Hi from a lurker!8o


I was thinking about doing an iron smelt pretty soon and was considering about doing two with two diffrent ores to try nd get the patterning like the old saxon and viking swords and seaxes had. The trouble is, while I have been searching I found that buying the rocks from a mineral outlet is way expensive:confused: . I am looking for siderite and hematite I know what to look for for the hematite, but not the siderite and I was thinking of driving up to Georgia to a place called Graves Mountain to try and collect some. Would any of you know what to look for or know a place to order that sort of thing less expensive than these rock places?

Thanks!!!

Jesse Frank

Contact Dan Scheid over at flyinghorseforge.com

His web site shows an Iron Bloom process he did. I also saw him do this process at a hammer-in held at Oso Forge a while back. Perhaps Dan can get you in touch with a cheaper source of Iron ores.

I'm using iron oxide from a pottery supplier for my soon to be finished smelter. It's the least expensive source of Iron I've found. I may have to add a little sand so I get enough slag.

BTW, I don't believe you will see multi metal pattenerning in your smelt. When the ore combines in the bloom, your going to cook off a lot of impurities, and make slag of most everything else. Your going to end up with low carbon iron when your done consolidating the bloom, so you will need an aditional step to make steel. After you get steel, you can forge weld the patterns in.

If you can get your hands on the book "The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" , the author goes into tons of detail on the bloomery process, including design.

Hope that helps,
Jeff

Thanks for the replies!! I will try to get in touch with them soon to see about that. I was thinking that I would do at least two smelts to get the diffrent alloys and then go ahead and maybe do a crucible melt for the high carbon since that seems a little more controllable.

Jesse Frank

You could dive into the Outpost and hunt down Achim Wirtz's commentary on making Wootz. Sorry, I don't have a link to any of the old threads....

Roger