Steel in Ancient Greece and Rome

The melting point of pure iron is 1540Â°C. Landels points that even by Roman times European furnaces were not producing heat much over 1100Â°C[9]. Smelting of iron, unlike the smelting of the lower melting point metals, copper, zinc and tin, did not involve the iron turning to the liquid state. Instead, it was a solid state conversion requiring chemical reduction of the ore. Ore was placed in a pit and mixed in a hot charcoal fire. Air was forced into the dome covered structure via bellows through a fireproof clay nozzle called a tuyere. After a sustained temperature of 1100Â°-1200Â°C, slag (oxidised non-metallics) fell to the bottom leaving the spongy mass containing the iron. Holes forming the sponge texture were a result of the removal of the non-metallics when the slag melted out. The spongy mass is called a bloom by some[10, 11]. This spongy mass was then pounded, usually while still hot, and more slag dropped out as the metal was concentrated into a denser mass. The pounded metal was called wrought iron.