cabbling

English

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Noun

cabbling (uncountable)

1. The process of breaking up the flat masses into which wrought iron is first hammered, so that the pieces can be reheated and wrought into bar iron.
   • 1850, John Weale, Rudimentary dictionary of terms used in architecture, etc., page 71:

     The pieces of iron obtained by cabbling are then heated in another furnace almost to fusion, hammered down into shape, and ultimately drawn out into bar-iron.

   • 1878, Robert Hunt, Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, volume 1:

     Finery iron is smelted with charcoal, and when a soft mass of about two hundredweight is formed it is hammered out into a flat oval from two to four inches in thickness; this is allowed to cool, and is then broken up into small pieces, which is the process of cabbling or scabbling.

   • 1894, Noah Webster, Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language, page 199:

     Cabbler (kabbler), n. One who works at cabbling. […]

   • 1901, The International Encyclopaedic Dictionary ..., page 692:

     […] cabbling commences, which is simply breaking up this flat iron into small pieces.

Related terms

• cabbler

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “cabbling”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)