And this is why iron/steel objects we're so prized before industrialization. The amount of effort to get a small amount of usable material is astounding. Nice video.
Iron production wasn't always this small in scale. Often a master smelter would preside over 5 bloomeries and you'd have 30 bloomeries going at any given time. It was a very long process as seen here but with comparable effort you could produce over a hundred pounds of usable wrought iron.
I love videos like this that dispell myths about swordsmithing. Iron sand was not a type of ore unique to japan, and folding steel isn't a japan-unique style either. Thank you so much
Thank you for the post and sharing your experience. You may have had a "half failure", but I am learning over here, without having to have picked up a hammer. And that is a success. Again...thank you, teacher.
As usual very cool to watch and very interesting. I loved the beautiful countryside it reminds me of my trip around Europe when I was young. Thanks for the videos and keep them comming
your videos are always great! finding a new video of yours feels like finding gold to me! thank you for the amazing contribution, i hope more and more people will understand the cultural value of your work here!
I wish I had friends who did stuff like that! Wow. I want to learn how to do all of this. I think of it as fundamental research into the history of civilization. We who eat meat and never think of the animal, and we who live lives surrounded by steel and tools and machines and no idea where the ore comes from, and how smelting, and materials we live with are obtained. So fascinating. I think more people should be doing stuff like this so that the knowledge of how we got from this red raw ore to a billet of iron was done.
Warren Postma Just get a job loading paper into a fax machine you rebel! DO you mean to say your heart is not fully alive working a commercial job behind a customer service desk 9-5? K, so if you live by me, we can start together.
Compared to other traditional smelting furnaces I've seen, it deff looked a bit tame, heat wise. That said, you guys have more talent in your thumb than I even hope to have. Great video!!
quite interesting,the power hammer looked like a very good tool for this type of work.would love to see more about this particular billet and again thanks for sharing with us!
Woah! I had no idea one could MAKE iron. I thought that stuff had to be mined. As always, I learned something new due to your channel. Keep it up T.A !!
moreso in Accordance of the poet Mallory but yeah youre right, whoever has in their employ those who can draw swords from stone will rightwise be King of All England.
@@Superbowlofluck Thank you for your acknowledgement as you say the myth becomes reality when you see can see it. Ask any boiler maker or black smith the action of heating iron or steel and then hammering it into shape on the anvil is still referred to as 'drawing'
@@cubicinches18 An actual draw knife is used by the act of pulling. There is a real magical feel to metal work and all the old terms/names add to it. Great spin on the legend. To draw it from stone. A certain stone. Which and where!!!!! And how!!! Who is worthy!!! :-)
Having watch Japanese traditional steel making I am stunned by the similarities between the two techniques, developed separately and within vastly different cultures. The work your doing here is very important you are the essential resovoir of a vital cultural memory. Thanks for your hot and heavy work.
Thank you for this. As a metal worker (goldsmith), I would love the opportunity to pull my materials out of the ground and complete a project from start to finish
This must be incredibly satisfying, if hard work! And it looks like you had a lovely area to work in, and great friends (I assume!!) to work with. All of those things make it worthwhile, plus having something you can honestly say 'i made that'... :)
What a Absolute GIFT ,the ability to watch those Elders who probably learned from their Elders.This is TRULY MAKING ones own implement.I figure you all must be in Denmark? Cheers!! from United States.Envious ...
@@torbjornahman Oh,my mistake.(Apology)I am envious,would love to learn this without all the trials and error.lol..Best way to learn is through watching Elders.I am in Pennsylvania USA,and it is told we have great ore to . A group of expert's posted video.They got actual "Wootz" Damascus ore,trying to learn what exactly caused the pattern because real Damascus is not pattern welded or folded through layers or laminated.The actual ore caused the pattern.Well kings guarded this mine for centurys and once in awhile a 1 in a thousand blade would come out, fit for a king.All were great functional but 1% valadium is what caused the wootz pattern they claimed.I would love to send out to Jordan for a box of that ore and try this.The men who teamed up has the video on here.They used same process as your Elders here.May I ask? how did your project turn out? Was it quality when finished?I want to truly make my own EDC knife from scratch.The billet you showed at end looked nice to me. My grandmother worked for "Sandvik steel", and they used Swedish Stainless Steel,was among finest.It is Sweden based company here in United States.Are you familiar?
Yes, I have seen the videos I think. Very interesting. Out project? Well my end result is wrought iron basically. Hardly any carbon at all in it. For steel you probably need to tweak the furnace and run it hotter maybe. Sandvik is a well known steel manufacturer here yes! Not sure what their specialties are today?
Definitely. That's a lot of work for a little iron, even with a modern power hammer. It's hard to imagine how we progressed from the bronze age to the iron age. My hat's off to those early smiths who pioneered working with iron using the bronze age tools and technology they had available at that time.
I would love to get into this art. I wouldn't even know where to begin with it though. I noticed how the iron piece you took home sounds very soft when you hit it at first and as you went on it started to compact. I would love to learn to work with metal and how to refine it like that. To learn the way it behaves and how to make amazing things with it. Blacksmithing is awesome.
+Keltic Peak Great! It does not matter where you begin. If you think this is your passion, important thing is you begin somewhere, the rest will follow somehow. Start by picking up some tools maybe, or join a local group of people interested in the same thing.
+Torbjörn Åhman I would love to. I think I have a friend who could introduce me to some blacksmiths and maybe through them I can find a "guild" haha. Too bad industry has killed off this art.
Blacksmiths really need to start using those disposable masks that doctors wear, I bought some nice ones that make a good seal on the face and they help me to not cough as much from all the coal smoke and other fine powders, like that red earth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respirator Please take the time to research the benefits of a respirator, cloth is not mechanically/chemically designed to catch and stop micro particles or fumes. Safety first!
Quite the laborious process. Can imagine how useful that piece will be if forged into hatchet or knife. years of service for the hours of work forging,
iT screamed, flux me!@!@!@! and yes to temperature on the cool side, been here before. Got a bigger blast. Also always work Iron hotter than you work steel and always stop before you would normally stop for steel.
Hi Torbjorn: How about a video on the construction of the bloomery furnace please! Also on how it used. Details man, we need details! Regarding the poor bloom quality, could one take and crush amd fractionate the bloom, tjen heat it to melting in an induction or gas furnace to let the iron separate from the slag before pouring into an ingot? Cheers and Happy Easter!
Yes, I think you correct in that it was too cold from everything I've read and looking at how hard the bloom was. My guess is that this was on the high end of cast iron at 4% carbon combined with cold shortness.Too much carbon, you were in a way "puddling" that chunk to reduce the amount of carbon to get it to a forgeable state. There is a good documentary on Wootz Damascus and it compares this steel to bloomery. The Damascus had vanadium, was melted in crucibles and cooled very slowly to form spheroidal perlite- all added to the toughness of the steel. Martensite vs. Pearlite.
does not matter. You can throw hot red charcoal from one hand to another, and if you do it quickly you wont even feel its temperature. I often do this trick with my friends when we go hiking.
Torbjörn Åhman : tapping the hot charcoal with his bare hand random dude from the foundry: hold my beer and watch this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hlwi1XZg2EA.html
Otrolig inspirerande video! Just detta är något jag länge velat göra, hur skulle du gå till väga för att få tag på järnmalm eller Magnetit på egen hand? Jag bor i Stockholms län. Jag vill gärna få tag på mina mineraler på egen hand. Tips tas gärna emot! =)
seems similar to wootz making , saw that almost 10 year ago on a knife making forum , after that they made a huge damast bar (7000 kg ?) and used cuts in all kinds of angles for unique inside patterns
lillscum I'm no expert but this is quite different from wootz. Wootz is made in a crucible, with a mixture of iron and carbon, with the goal of making high carbon steel.
Not bad at all! though can I suggest adding a small amount of powdered Borax to your Red-Earth? Not only will it lower the melting point of slag and make homogenization and processing easier, but because it's a naturally occurring crystal it's been used as flux for a very, very long time, making it authentic to the time period too!
Firstly, "Lime" Aluminium?? I'm assuming you ment "like" Aluminium. Secondly, I'm Guessing you've never done Forge pattern welding or worked in a smithy before - Since anyone who has will tell you that Powdered limestone is used as a purifying agent in a blast furnace, while borax is a welding agent (Flux). Furthermore, Limestone wasn't used in the production of Iron until the invention of the blast furnace at the start of the industrial revolution because of the fact that the excessively high heat of that style of furnace made the resulting iron brittle (from an excess of carbon that molten iron absorbs from the air at extreme temperatures) if it wasn't treated. (which is why cast iron shatters if you drop it from too high) Also, Aluminium is made through a chemical process (known as the Bayer process) that produces alumina (Aluminium oxide) which is then Dissolved in solution and distilled through electrolysis. The Bayer process usually involves limestone, so you have it backwards! So if you want to stay authentic to the time period it would have to be Borax!
Limestone is used as flux in a blast furnace, it's not a purifying agent. It helps to form a light slag that floats on top of the molten iron. This shields and reduces the sulfur contamination form the fuel as well as making the slag more viscous and easy to get rid of. Sulfur makes the iron brittle. This is my understanding of it at least. I'm not sure what the historical finds are regarding the use of any flux in a bloomery furnace. There is no need to form a slag in the same way as in a blast furnace since we are not dealing with liquid iron, but the slag properties might benefit form it. The point here is that the different ores produces different slags and that is what makes a good or bad ore together with given iron content.
Torbjorn, the grey slivers that fall off during the working process, are they more oxidized metal or slag or a combination of those two? I've always wondered about this and from what I understand the more you work a bloom the less impurities it will have, generally speaking and this question has always bugged me. I live in the city and hence never see these things in person.
+PhilaPeter When working bloom steel/iron I suppose it's a combination. Just working any steel at high temperature will oxidize the surface and "scale" (iron oxide) will form.
Very awesome video! I just came back from school camp and one of our assignments was making a bellow and an oven to melt iron ore! We were able to make a tiny bit of iron mixed with heaps of slag. I told the supervisor that I am a blacksmith and he gave me some bigger bits of iron for me to forge into a billet. I tried forging one of the smaller pieces but it crumbled in tiny pieces with one hit of the hammer :( Do you have any tips on how I can forge it without crumbling? Thanks! You could try to forge a knife out of it with a piece of spring steel as cutting edge :)
knives&stuff Cool! I'm no expert on forging blooms but first of all high heat. Welding temp, and at first light taps to try and mush it together. If it's still crumbling I think it's hard to do anything really. You could crush it and remelt... could end up with steel instead.
knives&stuff I saw in a video Japanese blacksmith covers ores with wet paper, clay and straws. These create an environment such that pull oxides out of steel. Maybe borax could do this job.
Enis Turgut Yalçınkaya The Japanese are late comers to working iron, most of what you see is part of their ritual. They use a sand rich in magnetite which is higher quality of ore than used in this video. I would venture the furnace temp was too low and the temp was not maintained long enough, This could be only a few degrees an minutes. .
knives&stuff You need higher heat and less force on the hammer at first until you get a workable billet. You might try to sprinkle a little borax on it to forge weld it together. Get as high heat as possible. Work fast and reheat often. You have to be patient and keep your billet hot enough to work. Good luck!
I have a placer gold claim in Oregon, USA and one of the byproducts from my operation are large quantities of heavy black iron sands, containing rare earth elements and other heavy metals including sulfides. I would love to do this with a batch of it and see if it would be any good for making blades. Would it be possible to do this on my coal forge? It would seem that adding a flux like borax would ruin it as it would absorb all the iron leaving only precious metals behind.
Rob S Cool. Not possible in a forge. This needs to be done with charcoal. The furnace must be tall enough so the ore spends enough time traveling down to the bloom. If I remember right a grain of ore about 1mm in size needs aprox 1h to reduce fully. Would be interesting to try your "sand"... like the Japanese black sand.
I was not present when the boys gathered the sand/earth. It's roasted over open fire. Often logs are split and piled up in a tower like structure with the ore on the flats.
hey torbjorn would it have helped to ad carbon/charcoal as the samurai sword makers do as they are working it down just being curious if that would have helped any
Not in this case as this is pure iron basically (no carbon content). The reason the Japanese smiths pack charcoal around their billets is to protect the steel from decarburization or maybe even make the steel pick up some carbon.
By our standards, a bloom is the worst material, but we have to start there. You could melt what you have and make crucible steel, but that's harder to work with.
Torbjörn Åhman You know more about this than I do. There's a great YT video "African Iron smelting" where the setup is very similar, yet they used an alkali rock (like limestone) in large quantities, and this seemed to flux and compact the reduced iron into a denser mass with less impurities, and they were able to forge it nicely. The clay furnace they used was similar. Anyway, great job, I love stuff like this.
My best (most coherent, solid, and easy to work) blooms have been when I added crushed oyster-shell (i.e. calcium carbonate). Limestone should work similarly.
9 лет назад
Where was this video shot ? This is kind of meditation by the way. Really peaceful to watch.
Why does the material flake so much as it's being worked? Are these impurities that are supposed to be driven out during the working of the material, or is it good iron that just isn't bonded well for some reason, and is useful mass that you would ideally want to keep?
In this case it is both oxides and slag from the smelting that falls off. The main purpose working a bloom like this is to remove the slag and consolidate the iron. But iron will also form iron oxides when exposed to oxygen during the high heat.
