.m. and an aluminum pour. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch the past come alive!

Lynne Squilla is a skilled and creative storyteller. She honed her craft as a writer and producer / director of original scripts, documentaries, articles, web content, stage, and other live presentations. While her work has taken her across the globe, she’s rooted in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and has a passion for sharing stories about our region’s past.

Check out Lynne’s previous article on the Intercollegiate Iron Pour.

Coral Penelope Lambert works with five students to pour iron from a smaller ladle while two more students observe during last Saturday’s inaugural Intercollegiate Iron Pour at the Carrie Blast Furnaces.

The Inaugural Intercollegiate Iron Pour

By Lynne Squilla, Contributing Writer

With Carrie’s majestic Blast Furnace #6 towering behind them, thirty college students and mentoring artists gathered on a brisk March weekend to pour their own iron creations and forge ongoing connections among the metal arts community.

Rivers of Steel’s first Intercollegiate Iron Pour drew students from Carnegie Mellon University, Alfred University in New York, Shepherd University in West Virginia, SUNY Cortland in New York, Seton Hill Greensburg, Chicago Art Institute, and NYU, who were joined by seasoned Rivers of Steel staff and alumni from past iron-pouring events hosted at the National Historic Landmark. Suited up in protective leather aprons and chaps, spats, boots, gloves, masks, and safety glasses, the students put their faces near the fire for a one-of-a-kind encounter with iron casting, sharing their passion for working with this challenging but captivating medium.

The crew of the first Intercollegiate Iron Pour.

“It’s just brilliant,” said Alfred University’s Coral Penelope Lambert, professor of sculpture dimensional studies and director of the National Casting Center Foundry. “This place is a sacred site, almost like Stonehenge. The grounds we walked on have this spirit of the industrial past, and that is a really rich thing for artists.” Lambert has been coming to Carrie since 2017, and her own work, called Gushers, was cast on site and now permanently graces the Iron Garden on the eastern side of the landmark site. For this pilot intercollegiate pour, she brought one undergrad and one graduate student from Alfred’s School of Art and Design, Sculpture Dimensional Studies Division, plus two Alfred alumni.

Chris McGinnis, Rivers of Steel’s director of arts, leads students through the Iron Garden. Coral Lambert’s sculpture is visible to the right of Chris.

“The ‘big sell’ here is you’re going to meet people who will become part of your network after college. It shows what can happen outside of academia and in the future,” Lambert continued.

Josiah Shuman, a junior studying Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, brought nine fellow engineering students to the event; eight are members of a group he founded, called The CMU Forge Club. Shuman and his friends started with an interest in learning how to create sword and knife blades, and Josiah has been to the Carrie Blast Furnaces for blacksmithing workshops. But, he pointed out, he and his colleagues are more steeped in metallurgical theory, as well as research in such technologies as electronic high-density storage materials and capacitors. Most of them had never witnessed this centuries-old technology—a glowing mass of molten iron smelted and poured.

“It was truly awesome,” said Shuman, “and when it sparked, the staff yelled ‘Turtle!’ and you hunch up your shoulders and tuck your face mask in to protect yourself.”

“Everyone working with the students was so organized and enthusiastic and so helpful,” Shuman continued. “Engineers, and I guess a lot of artists, are really kinda shy and not really outgoing types, but as soon as you make connections, you go out of your way to talk to others at this event, which was a little out of our comfort zone. But I think we’ll maintain a lot of these relationships in the future.”

The crew pours iron from the primary ladle.

Building a community in the metal arts is the Pour’s primary objective. Chris McGinnis, Rivers of Steel’s director of arts, explains the inspiration behind this new event: “Rivers of Steel is part of a small but fierce community of people who are passionate about metal casting. And we want to grow that community to more people outside of that fray, to get students excited about metal and the trades and handwork, and share the history of Carrie that they may not know about.”

Carrie provides a truly unique experience for students of metal arts, where 300 to 500 pounds of iron can be melted and poured. The portable furnace used for the event is a scale version of the two giant early twentieth-century blast furnaces that dominate the site, providing a setting unlike any commercial or university campus foundry.

Rivers of Steel has hosted public pours at Carrie, including at the Festival of Combustion and an Iron Casting Spectator Event, but this is the first program focused specifically for university-level students to give them a sense of the history of iron-making in this region and to keep interest and these time-honored technical skills alive.

The scaled-down furnace at this pour is named “Bumblepig” and was designed and built by two of Coral Lambert’s past students, Paige Henry and Kay Dartt. While both are artists, Henry is now Rivers of Steel’s metal arts technician, and Dartt is a professor of art at Shepherd University. Ed Parrish, the metal arts coordinator for Rivers of Steel, who organized and supervised this event, elaborates: “Her full name is Frannie van Bumblepig [local blast furnaces were traditionally named after women from prominent mill families], and she’s an intermittent cupola-style furnace, which means we plug a tap hole with clay, and when the well is full of molten metal, you tap out 300 pounds. We poured a total of about 3,000 pounds of iron at this event.”

The iron is all recycled scrap from such things as old bathtubs, brake rotors, or radiators, combined with limestone and coking coal, heated by propane and then forced air. It duplicates, in scale, the same process that the Carrie Furnaces employed from 1907 through 1978, with the exception that hematite and taconite (iron ore pellets) were used rather than scrap iron.

Experienced artists and those seeing iron poured for the first time all got an up-close, hands-on experience, whether suiting up and actually poking the tap hole and ladling the 2,500-degree liquid iron, or standing by with essential tools.

Students prepared to participate in the pour.

“All those who wanted to were given a chance to pour,” Parrish said. “It’s hard work, and it’s a team process. Very orchestrated and controlled. But everyone is generally in awe because it’s very dramatic; there’s a natural theater to this process.” The molten iron was poured into resin, sand-packed molds that many of the students premade and brought with them.

Along with the spectacular visual elements, there was the steady hum of people communicating during the intricate process, the clang of pulley chains as the ladle was hoisted, the hiss of sparks, and the bang-bang as cooled metal was knocked off the poke-hole lance. It was all a faint reminder of the heat, glowing skies, and steady noise that emanated from the massive furnaces #6 and #7 at Carrie, along with up to 1,250 tons of iron daily that each of those two produced in their heyday . . . the entire site produced up to 9,000 tons a day!

Stay, 2023, aluminum and bronze, by Clark Clark of Shepherd University.

In addition to the big pour on Saturday, students also participated in a pop-up suitcase exhibition on Friday, where they shared “suitcase-sized” works they had created at their schools or studios. Displayed on 55-gallon drum pedestals inside the AC Power House on the grounds of the Carrie Blast Furnaces, there were a variety of cast metal pieces, sculptures, and even a work in neon.

Participants also had a chance to make their own Doodle Bowl, a popular workshop offered at Carrie where molten metal is poured into small molds that can be custom designed by carving out shapes and patterns in a preformed resin bowl. For this premier student event, the bowls were cast in iron, rather than the usual aluminum used during The Doodle Bowl Experience, the publicly offered version of the workshop.

Josiah Shuman and his fellow CMU students cast preformed 4×4-inch tiles as well as the Doodle Bowls. “As engineers, we were laughing, like, ‘We have to get creative now!’ But it was a great chance to explore our artistic side that engineering doesn’t always allow.”

Ed Parrish adds, “Teaching creativity no matter what your field is can be one of the most important things in your toolbox. There’s always a give-and-take with the students, too. I learn as much from them as they do from me.”

Participants were also given a tour of the Carrie grounds and part of furnace #6. Shuman, who had been to a Rivers of Steel’s Blacksmithing Basics: Hooks and Hairpins program in the past, gained even more insight from this event: “Before this weekend, I knew little of iron and steelmaking in Pittsburgh. [On the tour], you could imagine yourself as one of these iron makers decades ago all day, every day, year after year, pouring heaps of hot metal. You feel small next to those furnaces.”

Chris McGinnis, left, led the students through the historic furnaces. Here, they posed for a photo on the stove deck.On Sunday, once the molten iron had sufficiently cooled overnight, Rivers of Steel’s metal arts staff and crew broke the students’ cast pieces out of their molds. The works ranged from very intricate, lacy designs to solid mountain-like forms. “They came out perfect,” said Coral Lambert, who helped with this final stage.

An anatomical heart was one of the items cast.

For mentors like Lambert, the Intercollegiate Iron Pour goes well beyond academics and what can be learned in a classroom. “This is just a melting pot of information that you can be part of and can help shape it for the future. It’s not just the technical stuff, but the important interactions and relationships created.”

Students like Josiah Shuman hope to return to Carrie to work again with staff and other artists. “I’d love to do more of these pours and see what other collaborations—like even a bladesmithing workshop—could come out of it.”

“The connections sparked at this event will serve these artists and engineers well as they complete their schooling and pursue their careers,” said Chris McGinnis. “We hope to see them all again soon!”

Lynne Squilla is a skilled and creative storyteller. She honed her craft as a writer and producer / director of original scripts, documentaries, articles, web content, stage, and other live presentations. While her work has taken her across the globe, she’s rooted in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and has a passion for sharing stories about our region’s past.

Check out the metal arts programs offered by Rivers of Steel.