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I found out our local foundry used to pour a specific alloy for ship propellers back in the 50s

I was looking through some old city records online for a different reason and stumbled on a list of past projects from our town's main foundry. It said they made a special manganese bronze alloy for big ship propellers in the 1950s. I had no idea we had that kind of work here. The record said they poured over 200 of them for Great Lakes freighters before the work moved. It just surprised me because now we mostly do smaller iron castings and some aluminum. It makes you think about how much the trade has shifted in one place. I wonder if any of the old patterns or core boxes for those are still tucked away in a corner somewhere. Has anyone else found old history about their shop that changed what you thought it did?

3 comments

3 Comments

daniel_gonzalez2d ago

Our shop's old glory days were pouring manhole covers, talk about a letdown after @brianreed's find.

thomas_sanchez2d agoMost Upvoted

That manganese bronze alloy is the real story here. It was a big deal back then because it could handle salt water without rusting away. I bet the guys pouring those propellers had skills we don't even see anymore. It's like what @brianreed said about the old gear tooling, that knowledge just disappears when the work leaves. Makes me sad to think all that specific know-how for mixing and pouring that special metal is probably just gone now, not written down anywhere.

brianreed2d ago

Found something like that at my old shop too. They had photos of guys making huge steel gears for mining equipment in the 40s. Totally different from the auto parts they do now. Makes you wonder where all that old tooling ended up.