Quenchcrack, you must try these newfangled things people are reading, they are called books...
Alfie, short answer, yes, long answer , not in your shop. Around the late 1700's a prosess called Puddling was developed in which the raw pig iron from a blast furnace was fed into a large rectangular furnace that had a fire box off to one side, normaly heated by coke or charcoal, the pig iron used had around 3-4 % carbon and high amounts of silicon, phosphorus and manganese, so not quite mild steel. So, once all the bar have melted in the fire pot, the mass is stired around and oxidized untill most of the silicon has boiled away, then the phosphorus, carbon and slag are removed in the same way. Once all the impurities have been removed, the iron is taken out of the furnace at and rolled in a mill or forged into bars. You could say, its a silmilar idea to the bessemer converter, only all the work is being done in one furnace, And later on when hand-puddling became obsolete this same prosess was scaled up and could make wrought iron in 5000-8000 pound batches at once.