In order to get useable metal out of iron ore, you must smelt it with extreme heat to get rid of the useless impurities.

A piece of ore is a rock with significant valuable resources within it, but you must smelt this ore with intense heat in order to extract these valuable resources.

In the old days, a blacksmith would have to smelt ore by hand using a furnace in his smithy, a process that took a great deal of time.

The earliest process used to smelt iron ore did not melt the iron so much as soften it, allowing it to be pulled away from the rest of the less useful materials in the ore.

Because you need such a hot flame to smelt ore, smiths in the past would require bellows to pour oxygen into their furnaces and raise their temperature to the required level.