Wheelwork
A wheelwork was a blast furnace type developed in the Middle Ages and used until around 1900, but is now technically obsolete . These blast furnaces were used to extract iron . Charcoal was used as fuel . In order to achieve the highest possible temperatures in the smelting furnaces for iron production, air was blown in with the help of bellows . These bellows were operated first with treadmills and from the 13th century with water wheels . Therefore, these smelters were always located on rivers or streams and a typical component was the water wheel, from which the expression “wheelwork” for such an independent smelting plant goes back. The wheel works correspond comparatively to the pre-industrial iron production facilities known in some German regions, which were called Reitwerke (Reidtwerke, Reidewerke) and their operators Reidemeister (Reitmeister, Reidtmeister, Raitmeister ).
Another name for a wheel works is a flat house or blah house. Blowing comes from blowing, which means blowing air into the blast furnace through the bellows. The Blahhaus people, also known as lead or flasher, carried out and checked the filling of the melting furnace and the melting process.
The owners of the wheel works were called wheel masters .
In Styria , numerous wheel works are historically documented and they benefited from the ore deposits on the Erzberg near the town of Eisenerz in the mountain range of the Eisenerzer Alps . The last of its kind, Radwerk IV in Vordernberg , was discontinued in 1911. Today you can visit two of these originally 14 wheelworks in an industrial museum. These include the completely preserved Radwerk IV as well as the stone furnace and the blower house from Radwerk III. This also houses the earliest type of steam engine on Austrian soil. Furthermore, the remains of Radwerk I and also the furnace stock of Radwerk X are in Vordernberg.
literature
- Maja Loehr: The bike masters on the Styrian Erzberg until 1625 . Ulrich Moser Verlag, Graz, Vienna 1941 ( PDF )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fig .: Late medieval blacksmiths in the further processing ( freshening ) of the pellets from carbon-rich sponge iron . Source: Agricola : De re metallica libri XII. (1556)
- ↑ Hans Jörg Köstler, Josef Slesak: The wheel works to Vordernberg in Styria. A photo documentation of the fourteen blast furnaces and their pig iron production. Podmenik, Fohnsdorf 1986, ISBN 3-900662-04-7 , p. 12.
- ^ Edwin Weigand: Montanhistorisches Museumensemble RADWERK IV Vordernberg. Retrieved October 5, 2015 .