That employed two different hearths, a finery hearth for finishing the iron and a chafery hearth for reheating it in the course of drawing the bloom out into a bar. |
The forge had two kinds of hearths, the finery to finish the product and the chafery to reheat the bloom that was the raw material of the process. |
In order to do this, he had to reheat the iron, for which he used the chafery. |
The open hearths of finery and chafery are surmounted each by a huge chimney. |
The finery always burnt charcoal, but the chafery could be fired with mineral coal, since its impurities would not harm the iron when it was in the solid state. |