Titel: Ironworks, Starby
Skrivet av: Stefan Magnusson skrivet 2013-05-14, 08:30
Well, I'm not sure identifying the furnace as blast furnace is correct. As I understand it, the archeological report describes two bloomery furnaces. A bloomery furnace is an old iron reduction furnace and can be quite a lot smaller than a blast furnace. It is called a blästa or blästugn in Swedish so it is easy to make a a mistake and translate it to blast furnace.
A bloomery furnace is a batch furnace and doesn't need much in form of manpower or any other power for that matter. A blast furnace on the other hand is a continous process working 24/7 with a big demand on water power (to blow air into the furnace), char coal (to reduce the ore), lime (to form slag, remove impurities), and ore (obviously), it requires quite a lot of people as well.
In the south of Sweden, many small iron works like this did not use iron ore but myrmalm, which translates to bog iron ore, marsh ore and/or lake ore.