Finery forge

[4] However, it was perhaps not capable of being used to fashion plate armor until the 15th century, as described in conjunction with the waterwheel-powered blast furnace by the Florentine Italian engineer Antonio Averlino (c. 1400 - 1469).

The new methods used mineral fuel (coal or coke), and freed the iron industry from its dependence on wood to make charcoal.

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.

The next stages were undertaken by the "hammerman", who in some iron-making areas such as South Yorkshire was also known as the "stringsmith", who heated his iron in a string-furnace.

Because the bloom is highly porous, and its open spaces are full of slag, the hammerman's or stringsmith's tasks were to beat (work) the heated bloom with a hammer to drive the molten slag out of it, and then to draw the product out into a bar to produce what was known as anconies or bar iron.