At the casting house, a furnace at full blast kept founders preparing to receive up to a ton of molten liquid iron. They frequently checked crucible contents and removed slag impurities floating on the heavier iron, and all preparations had to be complete when the clay plug holding back the liquid was pierced. Founders wore long leather aprons, gloves, and high boots against the searing heat, and used simple hand tools including rakes to remove slag, V-shaped hoes called ships, and ladles for complex molds. The iron flowed through shallow V-shaped trenches dug in the sand floor, then cooled and hardened into heavy bars called sows. Products made at Saugus included firebacks, which were set at the rear of a fireplace to reflect heat back into the room and reduce heat escaping up the chimney, and decorative wood carvings served as patterns by being pressed into sand to create impressions filled with molten iron directly from the crucible. Potters and pattern makers practiced for months before casting began, and even a simple cast-iron pot required a mold of several pieces; pot molds were buried in the sand and filled by ladling in the liquid iron. A small cast-iron pot was one of the products of Hammersmith.
