First Smelt ever

[John Martin]

I am going to be doing my first smelt ever this weekend, five days from now.

I will be using my bricks that I use for forging for the furnace. It will be about 8-13in wide (square) and about two-three feet high. I will be using small pieces of iron and mild steel that has either been ground or cut up to about grape to pea size. I am going to be using two blow driers for maximum results.



I am wondering if a hardwood, not briquettes, charcoal from piggly wiggly or wal-mart will work for me. If not, please tell me of a different hardwood charcoal to use.

My ratio of 7:1 charcoal:iron/steel

Most likely 80-140 lbs of charcoal and about 10-35 pounds of iron/steel pieces.
This is a first for me, so please help me correct my mistakes before i fire it up in a few days. I have gotten permission from my parents, a day set aside for it, and funding for the material(charcoal and possibly clay). I'm going to start at about 6 or 7 in the morning and plan to be finished by noon. Which we will then grill off of the still hot/cooling down furnace.


Diagram of furnace:




I will be posting pictures of the smelt as i got permission to use the camera i mentioned in another post. ("Curious Question")

Please comment and correct.

The Elder M Brother

[Mithral]

I can't think of any reason why bagged hardwood charcoal wouldn't work, they make it the same way you'd make hardwood charcoal at home, just on a massive scale.

[John Martin]

Okay, I didn't know if there was a brand not to get or whatever.

[solvarr]

If you have a 55 gallon drum you can make your own charcoal out of small limbs and untreated lumber scraps.

Just a thought be a bit cheaper than 150lbs of charcoal which might be low for some reason for the amount of ore you are processing.

[mcraigl]

I'm wondering... Why go to all this effort if you're using already processed iron/steel? I can understand wanting to smelt your own bloom, I want to do that too, but I'm not going to waste my time doing it with scraps of steel and iron. I want some iron ore, black sand, iron pyrhite, etc. and actually make my own. Probably need to go drag a magnet around on the beach for a few weekends or something. Anyway, just wondering why go through the effort if you're not using a raw material.

[ThomasPowers]

You are NOT SMELTING. You are carburizing pre-smelted metal. You may end up making and melting cast iron but this is NOT SMELTING. Smelting is taking ORE and reducing it into metal, not taking metal and changing the carbon content of it. It really helps when you you use the proper terms when discussing things---then we all know what you are trying to do.

What he is trying to do is to make steel from scrap pieces of iron, in the japanese sword world this was called orishigane. You then weld up the bits into a billet and get a usable high carbon steel.

"Lump" Charcoal works; doesn't have to be hardwood charcoal---the japanese use softwood charcoal for smelting, carburizing and forging. Briquettes do not work-very little real charcoal in them. Size is important IIRC 1" cubes were preferred and the first part of the apprenticeship was spent cutting charcoal into such cubes.

The pea size is pretty good for the short stack and length of time. Old rivets and nails pieces should work, You probably want the air inlets about 1/4 the height of the stack up---do you have a way of cutting down the air? You don't want to burn the metal!

That ammount of metal probably would do better in a taller furnace. You want the pieces to end up in a nice reduction holding area under the tuyere's oxidizing effects. This sounds like quite a stack and may intrude into the oxidizing zone. In a bloomery we dig a hole (6"-1' deep) for the holding area before we build the stack.

Thomas

[John Martin]

I just finished building the furnace and air inlets tonight. Will post pictures tomorrow. I am wondering I should use clay to coat it or not. And I didn't think that there was much of a difference, so next time, i will post the correct term. So, once it gets going, i just put the metal on the top of it, and it should melt a little bit and make it's way to the bottom correct? Or did I spend five hours reading the wrong thing?

mcraigl, i want to get some experience under my belt before i go on and make iron or steel from scratch, i dont want to get the materials needed and then mess up big time. i want to know what to expect, so this is like a preliminary.

[ThomasPowers]

Generally you start by firing up the system and getting everything *HOT*---you don't want the charcoal to burn too fast so watch the air speed. When it's hot all the way up---won't be burning as there will be no free O2 but you may get the gasses to light off at the top where they meet up with free O2 then you sprinkle some of the metal on top and cover with more charcoal, as it burns down repeat until you have used up all the metal and put a good charcoal cover on the last load of metal and let the system burn down. At some point you will want to stop the air as the charcoal gets lower in the furnace and let it "coast".

Things to watch out for: too much air---charcoal burns up too fast, oxidizes/burns the metal instead of carburizing, or with a tall enough load you can get cast iron.

Too little air: charcoal burns up too slow, not enough heat for long enough to get good carburization.

When Ric did it in a charcoal forge he would let the pieces cycle to the bottom of the forge and then rake them out and repeat several times.

[John Martin]

Okay, will watch the air, charcoal and metal. How fast should 15 pounds or 20 pounds of charcoal burn at in a furnace. But, do I need clay in it?

[ThomasPowers]

Ifn I was going to try to do it that way I would go get a flue tile like they line chimneys with and then stack the brick around it.

As for how fast---can't tell without trying it out as it's not the same size or shape or blower as the rigs I worked with. You were not planning on being successful on your first run were you? (actually for orishigane you have a pretty good chance) These things usually are a learning experience until you get good at them---why they play up how many years/generations the smelters have behind them.

[John Martin]

I am having the worst luck ever, none of the digital cameras are working. Will get picks as soon as possible.

[Frosty]

I am having the worst luck ever, none of the digital cameras are working. Will get picks as soon as possible.

Oh come on now. Having the digital cameras crap out on you is hardly the worst luck EVER. If so you have to be the luckiest guy I ever "met".

Frosty

[ThomasPowers]

Frosty; I think that M_Brothers is young enough that he has a lot of years before him to enjoy bad luck....

I remember walking out of the woods on a badly sprained ankle as I figured it would take too long to crawl out. Emergency surgery 6 weeks after I got married and my wife wondering if I would survive to see the child we had started. Getting laid off 6 months shy of being able to take early retirement. Shoot I don't even have a digital camera!

Frosty I bet you have some "great" life experiences too!

Thomas
"Anything that does not kill me better change it's name and leave town afore I recover!"

[John Martin]

No smelt, we had all ready to go, and a storm came fom out of no where. So we quickly ran all of the charcoal inside of the garage, and put a tarp over the furnace. Have to wait till next weekend. Man, I am really bummed out. That is bad luck compared to the camera.

[ThomasPowers]

One thing we do when we smelt ore in a cobb build bloomery is to do the preheating with a wood file, gets the temp climbing and starts a charcoal mound and is cheaper than the store-boughten charcoal that will do the heaving lifting later.

BTW M_B were you not going to stop using the term smelt when you do not mean smelt? How about "the orishigane run", "the carburization run", or even just "the run"!

[John Martin]

Okay, the run didn't work. My dad said that he would get some iron ore from a friend for a real smelt some time in the near future.

[Frosty]

Oh yeah Thomas, I even remember when I was that young and all the old geezers were telling me my misfortunes were NOT tragedies.

Hmmmmm. You actually WANT me to tell stories? Let's see, experience being how you deal with life, the good, the bad and the misfortune.(mistakes) I've been a really fortunate person, I've survived enough mistakes to be fairly experienced.

Okay, here's a mistake Deb and I made a few years ago. It occured over a few years and like so many mistakes the unintended consequences continue to this day. I met Deb online in early 97', we met in person the next Memorial day when I flew to the UP for a face to face to face visit. That July she flew to Anchorage for a return visit and we were married in the muni court. (MUCH to my friends surprise. )

Afterward Deb had to return to the UP of Mi. She owned a 40 acre hobby farm, lots of STUFF, a herd of pygmy goats, flock of geese, dogs, cats and various and sundry other critters. Lots of loose ends to tie up to say the least.

In the mean time I had a newly purchased 30 acres of woods to turn into a home, barn and sundries. While Deb was having garage sales, packing, cleaning and selling her land down south I was killing trees, moving dirt, stacking cinder block and such.

That september I flew down to help Deb and a friend Julie load all their remaining stuff in storage, pack Deb's van and after the reception drove to AK. We got married in an Anchorage court and none of Deb's friends liked the idea so we held an informal ceremony and reception. It was quite the event with a couple hundred folks showing up to inspect the Alaskan bushman and give one of their own a proper mid-western sendoff. It was a very cool event, much better than the courthouse wedding.

I had to fly back home while Deb and Julie drove so I beat them by about 5 days. The next several months were pretty mundane for a newly married couple building a house in the woods during an Alaskan winter. The next spring things were starting to get rolling good when we discovered there was a problem with where Deb'd boarded her remaining goats. We needed to get them to AK soonest.

Well, we'd made contact with a number of goat owners locally and one was a reasonably close neighbor, about 7 miles. They offered to let us keep our herd at their place till we had barn, pastures and such finished that fall.

Deb had been raising goats for maybe 16-17 years and my family had raised horses for some 9 years when I was a kid so we both had more than a little understanding of what can happen mixing herds. The first thing we did was ask about the health of their goats. We were assured there'd never been a positive test result for any of the dangerous diseases.

We took their word for it.

We kept our herd on their property a little longer than we anticipated but it was all good, we bought hay, feed, meds, helped out, cooked for each other, etc. In general we were good friends and all was well. The next spring we moved our herd to their new digs and as kidding season was close our friends gave us a milk goat in case one of ours wouldn't nurse kids.

Deb had only kept a core herd and we purchased another six animals from different herds to improve the gene pool. Hers were the first registered pygmy goats in Alaska in about 25 years. So, we had a number of unknown new does and getting a milker was good insurance.

All's well and we jump ahead a couple years. Our herd then numbered some dozen adult does, 8 pregnant, three adult bucks, three yearling does. One of the bucks started losing weight and occasionally having bouts diarrhea, though he was eating well, was bright eyed and in no discomfort. We doctored him with everything we knew, consulted vets and long time breeders.

Finally, in early summer we had to put him down, while he was still happy, bright eyed and eating well, he'd become so weak he couldn't get up. We had a necropsy done and discovered he was suffering an advanced case of Johne's. (pronounced yo neez)

Johne's is a bacterial paratuberculosis with no cure or treatment. It has an extended amplification rate, some 2 years before an infected animal will show antibodies though it may start shedding sooner. It's spread through feces and goats being indiscriminate excreters it's everywhere.

At the time the results from Jimmy's necropsy came in, kidding season was nearly over, we had some 18 kids on the ground and two still pregnant does. The only practical, ethical thing to do was put the entire herd down.

Then with the herd gone we had to leave the pastures and barn fallow for two years to let the bacteria die off. Most of the chemicals necessary to kill Johne's bacteria would leave the land and barn a toxic site. Oxygen and sunlight will kill it given time.

After waiting the two years we reestablished a herd. It isn't the lines Deb spent nearly 20 years building but they're champion lines. The herd isn't as large as it was, we don't have the same fire as we did. But we still raise beautiful pygmy goats that kick butt at shows.

WE broke a basic rule, we not only boarded our animals on an untested farm, we accepted an untested animal onto our farm. Sure, they'd NEVER had a positive test result. . . They never tested.

One of the spinoffs of our "misfortune" came about by the pygmy goat community's response. Deb's well known as a breeder and well thought of so when word got out there were many breeders in the lower 48 who offered to give us replacement goats.

Our response was NO WAY, not a chance! Unless you have a clean herd. That means a minimum two years of clean test results for Johne's and one year for the rest. The ONLY acceptable proof is the vet's test results in writing. Untill then maybe 15-20% of pygmy breeders tested. Now some 75% test simply because it's getting hard to sell a goat from an untested herd. More and more goat breeders in general are testing as well.

We won't even breed to an animal from an untested farm. This too is becoming more common around the country.

Well, that's probably the biggest mistake we've made in the last decade or so.

Lesson learned.

Frosty