Inside Battery A's hot shot furnace! This furnace was built to heat balls for the battery's intended armament, 32-pounder guns...and of course 10-inch Rodmans were what were eventually mounted at this battery, which made this furnace even less useful than it had been with no guns to serve. Could a 32-pound shot, which was much smaller in diameter than 10 inches, have been fired from a Rodman? Maybe, but by the time the Rodmans were emplaced, wooden warships were less likely to be the craft approaching coastal batteries, as the age of the ironclad had dawned.