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Steve Haw was a good engineer and important designer of many of the non-clay products. He championed the notion that the non-clay products could not be successfully produced in the unionized plant at Waynesburg. We leased a plant in Madison, Ohio, and moved the operation there. For several years the business grew, but not the …

Republic Steel had hired Dick Simmons, a bright metallurgist from MIT. Dick called me and requested a hot top for a consumable electrode mold. It was a new business for them and they wanted to run a trial ingot the following week. The mold extended several feet above the pouring platform and presented an extreme …

We received a great assist in this work from Borden Chemical Company when we requested samples of various resin binders to form the exothermic into hot top shapes. Borden wanted to develop a resin for the growing exothermic hot top market. Again, the key was a resin that would not generate enough gas to boil …

John’s story continues: Accompanying the plunge in company fortunes from a peak to a valley, were people changes. John Dagenhard, our highly successful hot top salesman, no longer had competitive WG products to offer and accepted an offer from PMP, a growing exothermic hot top supplier. John moved to Pittsburgh and later continued his successful …

Earlier, I had received encouragement from “Rib” Meredith. Rib taught labor economics when I was at Case Tech. He also negotiated labor agreements as a consultant. After negotiating several labor agreements myself, I decided some help might be in order and contacted Rib. It turned out he had worked as a football coach at Waynesburg …

John Jr. elected president of WG: By the end of 1961, the Copperweld account was gone and the financial results of 1962 unfortunately confirmed the accuracy of my report to the directors five years earlier. The annual meeting coming up in April coincided with the expiration of JB’s 25-year reign as controlling stockholder. However, I …

John’s story continues: However, there were signs that a fall could be in the future. Our good hot top customers, Timken for starters, were converting to a cast iron hot top with a refractory lining that could be used 20 times with the replacement of a simple bottom ring after each use. This was much …

The Columbia Gas System was trying to expand its industrial customer base and agreed to lay a pipeline to the Magnolia plant, if we would pipe up the kilns and use the gas. We hired a contractor, Bill Staub, who hired certified welders from the gas companies to work weekends and in a few months, …

WG’s other products were struggling. Except for the hot top product, the 65 periodic kilns we were operating at Waynesburg and Magnolia were now obsolete, in terms of cost and quality, when compared with continuous kilns. Our face brick and ladle brick were high cost, low quality and low profit, when compared to continuous kiln …

At Magnolia, where face brick were produced, George Skaggs resigned as plant manager to take a position managing brick plants in New York State. Jim Crowe was named plant manager. At Magnolia, the drawing crew constantly complained that the tractor driver who serviced them could not deliver the wages of material and scrap to the …