Let’s say you need a hammer. You could go to the nearest hardware store and buy one. After all, that is what most people would do, right?

Or you could mine/source iron ore, smelt it to get iron, carburize the iron to make steel and smith yourself a hammer. Guess which method I have chosen?

Let’s leave politics behind for a minute and delve into the “RIDDLE OF STEEL”

Steel remade the world and it’s tale is a long one but worth reading and I’ll do my best to make sharp and incisive rather than dull.

DISCLAIMER: this diary is Eurocentric. That’s because that is what I know; European history from the Bronze Age through Viking Period. Also, my genetics, according to 23 & Me, are 99.9% European. Much to my horror I discovered that I’m a prime candidate for the so-called “Master Race”. Fortunately, I am also 0.2% Ashkenazi Jew ; I am VERY proud and possessive of that 0.2% of my DNA!! I also have 315 genetic variants associated with Neandandertals!!! Wait, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, I’m Eurocentric because that is where my ancestry and interest lies, so feel free to ignore this post if you regard this as inappropriate or exclusionary.

BEFORE STEEL:

Metal entered human usage thousands of years ago, although our predecessors were not kind enough to invent a language and system of writing so the event could be recorded. However, they were kind enough to leave it among their stone artifacts so that we could correlate its appearance with human activity. Interestingly, it was not just our species of human that used metal; it was also the Neandertal. We were using it in Africa the same time they were using it in Europe and for the same reason. Iron oxide in the form of red and yellow ochre is an effective pigment. You can color clothing, bones, and cave walls with it. Maybe you could dye skin with it as well for ritual?

Anyway, humans used iron ore for decoration and painting for about 240,000 years when, about the time of the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years ago more or less, we suddenly got interested in elemental copper and copper ore. Copper ore is gorgeous. If I was a Mesolithic/Neolithic guy or gal looking to get laid, I’d scrounge up some really beautiful green malachite and gift that to the object of my affection.

Malachite Green copper ore. If that didn’t get you laid in the Mesolithic, nothing will. Well, except maybe treating your partner decently, listening to them and meeting their physical and emotional needs. No? Well, better find some malachite.

Elemental copper, which can be found on rare occasion, is also quite eye catching. And if you bash it with rocks, you can make bracelets or bangles from it which slowly turn green as they oxidize.

Elemental copper. THE WAY to get laid in the Neolithic. Unless you treat your… oh, never mind. Dig up some copper.

CHALCOLITHIC AGE (COPPER):

One theory holds that pottery led to smelting of copper. Here’s how it goes: we’ve had pottery for about 28,000 years but your color range was basically black, brown, reddish brown, yellowish brown and other brown variants. Some enterprising ceramics artist saw the awesome colors of copper ore and said: “I want beautiful pots! Those will out trade the pots of the losers round the river bend.” They incorporated blue and green copper ore into a pot despite elders saying “Dude, been there, done that, you wind up with green rocks and ceramic bits.” This potter had a plan – crush the copper ore into small chunks, fire the pot super-hot and melt the green into the pot. So they popped that sucker into the best clay oven they have and with some help kept feeding charcoal into the fire and pumping those bellows to keep the air going and what actually happened is they created a reducing atmosphere – an atmosphere where all the oxygen was incorporated into carbon monoxide or dioxide and water gassed off. This freed up some of the the copper atoms (probably in an impure state) which pooled as a liquid in the bottom of the kiln.

The potter was probably disappointed and those bastards round the river bend laughed at him or her for wasting time and energy on foolishness. But somebody was curious about that pool of orange gold liquid at the bottom of the kiln (brief digression: lead and tin may have been smelted earlier than copper. Tin melts at 450F/232C; lead at 621F/328C so campfire temperatures could have done the job and bits of each have been found at the Çatal Höyük site in Anatolia (Turkey), and dated from about 6500 BCE but apparently no specialized use was made of them).

It didn’t take long to figure out copper made lots of nifty shit like arrowheads, knives and axes. But for all that, copper did not supplant flint as the major tool making material. First, copper was harder to obtain than stone. Second, it’s edge is inferior to stone. The one big advantage copper had over stone was that although brittle, it is less brittle than stone. So a copper arrowhead could be shot multiple times before breaking whereas every time a stone arrowhead strikes any remotely hard surface, it shatters.

Reproduction early European copper age knife. Surprisingly sharp.

BRONZE AGE:

Around 6,200 years ago somebody remembered the soft, semi-silvery stuff they smelted from the black rocks (cassiterite) and tossed some in with the copper and BANG! Just like that it was the Bronze Age.

Video showing smelted tin being poured into ingots in Cornwall, UK. This does not show the mining of the ore, the crushing of the ore, the sifting of the ore with water. Just taking the final bits of ore, some charcoal and smelting the tin from them. I’m the dude with the sexy legs working the bellows. The guy pouring the tin is Nik Megalithic of Shamanic Bronze.

Much like America today, being rich in the Bronze Age was pretty fucking cool. If you were a dudette you might get these mysterious, massive golden-colored bronze belt plates that shone in the sun, necklaces and bracelets of actual gold, amazing brooches. If you were a dude you might get an axe that holds an edge for a pretty long time and isn’t brittle. If you were a priest or possibly priestess you might get a funny looking gold hat. Musicians had the option of amazing, wonderful horns.

A re-enactment of the Egtved Girl from Denmark. You see that bronze plate around her waist? That was a king’s ransom at least. Something that large of metal from that time was invaluable. You ain’t gettin’ her attention with colored rocks. You better have metal bling. And see that horn? That, my friends, is a bronze lur. Incredibly hard to reproduce even with modern technology, it produces a deep resonant sound.

Gold hats of the Gods? German Bronze Age hats covered in incredibly thin gold foil decorated with breathtaking detail...

And warriors…

Elite warriors were pretty much Gods. Imagine, you have your best stone axe and spear, some furs to protect you and you walk out on the battlefield and the guy across from you pulls out a sword of gold that blindingly reflects the sun… that must have been terrifying.

Illustrations of northern European Bronze Age warriors with typical weaponry.

Bronze changed virtually all the cultures and peoples Africa, Europe and Asia. It was not due to the properties of bronze itself. Not because bronze is easier to work than copper (though it is), because it can be more easily resharpened (it can) or because larger objects can be made of it. Nor was it due to everybody getting bronze, because very few actually did. Nor because bronze allowed massive armies and military campaigns to take place (though it certainly helped; look up the Sea Peoples and Troy), but rather because in order to have bronze you have to have tin. And tin is not common, which forces the extension and expansion of the already impressive trade routes throughout the world. The hunger for tin to make bronze revolutionized trade and travel. Neolithic peoples traded; we find flint hundreds of kilometers from its source mine. But not like they did in the Bronze Age. Boats came of age in this time. No more hollowed out logs; now you get ships, sails and so on. Wheeled carts became a lot more sophisticated, and interest in animals to pull them boomed.

Less positive side effects took place also. Slavery boomed. Think about it. You want to spend all day in a sunless hole breaking rocks for tin and copper? Or do you want to stand in the warm sun with some mead and fur and point a spear at other people and make them work all day in a sunless hole breaking rocks for tin and copper? (I probably would have been the guy lying on the beach under the sun with wine telling everybody loudly how we should really get around to improving working conditions for the poor bastards in the mines breaking rocks… maybe send a set of stern hieroglyphs on papyrus to the head thug at the mines … liberals never change.)

NOTE ON THE AMERICAS When I talk about this online, somewhere in here some racist moron chimes in with: “Indians never figured Bronze out! That’s why Europeans kicked their ass!” As usual, the racists are dead wrong and totally ignorant as to why. The issue is TIN. To make bronze you need it. And Native Americans didn’t have it . There was an itty-bitty deposit from the place we now call Mexico and a larger deposit known in what we call Bolivia today. Contrast that with Southeast Asia and Europe dotted with major tin deposits. Of course Native Americans never entered the Bronze Age; they did not have the necessary ingredients. It had nothing to do with intelligence. By the way… many Native American tribes had an awesome copper culture… Native American copper artifacts from the great lakes region.

Tin was also the downfall of bronze. People got sick of kissing up to those who had the tin. They wanted a more democratic, less elite metal. And what the people want, the people get! (That’s actually nonsense; it’s really what the elites want that they get. And that’s who wanted to break from bronze. Nobody cares what the people think. They never have and, unless we make them, never will.)

IRON:

QUIZ TIME! Both of these daggers were in the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun. The one on top is made of SOLID GOLD. The one on bottom is made of crappy iron, not even steel. Which dagger was regarded as more valuable at the time of Tut’s death? IRON baby. That is meteorite iron, from before the dawn of the Iron Age in Egypt.

So we are back to the hammer I started the diary with. I want to make a tool from dirt. My goals are actually a little more ambitious. I want to make a hammer, an anvil and tongs – a complete Iron Age blacksmithing kit. And I want to make them myself, with iron I have made myself by my own hands. How could this be done?

Iron age tongs, spoon, hammer and anvil.

As you can see above, archeologists, metallurgists, and geologists have ideas and theories that make sense about how and why humans might have stumbled upon copper smelting. Tin, lead, silver… these all follow as well. Iron doesn’t.

Smelting copper, tin, silver, lead can all be done in a relatively small furnace with moderate billows to provide air. See tin smelting video above. Easy peasy.

Temperatures required to melt bronze (1832F/1000C) and Copper (1983F/1084C) are also manageable with moderate billows and not too much effort. Twenty minutes pumping the bellows shown in the tin smelting video and you have liquid bronze. Thirty minutes, forty minutes, liquid copper. Iron is a totally different animal. It never becomes liquid in smelting and you need to hit 2282F/1250C to smelt it. You will never reach that temperature with the bellows in the tin smelt video. Never. And from experience using manual bellows, increasing the temperature the 151F/66C from molten bronze to molten copper feels incredibly difficult. You have to maintain a higher bellow speed and cannot lose rhythm or it will not melt.

to smelt it. You will reach that temperature with the bellows in the tin smelt video. Never. And from experience using manual bellows, increasing the temperature the 151F/66C from molten bronze to molten copper feels incredibly difficult. You have to maintain a higher bellow speed and cannot lose rhythm or it will not melt. Iron needs time for the smelting reaction to take place which means a long, vertical chimney through which the iron travels slowly. None of the other metals require that.

Smelting copper, tin, silver, lead are all resource intensive. Iron’s use of resources dwarfs all of those metals. You are using several times the amount of charcoal to succeed.

So basically, we know how to smelt iron – take iron ore and convert it to actual iron - because we live 3,300 years after the discovery of iron smelting (China may be a couple of hundred years earlier than that. Their progression was the opposite of the west – in China they produced high carbon cast iron and only later decarburized the iron to make forgeable steel and iron. In the west low carbon iron was made which needed to be carburized to make steel). We have no clear understanding of HOW this process was discovered, refined and perfected. But we do know, from archeology, from writings, from experimental archeology and from lunatic blacksmiths like me, what the steps are to make tools from dirt. So let’s abandon discussions of history and talk about how it’s done!

As we discussed above, I will need a chemical reaction chamber with a reducing atmosphere. I will use burning charcoal which is carbon and ash to break the bond between oxygen and iron in the ore. The oxygen will gas off into the atmosphere as carbon monoxide or dioxide (either way, I’m helping give you a warm summer, if only in a minor way). Meanwhile the free iron atoms will be carried by molten silica down through the reaction chamber (which looks a lot like a chimney) to form a loose agglomeration of iron, silica and some other impurities that is called a “bloom” of iron. This is how a bloomery furnace operates to make iron from dirt.

Why don’t I just buy the friggin’ iron and make my hammer, anvil and tongs? In Europe that would be relatively straightforward. There is a tremendous amount of wrought iron available from centuries of ironwork. In the Americas, it is harder. In the 1850’s the Bessemer process (and Gilchrist-Thomas converters) skipped the whole iron stage and went straight to steel. It is not easy or cheap to get actual iron nowadays. However, you can get mild steel (low carbon steel) easily. But if I did that, I wouldn’t get to play with fire in a constructive way nearly as much.

STEP ONE: IRON ORE

Where to get iron? I’m in Texas and ironically, considering how big Texas is, Texas is relatively iron poor and I’ve learned that some property owners who have iron deposits on their lands would rather shoot you than let you take home a bunch of reddish rocks. However, a fellow blacksmith in the Carolinas sent me about 80lbs of limonite ore which he has found easy to smelt. I also found that a local ceramics shop sold powdered hematite ore in 50lb bags as a colorant for clays.

Turns out that either way you go you have some work to do. Large hunks of rock are not easily smeltable and if you try to put powder into a chimney into which you are blowing air… it blows out!

PREPPING ROCK ORE

Surface area is important; the more surface area the material has, the more opportunity there is for the reducing reaction of the burning carbon (charcoal) to steal the oxygen atoms from the iron ore (FeO3). So you are going to want to bust up your rocks into small, roughly 1 cm pieces. But rocks are damn hard to break… unless you cook them in a fire first. Water within them turns to steam and fractures the rocks and the heat itself makes them more friable. A couple of hours in the fire followed (after a cooling off period) by a couple of hours with a hammer and you have rocks the consistency you need.

“Hey neighbor! Bar-B-Q?”

“Naw, just roasting iron ore.”

”Whut?”

That’s the size I’m going for!

PREPPING POWDERED ORE

I thought this would be easy. I was wrong. The solution to avoiding the powder blowing out is to make a bread of sorts out of it by cooking it into flour. My girlfriend and her friends Cris and Lana volunteered to do this and used a corn flour, and mixed about 10lbs of ore to 1.25 cups of flour producing hematite brownies, which were popped into the oven for an hour and a half of cooking. Over four days they did 100lbs of ore. But while they were doing that, like a typical sexist lout I was lounging around spending days playing with my big, damp, sticky, fuzzy balls…

Ummmm. Yummy hematite brownies.

STEP TWO: BUILDING THE FURNACE

…get your mind out of the gutter. I was mixing 300lbs of sand in with 150lbs of clay and 40lbs of peat moss (our ancestors preferred horse manure) to make hundreds of clay balls. These balls would become briquettes for the walls of the furnace. I used a foundation of brick and built a chimney shaped furnace. I fired the sucker to make it hard (yeah, there is a lot of phallic imagery in this, but wait, the birthing chamber is coming) and shrink the clay so it is ready for the multi-thousand degree ordeal ahead of it.

Mixing clay for the stack. I recall sweating a lot.

Pictures of my balls. Still more to go. But like I told you: big, damp, sticky and fuzzy. At least with the peat in place of the horse manure they were not overly smelly.

When we finished an angel came and blessed our bloomery smelting furnace. I’m not sure why. The runes on the furnace dedicate it to Odin...

So, I might have gotten carried away when firing the the first smelting stack. I might also have met three of the local fire department and been told not to do this EVER AGAIN. I might also have kinda ignored them…

STEP THREE: PREPPING THE CHARCOAL

Remember how important surface area is with the iron ore? Same deal with the charcoal. Our ancestors had to gather up gather a couple hundred or more pounds of hardwood, set it on fire then bury the pile in dirt to make charcoal. Monitor it over a couple of days then harvest the charcoal before chopping the charcoal lumps into small (3cm on each side) bits. I just had to go to Home Depot (Lowe’s sells crap charcoal) and buy 100lbs of charcoal and chop it into chunks.

Whohoo! Only 90 more pounds to go!

ACTUAL SMELTING

Preheat the furnace for an hour or so by burning scrap wood in it. Get your air supply going either by beating the serfs so they pump the bellows or, as in my case, turn on the shop vac set on BLOW rather than VACUUM. Then, fill the furnace halfway with the charcoal you have been chopping up. Give it a few minutes to get going then fill to the very tip top with charcoal. Let it burn down to about six or eight inches. Throw in more charcoal. Do this two or three times and then…

Adding charcoal. By the way, those are authentic Iron Age plastic buckets and leather apron in the picture… not.

Start adding iron. You’ll add iron, then charcoal, then iron, then charcoal and on and on.

Adding hematite pellets.

At some point you need to tap for slag by hammering an iron rod into the furnace and letting the slag (molten silica) drain out.

Molten silica, or slag, flowing from the tap. I should have tapped more. A LOT more.

Finally the burn rate slows which hopefully means you have a large lump of iron at the bottom of the furnace. Time to open her up and see what is inside!!!

It is possible that my first smelt got a little out of hand at times…



Furnace has the English “Fire Heart” transliterated into Elder Futhark runes on it.

DIGRESSION ON ALCHEMY Alchemy (transforming base metals to gold) doesn't sound so nutty after reading this does it? Without chemistry, but KNOWING this rock turns to copper, this one to tin, this one to iron, this one to silver... well, cooking rocks to find gold might be a logical progression...

And for my second smelt this past weekend, this was the grand finale:

Which was actually a terrible thing. The river of flowing slag indicated that I had not tapped and drained a significant amount of slag and the iron marinated in the slag, never forming a bloom. The correct way a smelt is supposed to end is below:

Photo courtesy of Mark Green, from 2013 Magnetite smelt.

Once you have the bloom of iron, you’re pretty much done and it gets easy from there. All that is left is:

compacting the bloom with sledges to squeeze out the slag and impurities

compress it into a kind of “puck”

cut it (while hot! Don’t let it cool) so it will fit in your forge

make a billet of iron out of it (If it crumbles you may have cast iron — over 2% steel and that is useless)

refine the billet by folding and reforging several times

test the billet for usefulness by twisting till it breaks (3.5 turns hot is good; 0.5 turns or less when cold indicates brittleness)

determine (roughly) carbon content. If you have good steel, yea for you!!! If you have no sparks, that means wrought iron and you may need to make an Aristotle furnace and carburize your material

forge a tool, sculpture or whatever out of it! Easy!

Epilogue

So I’ve tried twice and not gotten a bloom of smelted iron. Will I try again? Oh, hell yes. I’m a Texas Democrat; my kind doesn’t give up in the face of failure. I will make iron. Then steel. Then I will forge an anvil as illustrated below, and a hammer and tongs… and it’s only about 100 hours of labor each time...

And then I will make swords the proper way my ancestors did… Valhalla calls!