Hey guys,

Just though I'd let you know that I've started a page dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon smelting / forging project...

It's linked off my main site and you can get to it off the main page ( for now ) and in the Studio section at the top of the page. ( My stamp below is a link, if you've never noticed. ;) )

For now it is a collection of online resources and a partial bibliography. Eventually it will become an online thesis documenting the whole thing. If anyone knows any books / sources they think should be included in my studies I'll post them up.. I'd like this page to become a resource for anyone else interested in pursuing a similar project.

Hey that's a great project Jon, I'll be watching your progress with keen interest.

Good luck mate.

I think you're a mind reader! I've been searching for some old links I used to have on smelting, but could never find them.

Add to that our Kingdom SCA A&S competition last weekend. I used W1 for a tanto. I wasn't knocked for not doing the layer buildup...I was knocked for "too many substitutions of materials for an expert level". Down here it seems perfectly reasonable to substitute spackling for gesso, or thread from hancock fabrics for home spun, but for any metalworking you're expected to go dig your own iron ore, smelt it and hammer it out using a traditional charcoal forge run by slaves with bellows!

O.K...fine...so the smelting begins!

Ahhh...much better :).

My parents property out at Kerrville, TX would be perfect for making a large smelter. The only problem is iron ore! I was considering rust. Easy to find down here, but will it create a bloom? Seems to me like it would be better in this regard.

Where's Bog Iron when we need him? :) He's done some of this and might be able to help with a few handy hints and warnings....

Roger

A friend of mine, Dan has smelted his own iron. He substituted a power vacuum for the slaves and all. But here is a link to a photo log of the process.


http://home.earthlink.net/~chevalvolant/iron_main.html

If you write Dan he might be able to help you get some iron ore.


(And as there seems to be a fair number of us in this forum, Dan is Master Damales Redbeard in the SCA, and is an equestrian Laurel. While I am just one of those poofy fencer types, Don Njall Olaf Hagerson)

Oh and I almost forgot.

The companion book for the Smithonian's traveling exhibit, "The North Atlantic Saga", has a nice bit on viking iron smelting and forging.

Very cool link, Scott. I'm setting that one in my bookmarks.

Hey Don,

I hear you. Actually the folks around here are always trying to get me to go for the A&S competitions and after evesdropping on a couple judges doing their thing... I've said No Way. Pompous *and* ill-informed. :rolleyes:

With all the myths and misinformation and simply outdated theories floating about *especially* concerning damascus I just make my pretties and don't even try to get recognition for them.

But hey, if you decide to do some smelting, by all means let's exchange info along the way... deep down inside it is going to be one of my secret joys to go to one of the local A&S events and plop down a seax and a couple a hundred pages of documentation showing *no* substitutions... I'm even making Mastermyr hammers and tools! :evil

As for ore, I have a couple bogs in mind and a blacksmith friend of mine knows an old iron ore mine nearby. I actually suspect that my house is pretty much sitting on good ore, but we'll see. If I have to I'll resort to industrially refined materials to get specific alloy contents.

I have a couple friends in the Regia group down here that have been wanting me to try some smelting. I've been wanting to make some wrought iron for some Japanese fittings as well. And of course the real reason....fire is fun:). ( I can't say things like that around our 3 yr old, though!) Our library only has 1997-2003 of Medieval Archaeology. The 1968-1979 issues are the ones I want with the radiographic studies, but interlibrary loan is proving to be a pain. Texas University has the entire collection, so I'll probably just drive to Austin one weekend. The have a much better liberal arts program and I would expect their library to have more historical texts dealing with this as well. I'm definitely up for doing some smelting. We did some ground-forge work with some migration era double bellows and charcoal.

Yeah, the whole competition thing got started way back when my ork was "significantly less than perfect" and it was fun. Now it's more of a morbid curiosity to see what kind of comments and scores I get, even though I know I'll get slightly bent outta shape! My work has improved as a result, so it does have it's good points. Myself and another are working on doing a new sword of state for the group down here also. We want to put a series of stars and laurel leaves up and down the blade.

My project right now is wootz(actually, a crucible melting furnace for casting steel and cast iron, but wootz is the next logical step). Our library has the entire journal collection where Al Pendray and his group published the scientific methods and results and such of their efforts. I've enlisted the help of Richard Epting and a couple other smiths down here with more heavy duty equipment than myself. I'll be doing the melting furnace and making the "pucks"! They'll be doing the power hammering. Not a bad deal :)! I have several library books I checked out with lots of photos of wootz blades from 17th-18th century islamic blades. One is in french...but the pics are nice! I'm scanning the entire books so I'll have them on cd.


I have some relatives up in the Pennsylvania and Ohio regions. I want to go up there soemtime in the near future ( I have a 300 lb Amish anvil waiting for me at an uncle's). If you find an ore source up around there, I'd love to fill a trailer up with a few hundred pounds! So what would happen if you charged a smelter with rusty scrap metal? Would it coagulate into a bloom? Is there a size above which pieces just turn into red hot lumps and don't precipitate down int o the bloom? Technically, wouldn't rusty scrap just be the same as really, really, really rich iron ore?


Edited: Well, it turns out Texas has rather large amounts of high grade iron ore. In fact it's used as decorative borders for flower beds and such in several places! Unfortunately, it all happens to be in the same areas as the shuttle debris field. I imagine it will be a while before I can go tooling around those counties with a trailer and go digging around in fields and embankments!

Here's a nice site:
http://iron.wlu.edu/
go to the iron links section as well for lots of research sites and such with working bloomeries!