The Daily Dispatch: February 26, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Westham iron works.

--This large iron establishment has suspended operations for the present, owing to the insufficient power and strength of the machinery to give the blast required for so large a furnace. The machinery was made by Messrs. J. P. Morris & Co., Philadelphia, the most extensive manufacturers of blowing apparatus for blast furnaces in the United States. It has, however, twice failed, when working up to but little over half the promised power, which renders it necessary to stop the works until other machinery of sufficient capacity can be put in its stead, which, we understand, will be done as soon as the iron market will justify the expenditure. The furnace, not withstanding the incapacity of the machinery, has turned out, in a short time, over twelve hundred tons of iron, a large portion of good grey foundry, and the remainder good mill iron.

When the machinery was in tolerable good condition, the furnace worked well, and produced one ton of grey iron for every ton and a quarter of fuel, (coal and coke mixed,) which is less fuel than is used by any furnace in Pennsylvania, from one-quarter to one ton for each ton of iron, thus showing the fine quality of the ores along the line of the James River and Kanawha Canal, and the capacity of these works, with suitable machinery, to make a good and economical iron.