vincentmarche

LMAO you guys didn't really help him out

Yes Sir, thats my project for this upcoming weekend.  I'm hoping I did things correctly.. Either way it was a fun experience.. although I do have a "ash burns" on my neck and arms to remember it by

I appreciate all the tips I got from people in the forum!

65 lbs magnetite

200 lbs charcoal 

total burn time 6 hours

approx 3-4 lb charges every 10 min

 about 30 lbs bloom

34 minutes ago, SLAG said:

 

I actually used Corn meal and corn starch with a bit of ground charcoal, added a bit of water, mixed, let dry and crumbled it up to the consistency of the crumbles you would find on top of a Coffee Cake, smelted well, I'm going to post the pics of the smelt and bloom shortly.

14 hours ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

 

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

I believe most primitive smelting experiments base success on %of available iron in the ore vs weight of usable product where 50% is very good. 

Fair point, my next step is to make that determination, any advice would be very helpful

As it stands now I have about 35 lb bloom not sure of the quality of the metal yet.

Thanks all for the advice, did my smelt this weekend, went well , will post pics in a new thread.

Thanks JHCC not the forge it self but a tatara style furnace

Do you think a typical home leaf blower pushes too much air on its lowest setting??

The height of the furnace was bout 4- or  4.5 feet high. The blower was a leaf blower.

I was thinking that if he turned off the blower for the charge, poured charcoal on top and turned the blow back on that might mitigate some of the problem?

Hi all,

Trying my hand at backyard tatara smelt.  I assisted a friend with his last week and a lot of the fine magnetite he purchased online simply blew out of the furnace.

Any recommendations on how to work around this?
I saw one post where a guy mixed the magnetite with fine charcoal powder and water and make "cakes" with them but there was no other detail.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Vincent M