Improved stove pipings are now being manufactured in the States which in appearance exactly resemble cast-iron. These have the additional valuable properties of extreme lightness, combined with great strength and a capability of ornamentation unobtainable with the usual cast-iron pipes mostly in use; paint in the case of the asbestos pipes not scaling off under heat as it will do in the case of ordinary iron pipes. The manufacturers of these pipes claim for them that they combine the strength of steel with the lightness of paper. Tubes also are made for electrical engineers which provide them with a non-conducting covering for their wires both fire and waterproof, so as to preserve the perfect insulation of the wire.
Asbestos rope is used for fire escapes and similar purposes, as well as for the transmission of power over places exposed to heat. In dyeing and printing cloth it is frequently necessary to hang the fabric in loops from parallel rods for exposure to steam, air or ammonia. In order that it should hold upon the rods, without straining or slipping, rope or strips of cloth are usually wound around the poles, but this does not remove, although it mitigates, the difficulty, because the heat and corrosive action of the vapours will rot any covering; the first notice of the deterioration being generally the appearance of small pieces of rod covering among the cloth which is in process of finishing. Asbestos rope and cloth are now largely manufactured and used for this purpose in the United States with very beneficial results.
In commenting on the recent loss of life occasioned by the panic at the fire at the Exeter Theatre, a well-known journal, speaking of the various modes of providing for escape, mentions the case of a man of fashion, a millionaire, who died not long ago, and says that he would never go to bed in a strange house without having an apparatus of knotted rope affixed to a ring in the wall, by which he might lower himself to the ground on an emergency. But, asks the journalist, what if the rope itself took fire? The answer naturally is, let it be an asbestos rope, then it will neither burn nor rot.
The use of the fibre in the manufacture of gas stoves is too well known to need any remark.