Åminne cabin
The hut Åminne (Swedish: Åminne bruk ) is a former ironworks in Åminne in the Swedish municipality of Värnamo .
The on the western shore of the lake Vidöstern located hut is today in large part as Hüttenmuseum Åminne (Swedish: Åminne Bruksmuseum ) out. The museum offers insights into the mining of sea iron ore and the extraction of iron.
history
First location at Kärda
In 1826 Carl Danckwardt registered an ironworks in Kärda under the name Åminne bruk . In 1810 he had acquired the Bestorp and Källunda estates in Kärda as a judicial officer . The hut had a blast furnace but also iron hammers, a foundry and workshop. It was located on Lake Källundasjön and used the difference in altitude to Bestorpsjön to use water power. This location was further west of the current location of the hut and is now known as Gamla Åminne . In this first hut, pots, plows, herds, horse pegs and threshing machines were made. Sea and bog iron ore served as raw materials . Danckwardt's daughter married Baron Adolf Lilliecreutz in the 1850s, who has been running the hut ever since.
Hut in Åminne
The location of the hut turned out to be too remote, so that the transport routes were difficult. In 1899 the blast furnace was relocated to its current location on the banks of the Vidöstern. The newly built railway line between Småland and Schonen ran right past the new smelter site, which greatly simplified the transport. Production started at the new location on June 28, 1900.
The blast furnace itself initially employed eight workers, but this number later fell. There was a steam engine with 25 hp. It was heated with gas from the furnace and operated a fan for the furnace. Coal and ore were poured into the top of the blast furnace and carried up by an elevator. The elevator was powered by another 10 hp steam engine. The coal basket held 1000 to 1200 liters. To fill the blast furnace, about 1100 liters of coal, 450 kilograms of ore and about 25 to 40 kilograms of limestone were placed in layers in the furnace. The coal was obtained from coal piles in the area. The limestone used came from Öland . There were three gas connections on the smoke duct of the blast furnace. Two went off to heat the steam engine, the third to a wind heater, with which the oven itself was supplied with preheated hot air.
One extraction resulted in around 1500 to 2000 kilograms of iron and around 500 kilograms of slag. The iron obtained was shaped into iron bars, so-called ingots , using sand molds . The slag was carried to the dump on the lake.
In 1904 the daily wage of the employed workers was between 1 and 2.75 kroner, and the working time was 12 hours a day. The old hut burned down in 1907, after which the other factory facilities were also moved to Åminne. The foundry and workshop were completed there in 1908.
The iron ore required for production was obtained from the bottom of Lake Vidöstern. The iron content of the ore varied between 12 and 46%. The workers went to the frozen lake in winter and sawed holes with a diameter of 1.50 to 2 meters in the ice. Using special tools, the ore was then scraped off the lake floor, raked together, conveyed upwards and then sieved. Ore was also partly extracted by rafts. A worker extracted 500 to 1500 kilograms of ore a day. In this way, however, only iron ore was extracted in a year that was sufficient for a three-month operation of the blast furnace.
In 1909 and 1919 excavators were purchased that extracted the ore from a depth of two to seven meters with thirty shovels in order to counteract the low utilization rate. Initially five people worked on each excavator, after rationalization in the 1920s, only two workers were active on each excavator. The ore was brought from the excavator to the hut by barges, each of which could hold 25 tons. The maneuvering was done by the steamboat Anna , which was purchased from the hut and whose crew consisted of two people. The ore was then transported from the quay to the area in front of the blast furnace using an overhead conveyor. The ore extraction was increased to up to 3000 tons annually. The operating time of the blast furnace was now 150 days a year, with 1150 tons of pig iron being produced.
In 1910 Åminne bruk was registered as a public limited company . The Lilliecreutz family still held the majority. A bad economy and financial problems led to bankruptcy in 1921 . In 1922 one of the excavators sank because a hatch had been forgotten to close, but it could be recovered. After a three-year stoppage, the hut was taken over by the South Swedish Bank and Consul Thomé. At first, ore mining was continued, and in 1924 the blast furnace and foundry went back into operation. The hourly wage of a transport worker at the plant was around 70 ore in 1926. During a storm in 1932 the second excavator sank, it was not lifted.
In 1934 Thomé took over the plant alone and ceased pig iron production in the same year. The blast furnace has been out of service since then. The smelter was the last iron production in Sweden that produced on the basis of sea ore, whereby the ore extraction was not finally stopped until 1942.
The hut was then taken over by the Husqvarna arms factory in 1937 . However, this also no longer made use of the right to extract sea ore in the surrounding lakes, which it had acquired. In 1964 it was sold to Arne Gramler . The order for casting the spiers of Riddarholm Church in Stockholm in 1969 is known from this period . Despite good quality work, the company had to file for bankruptcy in 1971.
There was again a takeover, this time by David Jarl AG. The foundry focused heavily on supplies to the mechanical engineering industry. In 1992, however, the production of Åminne bruk was finally stopped.
The site of the traditional hut was then acquired by Bruksgarden AG , which belongs to the lawyer Magnus Möller . In addition to the offices of the law firm, another company active in the field of foundry technology also settled down. However, large parts of the area were given to the Föreningen Åminne Bruksmuseum for use. The association tries to preserve and renovate the buildings and facilities and tries to set up a cultural center.
literature
- Åminne Cottage Museum , leaflet, no year
Coordinates: 57 ° 7 ′ 28.1 ″ N , 14 ° 0 ′ 39.3 ″ E