Papers, Publishing & Research Sources

Day 72

If judged by the budget included with my OAC Project proposal, the last actual 'grant day' would have been 43 days ending April 26. I decided to extend the project work to cover two last major elements. One was the iron smelt covered in the last couple of posts here. The second was an academic paper to be delivered at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo Michigan. The conference ran from May 9 - 13, with my specific paper to be presented Thursday May 10.

I've referenced the paper itself in an earlier posting here. I had given a first draft version at Forward Into the Past at Laurier University on March 31. Obviously I consider the various public presentations of both research and practical method, plus ongoing communications like this blog an esencial part of the entire Bloom to Bar project.

The revised text of my paper 'An Iron Smelt in Vinland' will be eventually be published. Session organizers Ken Mondschein and Michael Cramer are working with Freelance Academy Press to collect a number of papers from the past 'If Those Bones Could Talk' sessions into a volume. 

Not to get too (!) side tracked, what I wanted to detail here was some other excellent reference sources for those seriously interested in bloomery iron smelting.

Method :

A Practical Treatise on the Smelting and Smithing of Bloomery Iron
Lee Sauder & Skip Williams
Historical Metallurgy, vol. 36 (2). 2002
A version will be available by hunting around on Lee's Iron Smelting site
 
If You Don't Get any IRON...
Darrell Markewitz
EXARC. vol. 2012-1
Available on line (with subscription)

Remember there are some links to instructional methods to your top right!

References :

Iron in Archaeology - The European Bloomery Smelters
Radomir Pleiner
80-86124-26-6
David Brown Books in the US is currently contacting the original publisher to see if they can acquire some copies of this volume. They are also attempting to get some of Pleiner's 'Iron in Archaeology, Early European Blacksmiths / 808612462-2'


Prehistoric & Medieval Direct Iron Smelting in Scandinavia and Europe 
Lars Christian Norbach
13 9788772887746
Available from ISD Distributing
The book costs $60 plus shipping

Iron and Steel in Ancient Times
Vagn F. Buchwald
8773043087
Available from the Danish Royal Academy
The book costs 60, 56 Euros plus 21,4 Euros (to Canada).
Contact Katrine Hassenkam Zoref

Credit where Credit is Due!

Day 53

Setting the Record Straight!

Part of the project grant was specifically to cover my participation in Smeltfest 2012, hosted by Lee Sauder at his Germinal Ironworks outside Lexington Virginia.
Lee, assisted by his close friend and smelting partner Skip Williams, started investing historic bloomery iron smelting methods in the 1990's. They were initially inspired by African models, then worked backwards to establish a functional and predictable technique.

Sauder & Williams, pulling a bloom from their 'African Queen' furnace.
Frontier Culture Museum, Stauton VA - 2002

I had the good fortune to meet Lee and Skip in Fall of 2002. I had only undertaken two smelts at that point, both unsuccessful. They were extremely generous with their knowledge and folding my small group (other members of DARC) into their demonstration. Although we did little more than help with some of the 'dirty jobs' I certainly learned an immense amount. They had already determined the critical high volume air flow required to correctly produce dense iron blooms. By the point I met them, they had published their research both formally and inside blacksmithing circles.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the Spring 2004 smelt at Wareham had a special guest, Michael McCarthy from Cooperstown NY. Mike had been smelting at the Farmer's Museum, basing his furnaces on Colonial American models. He was actually on his way back home from spending a week building and operating a Japanese tatara furnace. Although yet again tour smelt was a complete failure, a solid friendship was struck up.

Mike would organize the first Early Iron symposium at the Farmer's Museum in Fall of 2004. This gathered together Lee & Skip, Mike and myself as demonstrators, each building and operating a furnace from our various traditions. My (quite unplanned) contribution was a Norse style short shaft.

the "Gangue of Fer"
(L-R) Sauder, Williams, McCarthy, myself (back)
Early Iron 1 - Cooperstown NY, 2004

Late Winter of 2005 would mark the first of the invitational Smeltfest events hosted by Lee. Initially this was just the small group of us, concentrating on some specific aspect of furnace construction or smelting method.
Over the years a number of functional problems have been proposed and tested. These methods have then been incorporated in the continuing work of all three teams. A growing group of other enthusiasts have been included and have contributed. The core these days includes Jesus Hernandez, Shelton Browder and Steve Mankowski. Smeltfest has been fortunate to have include a number of wide flung guests on a more irregular basis, including some that have travelled a fair distance to participate. (Recent years have included Jake Keen, Tim Young and Therese Kearns from England, Jeff Pringle from California.)

In truth, the Early Iron group acts much like a think tank - with a solid practical workshop aspect. Evenings are spent in brainstorming ideas, with the raw energy of being gathered from isolation into a group of fellow enthusiasts. Days are spent testing out suggested concepts. The combination of experiences, interests and personal skills provides a unique and often intense, learning experience for us all.

My single largest contribution to the overall endeavor has been with documenting and publishing the discoveries. Almost always I am *not* the originator of these ideas. In practical work, I am typically just a 'worker bee' rather than a team leader.
I do make every attempt to make sure credit is given where credit is due.

(This clarification arose from some secondary mentions of yesterday's blog post. Tomorrow I will expand on those additional comments.)

Smeltfest B

(Day ??)

Sunday proved to be one of the best all round days at a Smeltfest from the last several years. Participants had followed their interests, attacking several aspects of a general problem. There were four groups, all working around the edges of the rear smelting area at Germinal Ironworks.

Lee Sauder, assisted by primarily by Therese Kearns, repaired and fired the iron furnace again. After two full smelts on the previous two days, Lee hoped he had figured the right combination and sequence to produce a bloom from the magnetite ore. The first smelt on Friday had not produced much slag - or any iron. The second on Saturday had reduced the ore, but the product was a unforgeable cast iron.
Success! Roughly 60 kg of magnetite was reduced to create an un-compacted bloom at 17 lbs. On initial compaction (first by hand and then under the large mechanical hammer) the product was found to be a nicely consistent higher carbon metal. After more or less 'bracketing' the smelting process with the previous two (pretty much) failures, Lee was quite happy to have nailed the right sequence of working this new ore.

Lee (L) assisted by Steve Mankowski -
Compacting the bloom under the large mechanical hammer. (*)

Working inside the main shop, Skip Williams was preparing various samples of the earlier slags and bloom fragments for examination under microscopes. Skip better understands the various components seen at different stages of the ore to metal process. He kept pulling all of us over to have look and explain just what we were seeing - and how this could apply to our understanding of the overall mechanisms we were involved with.
Shelton Browder assisted with this, as well as working on another examination. An antique axe of unusual construction (at least to modern eyes) was polished and etched. This allowed some insights into historical use of bloom and wrought iron metals.

One of the large projects intended for Smeltfest this year was to experiment with a smaller re-melting hearth. Steve and Jesus Herandez worked on this. Jesus has a specific historic point of reference - Japanese swords from before roughly 1700. He explained that this marks the start of the direct bloomery tatara system. Before that point, the process involved producting a high carbon cast iron, which was then re-processed in a secondary hearth to remove excess carbon until the metal could be forged into blades. This step in the sequence is not very well represented in archaeology or documents, so is a bit of a mystery. He said that pre-1700 blades have a distinctive quality that distinguishes them from later ones. Modern methods are yet to duplicate this quality.
At Smeltfest 2011, archaeologist Tim Young (from England) had told us about ancient remains from England and Ireland which appear to be the result of a similar process. Therese had focussed part of her academic researches into studying of these hearths. Taken with Skip's early research and the Smeltfest 2008 work on the Aristotle furnace, this investigation suggests many possibilities.

The test re-melting hearth.
An ingot of high carbon steel is just being removed - created from cast iron material

My project for the day was working with the smaller Aristotle furnace. Although the group had done considerable experimentation here, both together and individually, it turned out that not many tests of *reducing* carbon had been undertaken. In a series I did with Gus Gissing (back at Wareham) two years back one of the tests had been using small pieces of cast iron from a failed smelt attempt. My duplication on Sunday once again showed that the Aristotle furnace could also be used to reduce the carbon down to a useful level. It appears the system first removes the bulk of the carbon present, then re-applies carbon to an amount that is regulated by the way the furnace is physically set up inside. This may be a significant discovery.

The Aristotle furnace in operation - early in the sequence.

Of course, this is just some of the overall work and experimentation that goes on during a typical Smeltfest! Not to be discounted is all the time for conversation and sharing of ideas and problems.


(*) The process used to convert this raw bloom into something ready for further forging illustrates once again why part of my own OAC project has included some work on a hydraulic press. The hot bloom is pulled from the furnace, and its surface worked over with sledges on a metal plate to break off the loose 'mother' slag coating. This is done working on the ground, the strikers squatting almost African style. Then the exposed bloom is rushed to the forge to re-heat. Further compaction, from a half bowl to a slightly flattened puck, is done with a pair of strikers wailing away with heavy sledges.

Shel and Steve (L & R) using sledge hammers for the first compaction steps, working under Lee's direction.

Next, Lee moves over to his massive (200 + lbs) mechanical hammer to reduce the puck to a block. This is then cut into quarters, again under the mechanical hammer.
(as seen above).
Obviously, I personally do not have access to either the skilled labour, or more importantly, the large power hammers that Lee has. The new hydraulic press is thus critical to my ability to work similar large bloom masses.(Which of course is what the OAC Grant is all about!)

Smeltfest A

This is just a fast taste of what is happening at Smeltfest. Sorry there are no images, with the confusion of working from the road, my camera cables are up at the workshop this morning.

The first day in the later afternoon and evening was really scheduled as a travel day. As people arrived, we cleared off the large 'Africa' furnace from last year. Another long task was roasting and crushing ore for this year's series.

The first official day started with preparing charcoal, with several hundred pounds worth to be hauled, crushed, sized and screened. Others worked on preparing Lee Sauder's production smelter for use. A third group worked up clay mixture for the various small furnaces and hearths under consideration this year. Skip Williams supervised the construction of an Aristotle re-melting furnace. I worked at all these tasks to some degree. Later in the afternoon, I showed Therese Kearns (an archaeologist participating from England) how the Aristotle worked. In the background from about noon on, Lee and Jesus Herandez ran a test smelt of the magnetite ore prepared the day before.

The second full day started with the preparation for another smelt using a different magnetite ore. Insights (??) from the first smelt were applied to the second. (It was decided that we had done too good a job high grading the ore the day before, resulting in virtually no slag bath in the furnace.) Again this started with ore crushing while the furnace was given some minor repairs and generally set up. Just after lunch we started this second smelt. Therese and I undertook the charging cycles, with Lee making the control decisions. (This makes smelt 50 for me.) The experience from the day before obviously paid off - sort of. The iron ore was most definately reduced to metal, but the result was a higher carbon cast iron rather than a forgeable bloom.
This turned out to be not the problem it might of been, as Jesus was interested in examining a theoretical Japanese sequence. He explained that historical blades were visibly different than those using even the 'traditional' Tatara method (post 1700). The theory is that ore was converted into a cast iron, then that was placed in a secondary hearth set up to *reduce* the overall carbon content as billets were created. In the background, Jesus, Shelton Browder and Steve Mankowski constructed a medium sized refining hearth to test just this method. (Expected to run on day three).


Of course there is always a lot of mixed conversation between various of the assembled team. These off the cuff discussions are always extremely valuable for how we share insights, experiences - and common problems to us all.

(I may edit this posting later when I get some images ready to insert)

Washington Cathedral

(Day 28)

As the combined Smeltfest 2012 and research trip proceeds, I will only have spotty internet access - via my lap top. So postings may be less frequent and shorter...

Today I drove into Washington from Winchester, and spend most the day at the Washington National Cathedral.

Now this is an impressive building in almost every way. My intent on visiting was to examine the forged metalwork there, primarily by legendary artisan blacksmith Samual Yellen. Over the course of some four hours, I took over 120 images. These were both complete pieces, but also many close up details. Those images are the kind of thing that revel many things about the construction of the pieces, and individual shapes and processes used. Many discoveries!

These are just a couple of samples:

Around the main entrance to the Cathedral, there are a number of roughly 4 foot wide by 6 foot tall panels, all by Yellen. Each shows a distinctive design. This is a detail of the main fill of one of these. The heavy rings are held by a series of looped over elements, each end forged by splitting into a crescent. These are wrapped around the rings while hot. The end result is that each of the rings is actually free to move, making the panel slightly flexible.

This is a railing to one side of a set of stairs leading downwards to the 'crypt' level, this in the NE corner of the building. You can see the very organic lines. The hand rail on the opposite side of the stairs uses the same flat bar with double lines hammered in. The uprights and supports are quite different however.

This is the famous 'Good Shepard' gate by Albert Pailey. (Most all smiths would recognize it!) This is a view of the *rear* of the gate, not usually ever seen. To give you some idea of scale of this work, the majority of elements seen here are forged from starting stock that looked to be 1/2 to 5/8 thick - and four inches wide.

Tomorrow is a slower trip down to Lexington