Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s5.t6.3

c23.s5.t6.3

The metal is never completely melted by this process—the heterogeneous mixture of the ore alone is fused and thrown off in scoria, and the iron being freed from it falls by its superior gravity to the bottom of the furnace, and there coagulates into a mass or masset; it is never very highly carbonised, and sometimes it is partially malleable even in its crude state; when the process is finished, the bellows are removed; the front part of the furnace demolished; and the red hot masset dragged out, and divided by large ades* before it has time to cool, hence it happens that the parts of the furnace thus broken up, require daily renewal.