| East Dubuque Local Area History Project | |
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 Scotch hearth smelter |
by
K.P. |
Smelting was used to separate rock from lead. The oldest method of smelting was used by the Indians. Indians smelted the ore by piling up wood and putting it on fire which melted the ore. They called the places were they melted the lead “Indian furnaces.” |
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| The French had better smelters that were built on the top of hillsides so that the fire would be hotter. They dug a pit near the top of a hillside. The pit was about two feet square at the top, eight inches square at the bottom, and two feet deep. A flat hole was dug at the bottom to collect the lead. When a hole was filled with lead, it would make plat. A plat is lead that is round and has a hole in the middle were they put a stick so they can lift it up Later, the lead was formed in long troughs, and the form that came out was called a “pig.”. The difference between plat and pig is that a plat is round and a pig is long. | |
 A lead pig |
People started using the Scotch Hearth in the mid 1830s. A Scotch Hearth is a cast iron box about two square feet and about one foot high. The chimney is ten feet wide at the base and thirty to thirty-five feet high. To put the lead in the Scotch Hearth, you would open the top and put the lead in. The process of smelting involves letting the fire get hot enough so lead would melt. Then they would put the melted lead on the workstone. A workstone is a box that they put lead on when it is done being smelted. Then they would put more fuel in the Hearth. After that is done they add the ore in. The process would take six to twelve hours. That would make about thirty pigs or pounds of lead. The remaining material from the lead was called gray slag, and still had some lead left in it. If the smelting process was done two times, it would be called black slag, and there would be no lead left in it. |
| The Cupola Furnace is thirty to forty feet high. The Cupola Furnace is eighteen inches in diameter. The ore is placed in the back and the fire is in the back. | |
| One thousand pounds of lead was worth anywhere from twenty-eight to seventy-five dollars. Miners had to pay the smelters to smelt the lead. | |
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Bibliography History of Jo Daviess County 1903. |
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