I have been interested in bloomeries for smelting my own wrought iron for a while now and I have a question. Is it possible to charge a bloomery with pieces of cast iron scrap and have wrought iron as the end result?

I believe what you'd get is a cupola melter, not a bloomery. They look a lot alike and even work alike but you feed them differently and the result is different.

 

Melting wrought iron and cast iron together in a cupola on the other hand is likely to give you grades of steel, just not in a consistent piece.

 

If you LIKE excitement however you could do a home brew BOP and maybe get pure iron. Just learn about Basic Oxygen Process first, "exciting" wasn't a turn of phrase.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

Look up puddling as a way to convert cast iron to wrought.

 

Kelly did his experiments (prior to Bessemer) in refractory lined barrels so it is possible to run the bessemer process in small scale---however EXOTHERMIC is just a charming understatement...

Post blast furnace a lot of cast iron was refined into wrought steel in a finery . But I only know of very few modern smelters who do this (in-fact only one comes to mind) But as Thomas mentioned above puddling would be the way to go.

 I do not believe that small scale puddling would be that complicated a task and it is defiantly on my list of things to do.

Iron ore can be sourced fairly cheaply in many areas as magnetite is sold as a pollution control agent.  As I recall my friend who bought the 400# minimal order paid more for shipping than the 100 mesh magnetite itself.

 

Also the "black sand" of gold panners on the west coast is magnetite---a high grade iron ore and the iron sand the japanese use in their tataras.

I actually found a place online that sells powdered magnetite in bulk. Once I get a bloomery built I am thinking of using that to do a smelt.