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I N V E N T I O N
D E S C R I P T I O N
My most important invention known as puddling. Its purpose is to remove excess carbon that the iron has absorbed during smelting, to make it workable by a blacksmith. The iron emerges from the puddling furnace as a spongy solid, which is next squashed using a "shingling" hammer. The final stage is to pass lumps of this solid between rollers, so that it emerges as long bars. I made possible the large-scale and inexpensive conversion of cast iron into wrought iron, one of the most essential materials of the early industrial revolution.
By fitting collars and grooves to my rollers, I can control the size and shape of a bar's cross-section: this part of the process is later adapted for rolling steel.
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Before I introduced this stage of the process, bars were shaped using heavy hammers, like the water-driven tilthammer said to be at Fonrtley Iron Mill when Cort took it over.There were many advantages to these processes. Puddling used the plentiful coke, instead of the expensive charcoal.
The result was that production of wrought iron was increasingly carried out in a group of coordinated processes in a single economic unit, with reverberation processes in a single economic unit, with reverberation and blast furnaces operating side by side. This increased production at a greatly reduced cost, and for the first time iron became one of England's exports.
I was confident enough to start travelling round the country (Wales and Scotland included) to show my process to other ironmasters and expected them to adopt it and pay me royalties. So, the other ironmasters will benefit from my invention and it will make their life easier.