Ferrier
See also: Ferrier (homonymy)
A ferrier indicates an old metallurgical installation dating from the Âge of iron. Indeed, an important activity, centered on the transformation of the ore of Iron into metal, developed starting from the Antiquité. This establishment was favoured on the one hand, by the presence of iron ore, and on the other hand, by the presence of forest which was used as fuel.
This period of the European protohistoire begins towards -1200 in the Mediterranean world and towards -800 with -700 in north from Europe. It is subdivided in the Period of Hallstatt (or first Age of iron) and the period of Tène (or second Age of iron).
Description
On the basis of observation collected on various sites, one could reconstitute the operation of the iron and steel workshops. All starts with the collecting of the ore, either on the surface, or in not very deep holes of extraction, to deep wells with supported level galleries. This ore often underwent a preparation: washing and netting. In the same time, it was necessary to prepare fuel: demolition of wood, manufacture of the Charcoal. The construction of the low hearth followed whose interior temperature will largely exceed 1.000 °C. The furnace, built coarsely out of clay, had a tank from 60 to 80 cm in diameter, up to 2 m for largest. The walls ended in a loud-voiced person or chimney. A ventilation system by conduits was assistant at the base. The furnace was lit with wood, then maintained with charcoal to go up in temperature, before the ore there is introduced. Cast iron of the ore, it resulted a sponge or concentrate from iron or cast iron which it was necessary to recover in the content of the furnace. The furnace was then opened and the liquefied ore residues ran out outside before being solidified with the air. Each operation of reduction could last several days. The sponges iron obtained were to be refined in a forging mill to audit metal (famous Gallic blacksmiths). The furnace had one short lifespan, because it was exhausted and disaggregated quickly. It abandoned and was quickly replaced with the profit again on the same site. Its calcined remainders were thrown in heap, as well as ashes and slags. Accumulations formed of the heaps or the hillocks which could exceed 10 m in height. The most abundant slags (hillocks of ferrier) were almost always re-used, either to consolidate the ways or the courses of farms, or intensively exploited at the twentieth century for the modern iron and steel industry, because of their strong content iron (from 30 to 50%) and manganese (5%). It is these large cluster which we usually call the ferriers, but there exists much about it who are more modest, more discrete and much less visible.
According to the times, the needs, the techniques, the processes and proportionings could vary somewhat, it resulted from it from the ferriers having very different aspects, the criterion paramount being to always contain iron slags. According to the dominant composition of waste, it resulted a “ground from it from ferrier” with bright colors, very varied energy of the carbon black to the red brick even carrot, passing by colors brown or brownish, yellowish, even sometimes very clear. Volumes of waste obtained for a workshop of reduction, can vary from less than 1 m ³ to several hundreds of thousands of m ³ for large ferriers. The smallest ferrier is the contents of only one batch.
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