[:—OE. blóma in same sense; identical in form with the word for ‘flower’ in the other Teut. langs. (OS. blômo, etc.: see BLOOM sb.1), but the history of the sense is not ascertained. No examples of the word have been found between OE. times and the end of 16th c.]
1. ‘A mass of iron after having undergone the first hammering.’ Weale. spec. An ingot of iron or steel, or a pile of puddled bars, which has been brought, by passing through one set of ‘rolls,’ into the form of a thick bar, and left for further rolling when required for use.
a. 1000. in Wr.-Wülcker, Voc., 141/36. Massa, dað, uel bloma.
1584. [cf. BLOOMERY].
1674. Ray, Iron Work, 127. At the Finery by the working of the hammer they bring it into Blooms and Anconies.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 163. They work it into a bloom, which is a square barr in the middle, and two square knobs at the ends, one much less then the other, the smaller being call’d the Ancony end, and the greater the Mocket head.
1719. Glossogr. Nova, Bloom, in the Iron-Works, is a four-square Mass of Iron about two Foot long.
1845. New Statist. Acc. Scotl., VI. 79. An extensive forge for the manufacture of blooms was erected.
1862. Times, 12 Aug., 9/3. Lord Dudley presents numerous specimens of fractured blooms and bars, which show a fine grain.
1881. Academy, 6 Nov., 350. It may possibly be a ‘bloom’ from a prehistoric foundry.
1882. Engineer, 24 Feb., 133/1. The blooms from the hammer are then heated and rolled down to make puddled bar.
¶ 2. Sometimes improperly applied to the ‘ball’ or mass of iron from the puddling furnace which is to be hammered or shingled into a bloom.
1865. Derby Mercury, 15 Feb., 6/5. An immense ‘bloom’ of iron, looking like a huge egg, and weighing 5 cwt., showing the state of the iron as delivered by the furnace.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, II. 1013. The bloom or rough ball from the puddle-furnace.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 410. After pig-iron has been puddled, the ‘blooms,’ as the masses of iron are termed, while still white-hot from the puddling furnace, are dragged to the helve.
3. Comb., as bloom-shearing; bloom-hook, an implement used for handling heated blooms; so bloom-tongs; bloom-smithy, a forge or smithy where blooms are made.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 459. This kind of charcole serueth only the Bloom-smithies and furnaces.
1831. J. Holland, Manuf. Metals, I. 18. At the suppression of the bloomaries (or iron smithies) the tenants charged themselves with the payment of this rent, which is called Bloom Smithy, or Wood rent.
1884. Imp. & Mach. Rev., 1 Dec., 6719/2. A large bloom-shearing machine, capable of cutting steel blooms.
