Global Fastener News

April 10, 1986 FIN – Domestic fastener manufacturers may have a new source for cold heading rod in the future.
More precisely, a source they once had which dropped out of the business in 1984. We’re referring to the Cuyahoga Works of U.S. Steel Corp., which formerly supplied one of the better quality rods from the domestic steel industry to fastener manufacturers. We wrote about this development in a recent issue of our sister publication Wire Industry News (WIN) and that item is repeated in its entirety below.

U.S. Steel Corp., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is reportedly in negotiations to sell its Lorain-Cuyahoga (Ohio) Works to an investor group for about $30 million.

According to an article in American Metal Market (March 27, 1986 FIN, page 1), the investor group includes former managers of plants; Thomas Tyrell, former vice president-marketing of Raritan River Steel Co.; James Thomas, a former works manager for U.S.Steel Corp.; John Peck, a Cincinnati lawyer; Roger Ach, a managing director of Prudential Bache Securities; and the Chicago West Pullman Corp., a holding company.
Plans, according to the article (which mistakenly identifies Lorain-Cuyahoga as a single rod mill, instead of two separate plants) are to produce high grade rod under a name similar to American Steel & Wire.

Readers of WIN will recall that about four months ago we said there was a rumor afloat about a possible buyer for the Cuyahoga Works.

We have not been able to contact the prospective buyer group about their plans so what follows is just some top of the head conjecturing on our part.

It’s our guess that what the investor group is looking at is the high carbon, cold heading and welding wire markets.
Before U.S. Steel closed down the Cuyahoga plant in mid-1984, the rod mill at Cuyahoga was mainly rolling rod for Lincoln Electric which is of course a large producer of welding wire.
Prior to that the Cuyahoga Works was a major supplier of rod to the spring wire and tire cord market but we believe that the rod for these markets were supplied out of the Fairless Works and not from Cuyahoga.

The Cuyahoga Works has a Morgan rod mill with a capacity, according to our records, of about 400,000 tons per year. Size range, we believe, is 7/32 to 1/2“ (55mm to 12mm). There’s also a wire mill at Cuyahoga.

Billets for the Cuyahoga Works were formerly supplied from the Lorain Works. The Lorain Works has BOFs for melting steel and uses ingot practice for billet making. ©1986/2015 Fastener Industry News.  

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