Everything about Osmond Process totally explained
Osmond iron (also spelt osmund and also called osborn) was
wrought iron made by a particular process. This is associated with the first
European production of
cast iron in furnaces such as
Lapphyttan in
Sweden.
Osmonds appear in some of the earliest
English Customs accounts, for example in
1325. The
kappe a Swedish iron weight used for osmond occurs in a commercial treaty in
Novgorod in
1203, and this implies the production of osmond iron.
Osmond iron was made by melting
pig iron in a hearth rather narrower and deeper than a typical finery in an English
finery forge. The hearth had a charcoal fire blown with bellows through a tuyere. As the iron melted, the drops fell though the blast and congealed. They were then lifted with an iron bar into the blast. As they melted they were caught on the end of a large staff, held in the fire and turned rapidly so that the drops spread out, forming a ball.
Osmonds reached England during the later
Middle Ages through the port of
Danzig (now
Gdańsk). However, there were hammer mills in its hinterland and that of
Lübeck, which made the osmonds into
bar iron. In the
1620s,
Gustav II Adolf of Sweden prohibited his subjects from exporting unfinished iron, and all trade in osmonds ceased.
The osmond process was also used in the Mark in
Westphalia in southern
Germany and
Switzerland.
The process was introduced to
Wales in connection with the establishment by
William Humfrey and others of
wireworks at
Tintern in
1566, an enterprise that was shortly afterwards taken over by the
Company of Mineral and Battery Works. Humfrey arranged to bring an expert maker of Osmond iron, Corslett Tinkhaus, from southwest Westphalia, where the production had reached a high level of technical proficiency. Tinkhaus arrived in Wales in
1567 and began working at Rhydygwern in the
Glamorgan part of the lordship of
Machen. This was where the first
Machen Forge was, and he was evidently making osmond iron there. The iron was apparently forged with a
tilt hammer, rather than the helve hammer, usual in
finery forges. This was the raw material for the wireworks at Tintern. Osmond iron was made at
Pontypool in the
18th century to supply wireworks there, and one of the forges there was still called the 'Osborn Forge' in the
19th century.
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