Lilahazir Foundry

Yesterday I was biking my usual route home, coming through one of the more rural sections of the route. In a clump of trees, between several acres of rice fields and a pond, I saw a red blaze through an open door. I stopped to look, and soon was invited for a tour of foundry ...as the sweaty bustle of the pour kept up its pace.


Molten steel and slag were pouring out of different sides at the base of a 20 ft furnace. The steel was caught by men in T-shirts and lungis with steel buckets on 4-ft poles. After tossing in a chunk of silica, they hauled it over to the sand molds, set into the floor all over. As they poured, others held the mold lid down with bamboo poles.

Most of the castings from this foundry are for tillers and threshers and other locally produced farm equipment. This foundry also had about 10 lathes for machining the castings -- all within a space about the size of my parents' apartment.


Toward the end of the pour there was a explosion of sparks from one of the molds, and I looked over to see an old man frantically shaking out his shirt and lungi. My guide told me they hadn't held the lid down hard enough; gas can build up underneath and then blow back with steel and sparks. The amount of safety equipment at the foundry was about the same as the ship-breaking yards. (And with the intense heat, they probably have even less motivation to wear anything more than their lungis.)