Iron Smelt

[D-ski]

As part of the Mason-Dixon Historical Society's 36th Annual Steam and Gas Round Up, the Blacksmith Guild of Central Maryland plans to do an iron smelt. This will be a repeat of the process shown to us by the Colonial Williamsburg blacksmiths during this past May's Blacksmith Days.

The iron smelt will be on Saturday, 12 September, 2009. The Guild will have a tent set up in the center of the grounds.

If everything goes according to plan they will start the pre-heat at about 9am and start charging the furnace at about 10 or 10:30am. Based on what happened in May we estimate that it will take about 4-5 hours before the bloom is ready to be pulled from the furnace. We are not exactly sure what we will do if it rains.

The Steam and Gas Round Up will take place at the Carroll County Farm Museum, 500 S. Center St, Westminster MD. Most likely parking will be at the adjacent Ag Center with a shuttle carrying people back and forth between the Farm Museum and the parking area. As you approach the Farm Museum, follow the signs for parking. For this event, parking on the Farm Museum grounds itself will be restricted to handicapped and

[wd&mlteach]

What do you do with the iron once you pull it furnace?

[David Einhorn]

What do you do with the iron once you pull it furnace?

That is a good question. After the Colonial Williamsburg blacksmiths during this past May's Blacksmith Days at the Carroll County Farm Museum pulled the bloom from the furnace they forged the mass into wrought iron, then they forged the wrought iron into colonial-period items. :D

[D-ski]

The bloom that was created during Blacksmith Days, weighed about 20 pounds.

Hopefully, they will get a equal size or larger bloom during the Steam Show. The current plan is to cut the bloom into pieces and either auction or raffel off the pieces at the September Guild meeting, (September 27th at the Farm Museum.)

In any case, once the bloom is removed from the furnace, the pieces will need a LOT of heavy hammering to consolidate the spongey bloom in wrought iron.

[David Einhorn]

Any chance that guild leadership of BGCM might consider using a couple of small pieces to make "storyboards" showing the stages of wrought iron that could be used in public demonstrations? It would be wonderful as part of public education.

[D-ski]

That's a good idea, I will pass it along to the crew that is doing the smelt.

[civilwarblacksmith]

wd&mlteach,

Once the iron is pulled from the bloomery it is cut into managable pieces and then put onto the anvil and refined by shaping and folding.

[wd&mlteach]

Thanks guys, that is the kind of answers that I was looking for. I know wrought iron is hard to come by these days and I figured that was what you were working on, being a blacksmithing organization and all. My real reason for asking is that I am not familiar with the operation of a bloomery. I would also love to take or have some pictures and more information on this operation for teaching my metals students. From my best guess I think you guys are about 2 hours from where I live, might be worth the drive.

[D-ski]

Since my cloning experiments have failed, so far. I can not be in two places at once, so this weekend, I will be on the Maryland Eastern shore attending the MASA METALSMITH CONFERENCE not at the Steam Show.

I am sure the crew doing the smelt will be taking some pictures. Also, one of our members has written an article for the Guild newsletter describing the smelt that took place at Blacksmith Days. Once that article is published, I will see about getting some of those pictures to post here.

Blacksmith Guild of Central Maryland

[D-ski]

Update to the iron smelt that took place at the Mason Dixon Steam and Gas Round Up. The event took place the weekend of 12-13 September. I was not able to attend but was able to get some pictures and a report of how things went.

In the pictures below you can see the furnace that they used. It consists of a piece of clay flue liner, wrapped with chicken wire and then smeared with about a 2"-3" layer of refractory cement. (This is not pure refractory cement. The first one they made back in May was just refractory cement and it cracked to pieces when it dried. What you see here is a mixture of refractory cement, portland cement and maybe some sand.)

In the 3rd picture, you can see them pulling the iron bloom out of the bottom of the furnace. The last picture shows them consolidating the bloom.

The smelt was considered a partial success. The steel tuyere burned up part way through the process, so they ended up with about 7 pounds of iron from 40 pounds of iron ore.

(pictures courtesy of BGCM member, Len Brown)

Edited September 29, 2009 by D-ski
Give credit for pictures.

[ThomasPowers]

We always used cob made with the following ratio: 3:2:1--- 3 shovelfuls of sandy silty dirt, 2 head sized bunches of chopped straw and one shovelful powdered clay. Add as little water as possible to mix and build up your bloomery using a 5 gallon plastic bucket as the form for the center hole.

Very strong in use, cheap too. We've been smelting using this mix for about a decade with 5 year previous experimentation with other ways of building a short stack bloomery. (new bloomery built after generally 1 or 2 runs).

[D-ski]

Thomas,
thanks for the formula. I will pass it on to our Furnace Master. He seems interested in doing more smelts.

[civilwarblacksmith]

The bloomery that we used for this smelt was our second run with it.

[ThomasPowers]

We did our smelts as part of an annual campout and so only ran once or twice and then tore it down till next year when we rebuilt it.