Did every town in Pennsylvania have either a steel mill or a mine? (Nope, some had oil wells.)
NLMK also owns Sharon Coating a little north, which does galvanizing.
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| Jon Wolfe posted Duane McCarty: rolling mill only thing left running, they ship the steel in for the rolling mill. Jeff Bindas: Russian steel. Tim Thompson: Jeff Bindas that is what I hear. Joe Pinkey: I just surveyed a stack up there for a new slab roll that's being built by Steven's. NLMK is putting a bunch of money into that plant Phillip King: I worked there as a contractor in the mid 90s on the Defurco Steel restart, it was sad to see how the mill just locked the original Sharon Steel employees out, told them they were through, over night. Pat McCon https://us.nlmk.com/en/mills/pennsylvania/ |
"The former Sharon Steel Plant was founded in 1900 and manufactured a variety of steel products. The company ceased operation in 1992 when it was ordered by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) to stop their disposal practices and they declared bankruptcy." [EPA] So Duferco was able to buy the steel finishing assets and leave the steel production assets for the EPA to cleanup?
In the 1960s the #1 furnace was shutdown and $5.2m of Federal money was used to repair #2, which was named Judy. #2 was "energetically felled" in 1995. NLMK is a Russian company. [TheRustJungle] The Russian ownership would explain why you never see the acronym spelled out. And why the plants import slabs from Russia.
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| Rick Rowlands posted Sharon Steel blast furnaces 2 and 3 John Groves: Rick, can you provide any best guess when the picture of the two Sharon Steel furnaces was taken? I visited Sharon Steel's Farrell plant in 1983 and saw these two very old blast furnaces. Both were originally built in 1904. They received rebuilds with limited enlargements around 1920 and again in the 1950s. When I saw them in 1983 I was stunned at how antiquated they were. At that time Sharon's BOF steelmaking, hot rolling and cold tandem mills were in much better shape, with a new BOF shop and cold mills installed in the mid-1960s. A second hand but refurbished hot strip mill was installed 1966. The blast furnaces and BOF steelmaking were closed in 1992. The hot strip mill and cold mills are still operating under Russian ownership. |
According to a Flickr photo comment, the tree line down the center was the high line and the blast furnaces were to the right and the ore storage piles were to the left. Why would they leave three of the eight hot stoves still standing?
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| 3D Satellite |
The Pennsy went north/south along the east side of the plant. The Erie went east/west along the south side of the plant. The Erie also had a couple of industrial leads into the plant using two more bridges.
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| 1906 Youngstown Quadrangle @ 1:24,000 |
NLMK's web site states that they "service our major markets by truck, rail and barge." But I don't see how they can get barges up that river. Actually, it must be their Indiana facility (satellite) that ships by barge. I wonder if NLMK uses salties to ship slabs to this plant from Russia.
Another modern 1:00 video that is frustrating rather than informative. I don't think the two shopped up scenes are even in the correct production order.
An old fashioned and informative 45:14 video.
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| Bob Ciminel posted Carnegie-Illinois steel mill, date unknown. Sammy Maida: Looks more like Sharon Steel in Farrell |
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| Len Martin posted This is my photo of one of the EAF's at Sharon Steel Corporation in 1985. At the time I was working for Pennsylvania Engineering Corporation as V.P. of Creative Services or as many of you may have known it as PECOR. In the early 70's P.E.C. was actually a combination of PECOR, Lectromelt, Birdsboro, Northern Crane, SerStel, Pecon and Perox. Didn't last much longer nor did Sharon Steel as my Dad knew it for the 40 plus years he spent working there. Pete Kaup: It wasn’t the blast furnace that did in Sharon Steel it was Victor Posner. He bled the mill and the town dry. Len Martin: Pete Kaup Believe me.....I know pretty much first hand. I told my Dad to get out at 62. He did and always thanked me for telling him what was going on. He lived a great life until he was 96 and passed in the spring of 2020. Maybe some of you knew George. |
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| Jerry W. Jordak posted A view of the NLMK Pennsylvania mill (formerly Sharon Steel) in Farrell, PA a month ago. Mike Ball: They take slabs in and produced finished products as outbounds. I wanna say it’s been this way for close to 30 years now. Even when it had the BOF’s going, it wasn’t a fully integrated mill, but still produced a lot of outbound loads. Jerry W. Jordak: I read that in its later years, Sharon Steel’s cold side capacity was greater than what its hot side could produce, so they supplemented their hot side production with slabs purchased from other mills. Otherwise it was a fully integrated mill, with the exception that coke was not produced on-site. (Sharon Steel had coke plants in Armstrong County, PA and Fairmount, WV. They also had an interest in the coke plant in Monessen and sometimes bought coke on the open market too.) Rick Fleischer: I see the lone Cowper stove is still standing. |
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| Rick Krisuk commented on Jerry's post Sharon steel 1945 |
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| Rick Krisuk commented on Jerry's post, cropped Carnegie at this year |
I highlighted the Cowper stoves referred to in a comment above.
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| 3D Satellite |
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| Jon Wolfe posted Sharon steel 60in mill Ian Maynard: Miss that joint! Haven't been there in while. I'm a union millwright out of Pittsburgh 443 and used to go there for maintenance shutdowns and then again building the new walking beam furnace. How's that running btw? Dennis Racketa: Ian they are still testing and cold running New walking beam furnaces . Should be firing them up soon. Old slab furnaces were from around 1960 Sharon Steel. John Groves: Definitely was the 77" HSM relocated from J&L Cleveland after the 80" mill started up in 1964. Not the former Republic Cleveland 98" HSM which continued in operation until the new 84" mill was commissioned in 1970.The J&L mill was refurbished by Bliss and the width of the finishing stands reduced to 60". The main roughing stand is Mesta and the original six finishing stands were United. The Sharon HSM started up around 1965 or 1966, not 1963 as reported in some sources. The 60" HSM started up in 1966. It was modernised in 1999, presumably including the coilbox. What other modernisation was carried out at this time? Viktor Mácha: Credits, please… https://www.viktormacha.com/galerie/nlmk-pennsylvania-farrell-306/ [Identifies the location as Farrell as opposed to Sharon, PA.] |
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| David Holoweiko posted Charging Sharon Steel Farrell PA 1962 Carl Jacobson: In 1962 at Sharon, this would be a 150 ton Kaldo [Basic Oxygen] Furnace. They were the only Kaldos built in the U. S. for production. Most of the European Kaldos were small and used light scrap. Since Kaldos rotate like a cement mixer, it didn’t work out so well with a larger furnace. They only got a short life out of the refractory brick. Norbert Wleklinski: I hated doing maintenance on a Calderon charger |
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