Making Viking-Age Bloomery Iron in a Bloomery Furnace 

turn down your radio... the music in this video was subtle and easy to hear the narrator talk over.

I plan on doing this for a public event, theres no chance in hell im running bellows for 7 hours when I have to entertain a crowd of 200 people. I would get the crowd involved with bellows but "its dangerous" *rolling eyes* obviously all the prep will be done before the event

They didn't show a lot of things. They're artists, not specifically craftmen.

What do you do next after you get it out of there ? Will you get good knife material?

@@davidbishop4085 , no after getting it out, it needs to be hammered/consolidated down to become an iron bar, then there is another furnace process that adds carbon to the iron to make into steel and the grade of that varies with the processes/materials used. then you can start making the knife. there are several videos out there that show more of the processes, the iron smelting, the steel forming and testing and finally knife.

Ok.. so I got the blooms but they just break apart shiny black most of it... I know I have a lot a of slag but even tiny little iron would make me incredibly happy. So does that mean I have to keep heating it hitting it and brushing it?

@@foggy7595 It would take too long to explain here. Search for traditional steel making and there are others. But it's a long process

​@@foggy7595 Presumably with hand bellows? Air being piped in makes the whole thing much more efficient

Yes, when he makes beer, it's usually very tasty :-)

+Andrew Phillip fortunately, the majority of comments are still reasonable.

This is true, but the Vikings would have also used Bog Iron which would have yielded a much more crumbly bloom

You did a great job, but comments make a point saying that it's not fully "viking age", electric blower and modern refined reagents and building components might not be what people expected to see. Anyways, I still think this is a pretty good video :) The yield is quite impressive !

Controling the exact flow of air is part of the craft and it is as important as the coal or ore itself. These guys didn't do a " Viking age " thing

So difficult that everyone around the world since the start of the iron age has been able to do it.

Hehe

IIRC, for this run, there was almost no added silica because iron sands already have a lot of silica. You probably have to experiment and see whether you get too much or not enough slag.

Lol

“Making viking-age” furnace not “cosplaying vikings for 5 minutes”

Glad you like it; spread the word :-)

Niels Provos how exactly did you do this? Did you just put a bunch of iron rich clay in the bloomery and let the iron melt away from it?

+Themostamazinguy it was black iron sand collected from the beaches around San Fransisco. The bloomery process melts the non iron bits eg silica.

you need CO to reduce the iron oxides, CO2 is formed during that process as the iron oxide becomes iron (FeO -> Fe and CO -> CO2), the flame should be blue at the furnace mouth, calcium can be added to lower the viscosity of the slag and further reduce sulfur content in the ore.

+Frank Bags it was pretty fun

Niels Provos do you need an apprentice haha

+Frank Bags :-) how heavy a sledgehammer can you swing?

Niels Provos what ever it takes haha. you're very lucky to do what you do. when I cant sleep at night I watch forging videos. there is just something avout it man.

I don't know what it was after consolidation. I think the wrought iron might still be stored for some special use case!

+kagapeme this is the best I got. The filming was not really planned.

Niels Provos z👈🏽

kagapeme eee🖐🏾

It was black iron sands.

@@NielsProvos thánk thask

For adding a sense of continuity and connecting with the past :-)

It's slag but it still has a lot of iron and charcoal in it, so free materials

You could use iron sand, e.g. magnetite, but then you need to pebble it so it does not run through too fast.

@@NielsProvos I collected about 20 pounds of purish magnetite from the great sand dunes in Colorado. Do you think this would be impossible if it was contimated with sand? I’ve filtered it was a magnet about 10 times but it always picks up some sand.

@@changedpace9169 you’ll get more slag would be my guess. The problem with iron sand is that it runs through very fast. I have heard from others that they try to pebble it.

a demon child from hell's brimstone fires. sure.

eles usam a beira do lago, o solo eram rico em ferro

They would use swindle blower in some parts of the world. Other parts clay and leather to make a bladder. all using manual labor.

Lucas Medeiros pachelbel canon in d, his greatest hit

+Pieter to keep continuity with the past :-) it may also help with fluxing

I can understand better now why making a fine sword would cost a fortune. I think that making the metal alone is pricey enough. The arduous task of making metal in the right quality, then heating and hammering away for days at an end, twisting and folding the material. Then grinding, sharpening and polishing the blade, making a pommel, hilt and crossguard. And a scabbard of course.

+Pieter that's exactly right. A sword was a luxury that not many could afford.

I know this is an old thread but thought you might be interested to know that in medieval times making white armour, the term used for highly polished and often decorated steel plate harness, the cost of the polishing and finishing touches was usually greater than the cost of having the suit of armour forged and made in the first place. Getting mirror smooth polish is a very lengthy and laborious task when doing it all by hand with no machinery to assist you, they also had to be chemists as many kinds of polishing/buffing compounds, etching chemicals and enamels were also part of the job.

Check out some of my other videos where I use wrought iron.

Well tbh the complexity comes in because you want to refine the process as much as possible to get better quality iron. To get started you "only" have to overcome two challenges: find the right stones and get your foundry hot enough and you will get a bloom ... the question is how useable it is. If this truly represents (the blower does not count) Viking age technology than that means ca. 2000 years of development has already gone into it and it is not exactly how iron smelting started out. Not to mention that people smelted a hole bunch of other metals for a lot longer (copper, tin, gold... ) so its not that smelting itself is a new thing altogether. And even those things didn't just appear out of nowhere... at least firing clay has been around even longer and heating and cooling rock to make working it easy and other uses of fire all contributed to the development of new uses of fire. So to say it is hard to comprehend how someone could come up with such an elaborate process is absolutely right because no single person did... it took thousands of years to arrive at a point we see as primitive as the beginning of iron working. It might be in comparison to our capabilities but I doubt if you asked someone smelting iron right after the use of iron began to spread I doubt he would say the same

roggen dorf. I understand that the process and development took a long time,

roggen dorf. My point was, this took place over a wide area, communication was almost nonexistent, probably kept secret because of its value. Yet it still developed. What, today is equivalent? Nothing much. We seem to have lost our curiosity. I know there have been advances in IT etc, but no real discoveries for a long time.

Ogram Brat drained but tamahagane they do not describe where it is come from. They add sand for coated so slag come out as you see.

Urban Recon Force Try "Pachelbel".. Sounds familiar to me

love the way you used cody's pronounciation for bleach, LMAO

Just charcoal.

@@NielsProvos So just put charcoal in the oven and burn, besides, there's nothing else left

The video shows the steps. At what point in the video do you have a question?

it was odd choice of music but it didn't destroy it at all. what the hell is up with anti music in videos people. fuck off. at least its not Justin beiber. or your mom singing.

You talk like my grandpa