I took a brittle, high carbon/iron alloy (cast iron) made from local ore and used a decarburization method to reduce it's carbon content making it malleable and forged it flat by hammering. Rather than producing a single bloom of soft iron in my furnaces, as was done in most of history, I tend to produce cast iron prills from the ore. Cast iron is iron that has a very high carbon content. Its good properties are that it's very hard and has a low melting point. The drawback is that it's relatively brittle compared to regular iron. So I set about trying to find a method for reducing its carbon content.