Bloom forging hammers

[Paul Rondelez]

Hi everybody,

Would anybody know of excavated iron hammers interpreted as used in bloom refining? Iron Age till advent of blast furnaces and can be anywhere in Europe.

All the best,

Paul

[Lee Sauder]

I’m interested to hear how one would interpret a bloom refining hammer from any other hammer? By some super-solid context in which nothing else happened but bloom refining to x stage, with no further smithing?
Lee

[Paul Rondelez]

Hi Lee,

Essentially yes, without the ‘super-solid’ bit.

The hammer I’m hoping to compare to was found on one of a handful of Irish medieval sites dominated by large slag cakes, generally associated with bloom processing. The mean weight of 84 slag cakes is 1205g. Difficult to be 100% sure that no further forging took place but these sites all lack the typical pit hearths found on sites with evidence for blacksmithing.

Other sites where only bloom processing can be assumed would be one-off smelting sites with a single large slag cake. Larger smelting sites where the blooms were refined but not further forged can also be envisaged.

The hammer is of the cross pein variety and weighs 1435g, see added picture, please (!) don’t share outside of this forum. Due to heavy mushrooming on the upper edge of the flat face, Rowan Taylor, who is researching the hammer, is interpreting this as meaning that it most likely was used in an upright position (as opposed to sitting/crouched which is typical for early medieval forging) and thus represents a sledgehammer.

Paul

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Author]

Posts