OK, first, I am SO glad I've found you folks! What a great site, so many kind and knowledgeable people willing to help. Thank you all.
My favorite suggestion is yours, Glenn - to hie myself to a blacksmith. Oh yeah! I'd love to, but as it happens I've got to get the first book written before I do that. I don't land my characters in the anvil-less past until the second book. That said, nearer the time (about this time next year) I will indeed do my best to find a kindly smith or two in this area (near Edinburgh, Scotland) and donate my effort if they will take pity on me and teach me a thing or two, let me learn the basics (including the drudgery jobs), maybe if I'm lucky work with a bit of iron. What a great idea.
Thomas Powers - wow, thanks for that lesson in smelting! I found it fascinating - or at least, I found the bits I could understand fascinating. There is an AMAZING amount of jargon in this craft! Of course there is, it's ancient. I'm going to get my engineer husband to have a look at your post and see if he can help me with the hard words Alas, I am even more ignorant than you realised. My husband has the same problem, he's a software engineer for astronomy, and when he starts explaining he has to rachet down a few notches before normal humans can understand. I think I'm gonna have to get a better dictionary...
I'm assuming that my smith Lanen would have acquired enough knowledge in 15 years of smithing to know how to set up a smelter and later a field forge, maybe on a stone (I like that as a swift and mostly painless way to get started) with a stone hammer to start with. Love the field furnace as a long low structure facing into the prevailing wind, Matt, thanks! They're not too far from the coast so they could set up there, in fact that solves another plot problem!
Would she make tongs first, or a hammer? I'd assume that those green wood tongs would last a VERY short time? Then, presumably, some kind of small-ish anvil, and over a year, cooking pots, axes, knives, garden spade and fork, maybe eventually a plow if they can get enough iron together.
And thanks all for the dragon suggestions, Frosty, but - as it were - that's my end of the business! Er, they're not on an island, they're stranded in an earlier time. And they don't so much have dragons as are dragons - some of the time - it's complicated! I'll spare you the fairly baroque plot in this forum, but if you really fancy answering dumb questions I'd be happy to have an experienced field smith as a source of real information. Happy, did I say? Ecstatic, perhaps, is the mot just! Though I love the idea of dragons thinking that they could smelt with just their breath. There are a couple of cocky teenagers who would be up for trying just that, without realising that you need - er - carbon, was it? I quite like the idea that the dragon fans (bless them) would learn something! I'm happy to provide my e-mail address for off-forum discussions, if you think that would be more appropriate. Or does everybody want to play?
Thanks again, everyone, for the kindly welcome, the vast amounts of information, and the good humour. :)