iron is continued until the whole has assumed a granular, fluidless appearance. The Japanese seem to know this point exactly and at that time take the metal away, to bring it directly under the hammer, in order to squeeze out the liquid slag and to force the iron-particles into a coherent mass. Japanese wrought-iron is delivered to the trade in square or sometimes round cakes, under the name of juku-tetsu (ripe-iron). This Japanese method has much analogy with our old continental Catalan process, which is still in operation in the Pyrenees. The Japanese, however, make no use of the water-blast-pipe, used in the Catalan process. The bellows used by Japanese are of Chinese origin and already described by many writers on China. Every-one has seen them in Japan in ordinary forges. The metallurgical bellows are much larger (sometimes 5 ft. long, 3 ft. high, 1½ ft. br.) but the construction is the same as the smaller. Bessemer’s process for converting iron into bar-iron is unknown to the Japanese.
According to our Japanese author steel is prepared in the following manner: A certain quantity of pig-iron is mixed with a little bar-iron in a crucible of fireproof clay; the whole is covered with borax (Hosha) and smelted in small furnaces during several (the Japanese author says eleven!) days. The metal being separated from the slag, is hammered strongly and alternately cooled in water or oil. The Japanese author observes that forgeing and tooling is to be done:
During the forging of the blades the greatest care should be taken that the anvil and its surroundings are clean, because Japanese armourers believe that the smallest particle of dust, and particularly lead or copper-filings, spoil even the best blades when forged.
The Japanese manner of preparing steel is different from our method. It is known that steel differs from cast-iron in its smaller quantity of combined carbon and from
