how does smelting work

Question

I know that in order to smelt stuff, you need to heat it until it melts and then pour it into a form. But that oven and that form always need to have a higher melting point, right? So how do we create the oven at the top? How do we create stuff when nothing with a higher melting point exists to make an oven out of it?

Edit: I think I understand now, thank you again to the kind people in the replies who explained it to me 🙂

In: Technology

Answer 1

Just to add my two cents. What you pour molten metal into does not necessarily need to be of a higher melting point. It’s mass can be much larger, acting as a heat sink, requiring more heat to bring it up to melting point than is available in the molten metal.