Rick, regarding your message thread from 2001; the furnace has been preserved as a park of the City of Mountain Brook. The 'solid balls' you saw at the time have caused the furnace site to be referred to as 'the cannon ball factory' by locals. I have seen only one of these balls, it is on display at the Birmingham Jefferson Historical Museum in Birmingham. The ball measures 3.978" in diameter, and from what little I know about civil war artillery this seems a little to small for a 20lb. ball with a diameter of 3.67". I'm referencing table on p. 116 of "Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War", the 20lb was a size designated by Parrot. Can anyone elaborate on the ball size? Is there any possibility that cannon balls were made outside Selma? My interest in the iron balls has to do with the possibility that the balls were used in a ball mill to crush the hematite iron ore that was used in the furnace.
OK, back to Rick's visits to the Irondale Furnace, do you have any reconciliations about the furnace site, or any photos? How many solid balls do you recall? Do you recall any bridge piers at either Shades Creek of Furnace Creek?
Robert Yuill