Nirayama Reverberatory furnace and its Cannon Casting

Nirayama reverberatory furnace is located at lzunokuni-city of lzu-Peninsula, Shizuoka-Prefecture. Hagi reverberatory furnace exists at Hagi-city, Yamaguchi-Prefecture, but Nirayama's one is the only one architectures that could make cast iron cannon. There are still remained some unknown matters as follows ; (1) whether cast iron was really melted or not, (2) what kind of pig-iron was used, (3) whether blowing of bellows were utilized or not, (4) what kind of fuels were used, (5) where firebricks were made, etc. On this Nirayama reverberatory furnace, the possibility of casting of cannon with iron was investigated, with melting experiment from a foundry engineering standpoint. The followings are presumed from the investigation. Firstly, at least three cannons of cast iron were manufactured. Secondly, high Silicon contained pig-iron could not be available, so casting of iron cannon was not well done. Finally, the melting time by reverberatory furnace, from preheating to pouring completion, was about eight hours and melting temperature was above 1623K.