Category: Demolition

The Amanda Furnace and BOF at the former Armco/AK Steel Ashland Works were simultaneously imploded at 8:30 AM this morning. Steelmaking operations were idled on December 15, 2015, and the plant was closed for good by November 2019. The Hanging Rock Iron Region in southern Ohio, northeastern Kentucky, and western West Virginia produced iron between 1818 and 1916, which helped build armaments for the Civil War, hulls for the Monitor and Merrimac ships, kettles and pots, tools, and wagon wheels. It was predicted that iron ore in the Hanging Rock Iron Region would last for 2,700 years but most of the iron seams had been depleted by the 1900s. Traditional blast furnaces, a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce pig iron, continued to be built until 1963 when the Amanda opened at Armco’s Ashland Works. The crown jewel of the steelmaking industry, it was the largest of its type in the world. Ashland Works at its peak was the second-largest facility by Armco. It boasted the world’s first continuous sheet rolling mill, which was later replaced with a hot-strip mill in 1953. A cold reduction mill, strip pickler, light gauge Zincgrip line, and a heavy gauge Zincgrip line were completed in 1954. Armco had developed the Zincgrip process in 1936 by offering the first zinc-coated (and later aluminum-coated) coils that were far superior to older processes. The open-hearth furnaces were shut down in 1969, which coincided with the start-up of the basic oxygen furnace complex (BOF). But…