[Captions by Y Translator] Guys, we are back once again with my friend Joseph,
and today, we're going to use some of the things we've made before...
Including the bag bellows from the previous video,
and this furnace
that was teased also in the previous video.
And today,
we are going to try and extract iron, from iron ore.
[Music]
>> So, blacksmithing is primitive.
You're like raw, dealing with the elements,
beating on a piece of iron,
but where did the blacksmith get the iron?
And that's what we're doing today.
We are going to make iron.
> So what materials are we going to start with?
I know we've got our bellows, and we've got our bloom furnace,
which is basically a cylinder of clay.
>> Yes, a cylinder of clay with a hole in the bottom,
so that we can pump air into it.
>> All right.
What else do we need?
>> We need to make basically a lasagna
out of ore and charcoal.
And what's going to happen is, as the fire burns,
it's going to sink down into the fire.
And what we're going
to keep doing is adding a little bit more charcoal,
and then a little bit more ore,
and it's going to make layers, like lasagna on its way down.
And on its way down, It's going to get hot,
but the heat is not what converts this into metal.
You can get this crazy hot,
and what you would have is molten red rocks.
In order to make iron,
you need a chemical reaction to happen.
And for that,
our secret ingredient is charcoal.
Charcoal is basically pure carbon,
and when it burns, it produces carbon monoxide.
This is why you should never ever burn it inside.
The temperature is going to melt
off all of the glassy stuff, all the silica,
and then the carbon monoxide is literally going to rip
off oxygen atoms from the iron ore,
leaving us with iron.
>> So we've got this full.
There's a little bit of wood down at the bottom.
The top layer is pretty much all charcoal this point,
and then we have our first batch of iron oxide.
It's not even slightly warm yet,
because not much oxygen is getting into this.
So the fire is staying very low,
until we use the bellows to flood it with oxygen,
and just get it blazing hot.
>> And you can think of it in different temperature zones.
Up here, it's like just drying off,
if there's any moisture in the ore or the charcoal.
And as it gets a little bit lower,
it'll heat up,
and then right around here,
it'll get hot enough that it will start converting.
And then, it will get close to the oxygen again,
but what we're pumping in is oxygen,
and that's exactly the thing we're trying to get rid of.
So what will happen is the iron bits are going
to turn into iron,
and then as the come past here,
there's a danger that will turn back into rust.
Fortunately,
we have a secret ingredient, also included an ore,
and that is the glassy stuff, the sand.
And so that's going to melt
and coat all of those little particles of ore,
protecting them from the oxygen
until they settle down here, in the bottom zone of the fire.
>> Let's pump some air.
Let's do it.
[Music]
So we're doing right here is we are pre-roasting the ore.
This is particularly useful for hydrated ores,
in other words,
ores that have water molecules bound it onto them,
similar to the way that concrete has water bound on to it,
and so, what we're doing is we're roasting it,
and the other thing
that it does is it makes it way easier to grind
to down into the pea gravel and powder size
that we need to put it in the furnace.
Joseph and I tried grinding this up, like normal,
and it was miserable.
So roasting it as a good thing.
When you find reddish rocks,
like in say, the Grand Canyon area,
it doesn't take very much iron to stay in rock red.
So just because it's red,
doesn't mean there's a lot of iron there.
The first smelt I did with iron failed miserably
because I had red rocks,
and I assumed that they were iron.
Turns out,
they only had like three percent iron,
and tested that after I failed with it.
[Music]
>> All right, we want to do an update.
This has been running for several hours,
and, although we did use the bag bellows for many hours,
we also did decide it's okay if we cheat a little bit.
>> Especially since we ran into a problem
where we were not going
through enough ore fast enough to finish within like a day.
In order to speed things up, we got an electric air pump,
and that goes a lot faster.
The bag bellows was working.
We were getting everything processing.
It was just processing slowly.
>> And it was so cool.
Well, except for the fact that it was hot in the sun,
and next to a 2000 degree furnace.
But other than that, it was cool.
>> We opened up the back
of it to try and let some slag burn out.
Slag is everything
that's in the iron ore that isn't the iron itself,
and we found
that we believe we have a good sized lump of iron.
>> Now, this could be just a bunch of slag,
or it could be a bunch of iron and slag,
so we can cool that off. >> Cool that off first.
Yeah, let's put that in a bucket of water.
[Music]
What do you think it was, mostly iron or mostly slag?
>> Mostly slag. >> Mostly slag.
Okay, big old blob of slag.
So the way to tell is you whack it with a hammer.
If it shatters, it's slag.
If it dents, it's iron.
And as you can see,
it's probably a little over 200 degrees.
The cool thing about this is the partially reduced bits,
I can just throw back on the fire,
and we can recycle this.
[Music]
>> At this point,
we have enough heat in our bloom furnace
that we have slag pouring out.
This stuff looks like lava,
and since a lot of its melted rock,
it kind of is lava.
It's just lava from rocks
that used to have a lot of iron in it.
[Music]
Getting slag this runny is a good sign
because it usually means there is a higher concentration
of iron in the ore,
and so the fact
that we are seeing this as a very good sign.
Slag is [inaudible]
>> Yes, holy crap!
That is iron.
[Music]
So, the furnace has been burning for a very, very long time.
You may notice from the lighting that it's late afternoon.
And what we've done is we've managed to get
through all the ore in those layers,
and I can feel with this thing
that there's a big lump of something right there.
Is it iron?
Please be iron.
[Music]
>> Now you can see how thick the walls are on this thing.
Oh boy.
That's a big old blob of something.
>> Is it iron?
>> I can't tell yet.
>> I'm going to clear out some of that charcoal.
And again, right here.
[Music]
>> More? >> More.
Yes.
Keep going.
Nice.
Okay.
Is it loose?
>> Not really.
Oh, come on.
Where are you?
[Music]
>> Oh, you were really close to cracking that.
[Music]
That is an iron bloom.
[Music]
>> Let me see that hammer log.
[Music]
>> Should I get my hands dirty?
>> Yes, please do.
[Music]
Okay, let's try to get a piece out,
put it on this wooden anvil, and then compress it.
[Music]
Whack it!
Now's the time to compress.
Nate, go for broke.
You want to be gentle at first,
but see if you can get it compressing on itself at all.
[Music]
>> It looks like a meteor.
>> It does.
You can see it deforming at all?
>> I think so.
>> Nice.
[Music]
No!
[Music]
Okay, so this purplish red rust that we see up here,
that's a really good sign,
as is that bluish stuff right there.
Like this...
>> Hold that [inaudible]. >> That lump maybe.
This is iron.
I'm going to join a heavy metal band because of how awesome this feels.
That is so cool.
>> So there's...
Is there still slag in this,
or do you think this is pure iron at this point?
>> This is got tons of slag,
and probably even some charcoal in it.
>> All right Joseph,
so we started out with a bunch of red dirt.
>> Yes. And a bunch of charcoal.
Well actually, we start out with red rocks,
and we had to grind them down painstakingly into red dirt.
Yes.
>> So we just burned it for like six or seven hours.
Yes.
>> Yes, we just burn it for six to seven hours. >> And now we got this.
Yep. Very cool.
So this right here should be able to be turned
into a block of iron,
similar to what Joseph has made before.
To get this to turn into something like that,
it will involve some heat, some hammering,
maybe gathering up pieces
as it smashes out all the remaining slag and charcoal
that's stuck in this.
But this should have quite a bit of good refinable iron in it.
And next, Joseph is going to take this,
and turn it into a brick, kind of like this,
and at that point, you can start blacksmithing it.
>> So hardcore!
This is so cool!
Yeah!
>> He's a little bit excited.
Yeah, this is pretty cool.
I haven't done this five times before to varying levels
of success to have his seen level of excitement,
but I am quite happy that this turned out.
I'm quite happy for the knowledge he already had
and shared with us to make sure this did turn out,
and I'm really interested to see what gets made out of it.
>> Thanks. I'll have to show you.
It would be great.
>> Guys, that's it for today, but there's always more for you to see.
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Talk to you then.