Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c23.s5.t6.4

c23.s5.t6.4

This completes the business of the smelting furnace—the process of decarbonisation being performed in the refinery, and Diagram VI: fig. D, represents half a masset—properly placed in a refinery and undergoing that operation; as it becomes decarbonised, it drops into the hollow of the furnace upon the plate of iron G—and when a sufficient quantity has accumulated, it is taken out and hammered into more circular lumps which are seen in every bazar; the charcoal used in the operation is always of hard wood, such as teak (tectona grandis), mowa (fana latifolia)* or bamboo; this is the part of the manufacture in which the Indian manufacturers play tricks; for in the first place they do not allow time for the crude mass to become properly decarbonised and then again they have a most pernicious practice of knocking off corners and small pieces from the masset in its crude state into the decarbonising fluid, and instead of waiting patiently until the whole of the masset is decarbonised they often throw in large lumps at the end of the process, mixing all these crude pieces with the other so that the cheat cannot be detected except on trial; thus they not only shorten the time of the operation, and thereby use less fuel, but contrive by this nefarious practice to sell a large portion of their crude iron at the same price as the malleable; they are also very sparing in their hammering lest they should force out too much of the Vitreous Oxide and thereby reduce the weight; so that upon the whole there seem to be causes which have justly affected the reputation of Indian iron—but as they are repairable errors, they ought rather to be placed to the account of the perversity of Indian habits—than arrayed against that fair repute to which the Indian metal under different management might lay claim.