When the Iron was taken out of the furnace it only needed a few swift thumps from the Tilthammer to sqeeze it up enough for the rolling. Whilst other designers engineered their rolling surfaces to be perfectly annular so that they a beautiful unblemished surface, Henry Cort didn't. He was more concerned with stuffing the biggest possible pieces of iron into his mill. So his rollers had cross cut grooves to help them grip and devour material more easily.
There were multiple pairs of rollers revolving in opposite directions so that the work would pass in one direction whereupon it would be grabbed in the long handled tongs and fed into the next pair of rollers. The results were significant, they speeded up the process of making iron bands for barrels by twelve times and turned a loss making process into one that was profitable.