process were just as brittle and breakable as the those formerly manufactured. Thomas advised him to conserve his money, but Andrew purchased yet another steel welding patent to try to fix the process. That, too, failed and soon Carnegie's steel-welding business was bankrupt. Thomas correctly foresaw that Andrew too easily believed his judgment was infallible, and soon a coal mining process Andrew had purchased also led to significant financial losses. Meanwhile, Thomas began courting Lucy Coleman, daughter of Pittsburgh iron manufacturing magnate William Coleman. Coleman provided Thomas with critical advice on how to improve the Union Iron Mills, and inside information on the coming railroad building boom. Another critical business relationship was with Piper & Shiffler (later known as the Keystone Bridge Company), an iron bridge building firm invested in by Andrew in 1862. Andrew diverted much of Piper & Shiffler's contracts to the Union Iron Mills, further bolstering the company's profits. Thomas often tried to rein in some of his brother's excesses, but to no avail. For example, in 1866 Andrew proposed purchasing a pipe works adjacent to the old Cyclops Iron Works. Thomas opposed the purchase, arguing that the time for expansion was not ripe and that the pipe works used a kind of iron which the Union Iron Mills did not produce. The pipe works turned out to be a white elephant, but they burned down shortly thereafter (saving the firm from further losses). The Lucy Furnace and Thomson Works Thomas Carnegie played a critical role in the expansion of the Carnegie Bros. & Co. company into the production of pig iron. Iron ore was usually smelted into pig iron first, a brittle but refined product (often cast in ingots) which was usually sold to other companies and turned into wrought iron or steel. Several investors in the Union Iron Mills wished to invest in companies producing pig iron, but William Coleman advised against it and advocated building a wholly owned modern furnace under the company's control. A division of the Union Iron Mills (named the Isabella Furnace Company) was organized on December 1, 1870, and the company's first blast furnace (named the "Lucy Furnace" after Thomas' wife) was constructed on 51st Street in Pittsburgh. Most of the investors who joined the Isabella Furnace Company were Thomas' friends, not Andrew's. Thomas Carnegie supervised the operation of the Lucy furnace, and he was almost alone in contributing to