Furnace Firing; Ore Roasting

[J.Arthur Loose]

So I finally fired up the Old Girl... Based on the experiments I did with the local clay & horse-dung mixture I thought it best to fire the smelter before the actual smelt. I decided that this was a good time to roast my ore, which comes from a local bog deposit.



Late afternoon on a Vermont Summer day. I simply started a wood fire in the smelter. I could hear the roar as the draft got underway. A few more feet on top and I bet I could smelt with an induced draft...

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A roaring fire naturally wanted to remain in the 800-900 C range suggested for roasting ore by Tylecote, Austin & Wraith in The Mechanism of the Bloomery Process in Shaft Furnaces, Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1971. I kept it there for about 5 hours...

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That, Gentlemen, is roasted ore.

[BrB]

COOL!!!!

I picture a bunch of naked people dancing around it and...

Ops...

He, He...


Jokes apart... very nice! Let us know what comes out of your ore now.

[Don Halter]

Does red or white wine go with roasted ore?


Nice pics! We've had a week of rain here. When it quits, I'll be digging some clay here. We have a 10-12" thick layer of pure white clay that is a dream to work. Unfortunately it's about 2-3 feet down to get to it! I was going to mix it with hay and us it over a skeleton made from elm saplings/branches. My design is based on the Rivault (sp?) Abby one. I'm going to modify it a bit so I can get the blooms oput without destroying the furnace, though. I get to skip the ore roasting part...for a while anyways. I still have over a ton of commercially pure red iron oxide. In fact, I have to mix this with crushed limestone just to get slag! I figure I can use the good stuff to get the basics down of smelting and start in on some good ol' Texas ore later!

We lost a 45' oak in a storm a couple weeks back, so I can make anothe couple hundred pounds of charcoal now, too.

[hammerdownnow]

Wooo hooo! That night pic is great....new wallpaper.

[J.Arthur Loose]

I'll be taking a lot of shots from late afternoon into night. :evil:

[sjaqua]

Bringing this thread back up to the top, two things............

What's the current progress on this project? Another group of smiths I'm on a list with, have also been talking of charcoal burning and smelting of late. So I posted a link to this thread to the that list.

And an observation from the left coast. Looking at the second photo just makes me twitch. That many embers in any forest here in So Cal is just asking for it. I've lived here since age two. And I don't think I can ever recall a summer without a nasty fire hazard. I know you guys don't have the same sort of issues, but........twitch.....twitch.......

[J.Arthur Loose]

Hopefully this week I'll get the charcoal & get the bellow built.

As usual, the lack of funds is preventing me from acquiring funds.

Definitely not the same fire hazard here; damp forest soil, it's been a very wet Summer & I've actually raked all the leaves outta danger. It's also a long exposure, so it looks far cooler than it was. I lived in S.CA for a while.. every time I go back I'm struck by just how dry the soil is. It's weird. You guys and your natural disasters...

[Lawrence Kemp]

Wow Jon, that is cool. What a feeling of accomplishment it must be to take raw ore and turn it into a bloom of steel. All with natural components bilt with your own hands and ingenuity. My fur cap is off to you man!

[Roger Gregory]

Great project and I love the pictures, especially the top one with the sunlight streaming through the trees. I can just imagine Weyland strolling over to poke the fire with a stick just to keep an eye on how the fire's burning

Roger

[J.Arthur Loose]

That's why I live in Vermont, Roger...