What I have written down concerning this quotation is that it is from the 1831
Cyclopaedia. pp 29-30. I cannot figure out where I found this. Can anyone
help?
JH Brothers IV
1674 John Fay, Cuckfield, Essex
There are several sorts of mine; some hard, some gentle, some rich, some
coarser. The iron masters always mix different sorts of mine together,
otherwise they will not melt to advantage.
When the mine is brought in, they take small cole [charcoal], and lay a row
of small cole, and upon it a row of mine, and so alternately, stratum super
stratum, one above another, and setting the coles on fire. Therewith burn the
mine. The use of this burning is to mollify it, that so it may be broke in
small pieces; otherwise, if it should be put into the furnace as it comes out of
the earth, it would not melt, but come away whole.
Care also must be taken that it be not too much burned, for then it will
loop, ie melt and run together in a mass. After it is burnt, they beat it into
smaller pieces with an iron sledge, and then put into into the furnace (which is
before charged with coles), casting it upon the top of the coles, where it melts
and falls into the hearth in the space of about 12 hours, more or less, and then
it is run into a sow.
The hearth or bottom of the furnace is made of a sand stone, and the sides
round to the height of 1 yard, or thereabout; the rest of the furnace is lined
up to the top with brick.
When they begin upon a new furnace, they put fire for a day or two, before
they begin to blow: They then blow gently, and increase, by degrees, till they
come to the height, in ten weeks or more.
Every six days they call a founday, in which space they make eight tons of
iron; if you divide the whole sum of iron made by the founday, at first they
make less in a founday, at last more.
The hearth, by the force of the fire continually blown, grows wider and
wider; so that if at first it contains so much as will make a sow of 600 or 700
pounds weight at last it will contain so much as will make a sow of 2000
pounds. The lesser pieces of 1000 pounds or under, they call pigs.
Of twenty-four loads of coles, which consists of eleven quarters, they put a
load of mine, which contain eighteen bushels.
A hearth ordinarily, if made of good stone, will last forty foundays; that is
forty week, during which time the fire is never let go out. They never blow
twice upon one hearth, though they go upon it not above five or six foundays.
The cinder, like scum, swims upon the melted metal in the hearth, and is
let out once or twice before a sow is cast.
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