Collecting iron bacteria as ore for smelting
Making charcoal as fuel for the furnace
Charging the furnace with fuel and ore
Mass of slag and iron
Cast iron prills
Crushing and panning the slag to get more iron out
Iron from several smelts
Making a clay crucible
The centrifugal blower being assembled for air supply
Cast iron prills to be melted and later decarburized (removing carbon from the metal)
The crucible is covered with hot coals and charcoal
The ingot is only partially melted prills and was not the solid ingot I hoped for
Breaking up ingot to try again
This time I'm going to rust the iron so that when it melts there is an exothermic reation that theoretically heats up and decarburizes the metal.
After a day the iron rusts and is ready to melt
The open hearth forge is simply a shallow pit with air supply
The results were actually worse this time with no melt at all. The rust does not help the process as I thought it would.
Now I'm going to simply melt the prills in front of the air blast without a crucible
A small pit is filled with charcoal and blasted with air
The iron is sprinkled in on top, above the air blast where it is most oxidizing and covered with more charcoal
In theory the oxidizing blast will burn the carbon out of the iron making it more malleable
Looking for the ingot
Hammering the ingot to test its malleability
It didn't flatten much so I'm not convinced it is malleable yet
It doesn't shatter when cold forged and may have become more malleable, but it's inconclusive at this stage
Another attempt to further decarburize the iron
Note the iron is glows brighter than the coals when the blast is stopped making it easier to find
Hammering the iron while at a yellow heat. Success, it is now malleable
Trying it with more iron
Success, the iron is more forgeable now
This piece is still brittle and probably hasn't decarburized or has slag inclusions
The decarburized and now forgeable flattened iron
This technique is an important step towards forged iron tools