The Stamp and Hammer Mill @museum.de

We’re still following the production process: after the steel has been made, it has to be turned into sheet metal. That is what the display in this room is about.

Originally, centuries ago, that process was carried out in Stamp and Hammer Mills, which were often driven by hydropower. Feel free to turn on the model to see – and hear! – what happens.

The ores were crushed beneath the stamps until they were sufficiently finely pulverised to be smelted in the furnace. A second waterwheel powered the hammers, which, depending on their shape and type, hammered out metal sheets of varying thicknesses.

The processing temperature of iron is eleven hundred degrees Celsius, so it was essential to have a forge fire in the Stamp and Hammer Mill.

This was how sheet metal was produced until well into the 19th century – including here in Thale.

In 1868, the production process was modernised. The Roughing Rolling Mill was equipped with Thale’s first two steam engines. The most powerful of those engines eventually became known as Steam Engine Number 7. From 1912 to 1990, it powered all three roll stands in the Blooming Mill. There’s a model of the steam engine and the associated roll standing in the display case at the end of this room, on the left-hand side.