At the brick hut
The old brick furnace
Dismantling the brick furnace
Digging a pit 50 cm in diameter and 12.5 cm deep
Making mud
Plastering walls of pit
Measuring pit 50 cm
Making a tuyere (air pipe) for furnace
Making fire with fire sticks
Fire in pit and drying tuyere
Dry pit
Starting the inner wall of the furnace 25 cm in diameter
Installing the tuyere
Building the furnace up above pit height
Starting the outer wall of furnace at the edge of the pit
Inner and outer walls
Increasing height of walls
Finished furnace walls 12.5cm below ground, 37.5 cm above ground, 50 cm tall overall
Fire drying inner furnace walls
Punching temporary air holes in outer furnace walls for drying fire
Drying outer walls
Furnace is completely dry now and the holes are plugged up
At the brick making hut
A batch of bricks is being fired
The ash from the fire will be used to insulate the furnace
Ash is poured into the space between the inner and outer walls of the furnace
More ash was needed so a fire was made
Ash was scooped in with a spatula because it was still hot
Meanwhile iron bacteria was collected from the creek as an ore for the furnace to smelt
Another fire was made to roast the ore
The roasted ore
The ore is covered with a pan to stop dirt getting in and contaminating it
The left over ash is collected for the furnace
Finished furnace
Filling the base of the furnace with wood
The smelting set up
1 hour preheat with wood. Being insulated, the preheat should take less time than normal
Filling the furnace with charcoal (9 double handfuls or approximately 1.5 kg)
2 single handfuls or about 200g of ore
3 double handfuls of charcoal, 2 single handfuls of ore
10 charges of ore were added in total in 1hour 30 minutes (it took longer than it should because the blower broke and needed fixing part way through)
Damage to the blower housing
Slag/iron mass
It was still hot the next day
Charcoal in the slag
Cast iron prills in the slag
Crushing the slag to get the iron prills
Separated iron and slag
Panning the crushed slag to obtain more iron
Separating the heavier iron from lighter slag, this technique has improved the recovery of iron from each smelt
The result is tiny prills and metallic iron dust that can be melted together later
I keep the slag to be re-smelted later as there may still be iron chemically bound to it
Total iron recovered was 34 g, the third highest amount I've produced in the wild
I'll try to melt it into something later along with the other iron I've been saving from smelts
All the iron I've got so far
Wood ash insulated furnace