Puddling and rolling
Pudelado y laminación del hierro
- Date
- 1784 · confidence high
- Place
- Fareham, Hampshire, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Henry Cort
- People
- 👤 Henry Cort1740–1800
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A process that decarburised pig iron in a reverberatory furnace fired with mineral coal and rolled it into bars, producing wrought iron without charcoal and fifteen times faster. It freed British ironmaking from the shortage of timber.
Peter Onions patented a puddling process in 1783, and the Cranage brothers experimented at Coalbrookdale in 1766; it was Cort's combination of puddling and rolling through grooved rollers that prevailed.
What it led to
- A tenfold increase in British iron output (1788-1815)
- The relocation of ironmaking to the coalfields (South Wales, the Black Country)
- Cheap iron for rails, bridges and machines
- The trade of puddler as a labour elite
Built on
- Coke blast furnace (Darby, 1709)
- Reverberatory furnace
- Rotative steam engine