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how to smelt iron ore bloomery furnace design
An Introduction to Iron Smelting – Part IV: Furnace Design

An Introduction to Iron Smelting – Part IV: Furnace Design

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You have a space for smelting selected, your equipment is gathered, you clay is mixed, you charcoal chopped and your ore crushed. Now you are finally ready to build the furnace. We are getting dangerously close to the actual smelting here. And that is what you came here for in the first place. Right? But first you will need to choose what sort of bloomery furnace you want to build.  There are many possibilities and examples available – both historic…

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iron bloom
More Smelting Experiments at University College Dublin

More Smelting Experiments at University College Dublin

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It was Tuesday the 20th of June and the weather was approaching that rare state of the skin-melting Irish heatwave. (Yes, these things do exist. The Sun rarely gazes upon this green island, but when it does, it does so with a vengeance most vicious.) In order to ease ourselves into the spirit of the summer solstice, and to show the treacherous orb in the sky that we do not go down so easily, we ran another bloomery smelt. (I…

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Bloomery furnace opening
An Introduction to Iron Smelting – Part I: Theory

An Introduction to Iron Smelting – Part I: Theory

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Smelting your own iron by digging up ore, clay and sand, and turning them into a bar iron using heat and hard work alone, is a transformative process which carries much mystery and appeal. The whole act of taking what is essentially dirt and transforming it into iron and steel, which can then be turned into objects both useful and beautiful, still captivates the imagination of artisans, archaeologists and chance observers alike. I have already touched upon the topic iron…

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