spoonplugger

There is an exellent post on paleo planet about a hammer-in held in July. They made a cake of wootz from simple equipment. You can see the post by going to Paleoplanet>metal working>Bladesmithing/knifemaking and search for the post "So. Cal. hammer-in aftergame wrap". It was posted in July. The person that makes wootz is Chris and he can be contacted at tidewaterforge.com. He is a nice guy and very willing to help. He is extremely knowledgable. If you decide to make your own wootz you have a great source of iron ore where you live. There are a lot of gold prospecting clubs in your area. Any one that uses a gold dredge will have buckets of black sand that they will give away after they extract any gold values from it. This is high quality iron ore. It is what the Japanese use to make their swords. Good luck.