Woodruff & Beach Iron Works

Is the corporate title of a Company incorporated in 1853, and are the successors immediately of Messrs. Woodruff & Beach, and remotely of Alpheus & Truman Hanks, who, under the firm-style of A. & T. Hanks, established in 1821, at the same location, the first Iron Foundry in Connecticut, known as the "Hartford Iron Foundry." The works of the Company have for several years been among the most extensive in New England for the manufacture of Engines and heavy machinery, and recently large additions have been made to the foundries, consisting of a centre and two wings, 230 by 63 feet inside area. The centre will contain a pit capable of holding the mold for the heaviest castings ever founded, and two immense cranes, with a working radius of a circle forty-three feet diameter, and a lifting capacity of fifty tons each. On the river is a dock fifty feet long, sustained on piles, with a shears the two legs of which are two single sticks each ninety-eight feet long. This enormous engine rests on two piers of stone sunk in the river bed twenty feet, and is guyed by cables of wire rope. It is for loading engines and boilers into the ships which they are afterwards to propel. It has a capacity for moving masses of seventy-five tons. To this apparatus runs a railroad from the machine and boiler shops, which is supported on piles driven through the sandy strata of the earth to the "hard pan." An addition has also been made to the boiler shops of a brick structure 125 feet long and 60 feet wide. To enumerate all the important engines and machines that have been constructed at these works would require more space than we can devote to the subject. The celebrated engines for the Brooklyn, N. Y. waterworks, which are the admiration of mechanics, were built at this establishment. They are constructed on a novel plan, without crank or wheel, every motion being reciprocating. The pumping apparatus for the Hartford Waterworks was also built here, and is known as the Double Piston Pump. It consists of one cylinder and two pistons, as its name indicates, the working-rod of one being hollow to admit the rod of the other working in the same; and these pistons are provided with flap valves, and are caused to rise and fall by an ingenious combination and arrangement of parts, in such order and in such relation to each other as to cause one of them to be rising and performing its function of moving the column of water upward at all times; so that, the inertia once overcome, the column of water is kept continually and uniformly moving forward without cessation, with a small power for keeping up its velocity compared with that which was originally required to start it, and which is necessary to put the water in motion at every stroke of the ordinary pump. The advantage thus derived is obvious. This Company also built the engines, 200-horse power, which drive the machinery at Colt's Works, and many others of great size now in successful operation in manufactories throughout the country. In another and more difficult department of mechanics, Messrs. Woodruff & Beach have attained even still more eminent success, and that is in the construction of Marine Engines. The two transports Dudley Buck and George C. Collins, which have been employed by the Government for over two years, are propelled by engines built by them, and have never missed a single trip for repairs. The engines of the Nipsic, a steam gunboat, have sustained a trial of ninety hours constant action at the dock, and three months at sea, without the heating of a journal—a fact almost without a parallel. This ship has one propeller wheel, which, with the engines, was constructed here. The wheel is of composition (brass), 11 feet diameter, and of 3,500 pounds weight, in a single casting. The Pequol, built at the Navy Yard, Charlestown, Mass., has a pair of engines built here, of very peculiar construction, on a plan never before attempted. They are reciprocating engines, but the cylinders, instead of being straight, are curved, being segments of a circle, or, in other words, bent tubes. They are thirty inches in diameter. The piston rod is a complete circle, swinging vertically on a pivot, passing through a hub, which connects with the periphery by arms or spokes. The motion of the piston, turning back and forth through the arc of a circle, determines the rotation of a crank by means of a connecting-rod leading without cross-head directly to the piston-rod itself. The steam-chest is connected with the cylinder, and the valves are worked by eccentrics precisely as in a common horizontal engine. As there are neither slides nor cross-heads, much of the friction is avoided. The boring of these bent cylinders is the most curious process in their manufacture, yet it is perfectly simple, and no more difficult than that of the straight cylinder. Simple however as it will appear to any one who witnesses the process, it is difficult to describe without the aid of cuts. Besides the Nipsic and Pequot, this Company built the engines for the U. S. sloops-of-war Mohican and Kearsarge, and the gunboat Cayuga. Messrs. Woodruff & Beach, at the time of our visit, were finishing engines for the government transport United States, of 1,250 tons burden, which was about ready for launching at Gildeisleeves' yard, Portland, on the Connecticut. The boiler for this ship is cylindrical, and fourteen feet diameter, weighing about forty tons. They now have contracts with the government for the machinery for three steam sloops-of-war (propellers), which will be among the most effective vessels afloat for speed and weight of battery. The cylinders of these engines will be sixty inches diameter, stroke 36 inches, working propeller wheels of composition 17 feet in diameter, and weighing about 12 tons each. The journals of the shafts will be thirteen inches in diameter and forty five inches in longitudinal bearing. The rudders, also of brass, will be cast here. Some of the iron castings for these engines will weigh not less than thirty tons. The amount of metal in a mass of that weight is hardly comprehended under the familiar terms of pounds and tons. When one of these masses is being cast, the interior of the vast foundry is an inferno of smoke, flame, and corruscations; streams of molten incandescent iron, in slow but irresistible flow, empty into the pit, which is a seething, bubbling cauldron of liquid metal. It is evident, from what has been said, that the Woodruff &, Beach Iron Works have facilities for constructing the heaviest machinery, and have every apparatus that can assist the human arm in moving and working immense weights and masses of metals. The President of the Company, Samuel Woodruff, has been connected with the works since-1840, and the Treasurer, Henry B. Beach, since 1S42. About 450 hands are now employed in the establishment.

Information Sources

• A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 Edward Young & Co. 1864 page 747
• American Steam Engine Builders: 1800-1900 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2006 page 278