Working on a smelter

[J.Arthur Loose]

Here's a bit of my smelter in progress... The stone frame supports a mix of local clay & local (organic!) horse manure. There will be another foot and a half coming out the top.

I'm also going to turn my firepit into a charcoal pit. Currently it's about 4 feet deep by 5 feet wide, with a stone wall around it. I'll plug up the holes in the stone wall with the same clay mixture & then I'll have about 6 feet, which I should be able to pile high enough to get another few feet before covering it with turf / clay. Something like 150 cubic feet if I'm figuring right... just over a cord.

I needed to buy wood this year anyway...

I thought this Regia Anglorum link was interesting. I wholeheartedly agree with the beer/all-nighter theory. They call this work?

[hammerdownnow]

Very Stonehenge looking.

[Jeff Mack]

Cool stuff! What are you going to use to supply air?

Jeff

[J.Arthur Loose]

I like the Pict siggy, Hammer.

I'm going to make a double bellows but with a lever to make them both go with one hand. I'm going to have to bribe a lot of labor with homebrew...

I'll measure the cfm and do some more controlled experiments with a squirrel-cage blower too...

[rhrocker]

I find this facinating! I'm looking forward to the progress reports of your smelter. By the way, it looks like you live in a National Park!

[mstu]

Cool! I'm working towards a second run of my short-stack bloomery in the near future. Used all my homemade charcoal and will have to go with the commercially produced stuff for run two. Had to tip over the stack at the end of the first run to scrape and chisel everything out. The first run made lots of dense iron-rich slag but alas no iron. I'm using mill scale as the ore since there's no bog iron down here

Here's another link:
http://bellsouthpwp.net/m/o/molly9/

[hammerdownnow]

Mike, who is in the pics and does the game warden think you are smoking fish?

[J.Arthur Loose]

Nice rock-work on that smelter. Is it lined with anything?

I'm pretty lucky when it comes to ore around here. I have a bog in the back yard that's probably loaded but there's also tons of ore in Vermont in general. It used to be a huge iron producing state in the 1800's, and was almost used for ore during WWII. Many of the rocks lining my firepit, for example have turned a nice rusty red.

[mstu]

Oops, I'd better clarify. Unfortunately, the nice rock smelter in the link I posted is not mine, but just a link a friend sent me. Wish it were mine though, I do like the look of dry stacked rocks.

My smelter looks more like an uglier version of one of those big termite mounds you see in nature shows on TV. It's mostly made of 'cob' made of yellow clay from my yard, pine straw, perlite, cheap clay kitty litter (bentonite?), sand, and some portland cement mortar mix to hold it all together. I put a thin coat of some kind of refractory on the inside, only a quarter inch thick or so, to line it but I think it might work almost as well without it. The slag stuck to this lining like glue, and I finally had to chip it off with a metal bar.

I posted a couple pics on Don Fogg's board a month or so ago when I tried the first run. If I can get it rebuilt the rest of the way in time, I want to try a second run this weekend. I'll try to put up some pics here too if it's successful.

Michael

[Raymond Johnson]

MEAD! DID SOMEONE SAY MEAD ( HOME BREW ) VERMONT IS A LITTLE FAR FROM FLORIDA, BUT MY HEART IS WITH YOUR MEAD. HOW DO YOU DAMM CAP LOCKKKKK.......

Raymond Johnson

[J.Arthur Loose]

Here she is all finished & drying... it's 11" x 27" interior. I may add a few more inches to the top...

Now for making charcoal with the pit method...

Raymond, I pride myself on making an excellent mead. I use only honey, water, champagne yeast and a tiny bit of gypsum & Irish moss. After the primary fermentation I cap it in beer bottles. After about six months they sparkle & the carbonation takes a nice bite off the sweetness. I just cracked one yesterday to celebrate the smelter which was brewed at MidWinter... young, but excellent! It was a nice dark, wild Vermont Fall honey.

[Drac]

Jon,

Don't tease . I haven't had a good glass of mead since I was at one of the guys in my Reserve unit wedding. One of the guests made 150 bottles of varying types as a wedding gift.

Jim