Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c24.12

c24.12

10. The cast iron thus made is treated with charcoal in a refining furnace, not differing much from the English ones, but the metal is not allowed to run out, the operation being continued for nearly five hours, until the metal has become tenacious and adhesive, when it is removed in lumps of about two hundred weight each, which are forged under a large tilt hammer, then cut into smaller pieces, and is drawn out into bars at once. In this process the metal loses about twenty-six per cent of its weight, and 149 pounds of charcoal are consumed for every 100 pounds of iron produced.