A chafery is a variety of hearth used in ironmaking for reheating a bloom of iron, in the course of its being drawn out into a bar of

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.05%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4.5%), or 0.25 for low carbon "mild" steel. Wrought iron is manufactured by heating and melting high carbon cast iron in an ...

. The equivalent term for a

bloomery A bloomery is a type of metallurgical furnace once used widely for smelting iron from its iron oxides, oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron. Bloomeries produce a porous mass of iron and slag called ...

was string hearth, except in 17th century

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

, where the terminology was that of the finery forge. A

finery forge A finery forge is a forge used to produce wrought iron from pig iron by decarburization in a process called "fining" which involved liquifying cast iron in a fining hearth and decarburization, removing carbon from the molten cast iron through Redo ...

for the

Walloon process A Walloon forge (or Walloon process) is a type of finery forge that decarbonizes pig iron into wrought iron. The process was conceived in the Liège region, and from there extended to France, then England around the end of the 15th century. L ...

would typically have one chafery to work two fineries (but sometimes one or three fineries). Chaferies were also used in the

potting and stamping Potting and stamping is a modern name for one of the 18th-century processes for refining pig iron without the use of charcoal. Inventors The process was devised by Charles Wood of Lowmill, Egremont in Cumberland and his brother John Wood of We ...

forges of the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

. Metallurgy

References

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