Subject: Re: Just an idea, just for fun :)

From: [email-masked] (W Thomas Powers)
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 15:01:47 -0500

>Just as a start, to make the ore usable, it would need to be smelted. Build the
>furnace in a bank of clay, make bellows out of animal hide & wood(it would
>helpif the wind blew strongly from one direction regularly), find limestone or
>oyster shells, make charcoal from the trees. With some practice you could make
>pig iron and, a little later, wrought iron.
>I'll leave it here. Something for the next person to work with.
>Mark

I feel like a bit of a ringer; you see I have smelted iron ore in camp
using very low tech twice before and we will be doing it again this
summer!

Mark; I would advise digging the clay out and building a squat tower
of clay and straw.  Air is a much better insulator than damp clay...
You're going to spend a lot of time and effort getting this up to and
keeping it up to temperature!

The simplest bellows would be the "bag" bellows and you don't need to spend
the effort cutting planks from trees.  Charcoal is the way to go and don't
forget to roast your ore if it requires it!

*PIG IRON*??????  The direct reduction process of going from iron ore
*directly* to wrought iron is much easier to do than to get pig iron.
Much lower temperatures--less fuel and easier product to work with!
Note: in europe pig iron came around over 1000 years after wrought!

(The chinese of course had cast iron a lot earlier and even came up
with a process to de-carburize it so it would be more "useful")

For those of you interested: "Cathedral Forge and Waterwheel" has
a discussion of the rise of the stuckoffen.  Jules Vern's "Mysterious
Island" makes the process seem much too easy!

The problems I thought of were: digging the ore out, FOOD--this is going
to take a lot of effort to get a usuable product and someone will have to
support the community while it is going on, and shingling the bloom
(done at welding heat and the "green stick tong" method doesn't work
long enough--though stone hammers and anvils should work as long as you
haft the hammer!), and finally: a method of lighting fires fairly easily.

If any one would like a copy of the story I wrote about last summer's
iron run--written for humour not technical details-- please send me
e-mail at [email-masked]

Been There; Done That; Have the spark holes in my shirt!

Why yes; I am one of those strange folk in the SCA

Thomas 
Columbus, OH

---

From: "Bruce M. Freeman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 21:37:57 -0500

>Imagine a hypothetical/fictional/possibly insane 
>scenario in which you were lost in the woods with nothing but your 
>knowledge of forging, all the natural materials you usually find in the 
>woods(tree branches, animal hides, stones, etc), and a small deposit of 
>iron ore conveniently close by, and you had a desperate 
>wish/need/desire to do some metalwork.  How would you go about doing 
>it?  What materials would you need, and how would you find them or make 
>them?  How would you make a forge?  What tools would you need to make 
>first, and how would you make them?  Given enough time, could you work 
>your way up to the quality of materials and ability to produce that you 
>have with your current forge and equipment?
>

How quickly do you have to get up and running?   Do  you have an axe?  A shovel?

A forge could be a small pit with a side blast.  A bellows could be an
animal skin, reinforced and squeezed, or a  hole in the ground with a
"piston" in it (feathers providing the seal).  Maybe a natural, constant sea
breeze could be caught and directed.  The fuel is obvious - wood or
charcoal.  No axe?  Charcoal is easily broken.

Once you have the temperature for ironworking, you can make crude glass from
sand and limestone -- good enough for blades and such.  That might enable
some woodworking, which could make some construction easier.

Fun to think about.  I don't think I'd really want to try it.
Bruce