Wrought iron of the earliest type was made directly into a tool or product. A hammermill was used to beat the heated mass. There is a bridge on the Highbanks Farm near Vauces, Ross County, owned by Kezia Vanmeter Sproat, which has a wrought iron bridge across Dry Run on the farm. Cast Iron Iron furnace technology evolved to blast furnaces which produced cast iron. It could be cast into items where toughness was not a problem as into stoves, kettles, skillets, steam engine blocks and flywheels.
Cast iron is reworked and modified to make steel.
This is an art which I am not qualified to explain, except in admiration. One can look in the atlases of the Nineteenth Century for Lawrence, Jackson, Gallia, Scioto and Vinton Counties and see the ads for iron products from the blast furnaces and the secondary forges. Because blast furnaces produced increased quantities of iron from the ore, the molten iron was cast into bars, called pig iron , for later remanufacturing. The furnaces were built and operated for the purpose of extracting iron from the native iron ores. The objective was to form bars of cold cast iron for transfer to a foundry for later remanufacture.