Steve Scotia

I just googled "Bloomery". My goodness. Mr. Powers....I can assure you that any grief you received from your wife for coal dust in the minivan will pale in comparison to the wrath of my wife if she were to ever find out who put the word "Bloomery" in my head...just sayin

Well, I do indeed know some Smiths up here in Canada. If I stumble across one of my Smith friends heading to the Quad State with room for 1,000 lbs of wrought iron. a ton of coal and a chain smoking, foul mouthed roughneck, I will definitely hitch a ride...... I did take your advice and have found a couple of local gatherings, one of which, is the guys making Viking Tools and Weaponry, which would be cool to see. I am heading out this afternoon to look for some forge building stuff. Maybe an axle/hub and any useable junk I might be able to use. There is an abandoned iron ore mine (early 1800's) not far from here and I might even come across some more wrought now that I kind of know what I am looking for. Let the adventure begin.

Thanks for the information fellas. To answer your questions. I live in Springhill, Nova Scotia. That is on the mainland, close to The New Brunswick border, right at the northern tip of The Bay of Fundy. Plenty of coal and maybe lots of old iron in these parts. I am happy to hear that my chain is indeed WI. I haven't yet decided between "heating and beating" this stuff myself or taking it to "hammer in" or other such conflab and opening up a hot dog stand type deal from the back of my pick up. A free sausage with every link....I'm afraid The Quad State area is beyond the range of my old truck. The coal here was supposed to be the best in the world until a couple of major disasters shut the mines down in The 50's.. The only analysis I can find has it at 65% carbon 3.92% Ash and 0.82% Sulphur. I haven't yet found heat value for this particular seam but other coals in the area run at 12,000 to 15,000 BTU per pound. Slag, my son is in his second year at Dal now. I can only assume that my own memories of Law in Halifax are not as good as yours. Thanks again for the help guys. I will keep you in the loop and try and keep a few extra links around when I figure out exactly what I'm going to do with this old chain.

Look what I found... I joined this group solely for the purpose of finding a buyer for this chain but after reading a bunch about home forging I have a head full of ideas. So, I have a few questions for anybody that would be kind enough to answer. Is this WI? If it is WI, would it be good for a novice to work with or would it be better put to use by a more experienced BS? If I were to part with it, should I sell the whole thing or chunk it up and what might it be worth? I'm just getting started. As I sit on top of what was one of the largest and deepest coal mines in the world. I have access to what I believe would be some very nice forging coal. Very Low Sulphur, High Carbon Bit. Now that the Old pit Head is a saw mill. I could make little home forge kits with a couple of links of WI and a bag of great coal packed in a nice pine box. Maybe I am over thinking this but I would like to make a hobby out of scrounging up old WI just for the fun of it. There may be some interesting history behind this chain. My buddy and I found it under a rock in The Bay of Fundy. After talking to some locals, we were informed that around 1900 there was a Northern Right Whale Carcass beached in the area. To get rid of the stink, the locals, using horses, pulled the carcass out as far as they could at low tide and then draped some of these chains over the whale to keep it down. Apparently, the carcass ended up back on the beach with the next tide and the chains were lost. I'm not sure if this is one of the whale chains but it makes for an interesting story at least. OK, I'm done. Any thoughts or words or wisdom? Forgot to say that this chain is 98' long with 96 8" x 4 1/2" by 1 1/2" links weighing approx. 5 1/4 lb each.