Also 7–8 finary. [a. Fr. finerie, f. finer to refine, FINE v.2; see -ERY.]
1. A hearth where cast iron is made malleable, or in which steel is made from pig-iron.
1607. Cowell, Interpr., s.v. Blomary, is one of the forges belonging to an iron mill (which also seemeth otherwise to be tearmed a Finary.)
1613. J. Rovenzon, Treatise of Metallica, C 4. The furnaces may be made with conuenient places therein for the Finery and Chaffery.
1697. View Penal Laws, 255. Any Iron-Mill Furnace, Finary or Blomary for the making of iron or metal.
1831. J. Holland, Manuf. Metal, I. 80. One man and a boy at the finery should make two tons of iron in a week.
1864. Percy, Iron & Steel, 579. Before the introduction of [puddling] the conversion was always effected in a finery.
2. The action of refining iron. rare.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 699. The finery … is executed in peculiar furnaces called running-out fires.
3. Comb., as finery-cinder (see quot. 1826); finery-furnace (see quot. 1874); finery-hearth = finery-furnace.
1788. Priestley, in Phil. Trans., LXXVIII. 154. Also when the scale of iron, or *finery cinder, is heated.
1810. Henry, Elem. Chem. (1840), II. 21. Iron thus treated [with water when red-hot] … may be crumbled down into a black powder, to which the name of finery cinder was given by Dr. Priestley.
1791. Beddoes, in Phil. Trans., LXXXI. 173. The reverberatory has been substituted in the place of the *finery furnace.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., I. 847/2. Finery-furnace. A species of forge-hearth in which gray cast-iron is smelted by fuel and blast, and from which it is run into iron troughs for sudden congelation.
1693. Lister, in Phil. Trans., XVII. 866. Bars … taken up out of the *Finnery Harth, or second Forage, are much better Iron than those which are made in the Bloomary.
