Air or oxygen is injected into a hearth under pressure from bellows or a blowing engine or other devices. This causes the fire to become hotter in front of the blast than it would otherwise have been, enabling metals to be smelted or melted or made hot enough to be worked in a forge, though these are blown only with air. This applies to any process where a blast is delivered under pressure to make a fire hotter. Archeologists have discovered tuyeres dating from the Iron Age; one example dates from between 770 BCE and 515 BCE.[4]
Following the introduction of hot blast, tuyeres are often water-cooled.[3]
Around the year 1500 new ironmaking techniques, including the blast furnace and finery forge, were introduced into England from France, along with the French technical terms relating to the new technology. "Tuyere" (French: tuyère, lit. 'air vent') is one of these French words, sometimes Anglicised as tue-iron or tue iron.[5]
Examples
General arrangement of the Tuyere (2), Tuyere cooler (1), Tuyere-cooler holder (3), Blowpipe (4) and Bustle Pipe (9) in a Blast Furnace.[6]
Early blast furnaces also had one tuyere, but were fed from bellows perhaps 12 feet (3.7m) long operated by a waterwheel. During the Industrial Revolution, the blast began to be provided using steam engines, initially Watt engines working blowing cylinders. Improvements in foundry practice enabled gas-tight cast iron pipes to be produced, enabling one engine to deliver blast to several sides of a furnace, through multiple tuyeres.
A finery forge contained finery and chafery hearths, usually one of the latter and one to three of the former. Each hearth was equipped with its own set of bellows, blowing into it through a tuyere.
The blacksmith's hearth at their forge has a tuyere, often blown by foot-operated bellows.
^ abW. K. V. Gale, The iron and Steel industry: a dictionary of terms (David and Charles, Newton Abbot 1972), 216–217.
^Alberge, Dalya (January 28, 2024). "'Forging new history': high-end Iron Age smithy unearthed in Oxfordshire". The Guardian. The excavation was conducted by DigVentures, an archaeology social enterprise, while investigating the area downslope from the iron age hillfort at Wittenham Clumps, a South Oxfordshire landmark. In 2021, the team found an extended iron age settlement, with the remains of roundhouses dating from 400-100BC. [...] Founded in 2012, DigVentures is a team of archaeologists who aim to increase public participation in archaeology.
