John:

I agree with the other statements, but size may be deceptive. Some
nineteenth-century bloomeries were quite large.

A bloomery will have no casting floor.

In any form, the bloomery process will have a very different
apparatus for removing slag and metal. That's because the metal is
not in liquid form when it comes out.

Bloomery slag can be mistaken for blast furnace slag by investigators
who are not familiar with the process; some of it is deceptively
glassy, but chemically distinct. I recently reviewed a report in
which bloomery slag was described as blast furnace slag by a
respected non-metallurgical chemist.

There is a vast literature on slags, and several good survey works.
Off list I can give you a few references.

At 11:05 AM -0400 4/16/03, John White wrote:
>?Query:
>     Can one distinguish between a stone bloomery furnace a blast
>furnace merely by reference to the physical remains of the
>structure -  and only the structure -  itself.  I 'd be appreciative
>of opinions.
>JRW
>
>


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Sitting here drinking diet mead
from my plastic fake auroch's horn
flagon, I wonder that my
contemporaries look like a bunch of
old geezers.