I am looking for information, how to on forging out a bloom. I have done this once, in an experiment this last summer. A fellow I know here in Wi has done considerable work researching and constructing small clay bloomeries, making his charcoal and smelting Iron. However he does not do any smithing, this gave me the great opportunity to help him out by hammering out a hunk of bar one long (hot)_ afternoon at an event last July. We are getting together again soon, along with some other smithes from the area, to spend a day smelting, and bloomsmithing. Our last work was a rather blind, heat it and beat it job, and while fairly successful I think it may have taken very excessive amounts of time and charcoal. I found we were learning very rapidly as we went.
So, any input here about the actual working of a bloom, how to do it faster, ( if there is such a thing), how to get it more homogenous, anything, any input, or references as to were I could read up on this a bit. I would like to be more prepared on this one. It would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Jared

Sorry I can't help but please take lots of pictures and post them here.

This might give you an idea. Possibly ask for a few more of the details you need.

BP1014 Bloomery Process

I've also a book coming, but it's not arrived yet. Tis a 1934 edition by two metallurgists on wrought and its processing. If there's anything useful I'll pass it along.

Go to dfoggknives.com then go to the forum and then go to the bloomery section, I learned a lot from there.

As I recall from some (minor) research I did last year, helve (power) hammers were developed to work blooms faster and easier, and larger blooms too. Ditto powered bellows. Working a bloom into a workable piece of stock is quite a long and difficult process, as you found out, which explains why they invented power tools several centuries ago to help with it! :D

Having actually worked with blooms for about 15 years now I can say it depends on the bloom.

Blooms with a lot of slag in them---we used to call them "iron soup" can best be started to consolidate *in* the welding fire using tongs to squish them together to get enough iron sticking to iron to actually have a piece to move to the anvil.

Then when a bloom comes out of the forge welding hot and *dripping* slag off you need to work it gently nudging it to shape and together; hit it too hard and it will splash and chunks will fall off.

when you finally get it in shape and the slag content goes way down you may want to start fluxing it for the welding.

Finally you can work it like low grade wrought iron---muck bar and then refine it into merchant bar or the S,D,T refined WI.

What helps: design a forge that can bring a large chunk of bloom to good welding temp---usually a bigger one than regular forge work is done on. It is better to subdivide a bloom into pieces the forge can work at the proper temp than try to work larger ones that don't all get to welding temp. Remember you are not held down to charcoal for working the bloom, propane forges or coal/coke ones can be used too.

BTW take a look at historical tilt or helve hammers; often very large but the speed of the blow was generally controlled by gravity so a fairly "soft" heavy blow---perfect for things like shingling blooms!

Also PPE! Personal Protective Equipment---*lots* of slag flying around, dripping, etc Leather is your *friend*! Wear the dorky face shield! Pants legs outside of the boots!

Thanks, for the help so far Guys
To elaborate more,
What I learned in the initial attempt, we spent a long time consolidating the lump with many light blows, turning and tapping over and over, working in my small portable forge added a challenge, long time to get up to full heat, then made what seemed like very little progress in a heat. Going by feel, hammering that bloom was like hitting a sponge or a lot of bubbles, squished a little ways real easy, but if you hit hard at all it would crack all apart. This seemed to be the slowest part of the process.
Once I got something I could actually really pound on, progress picked up. I had expected it to be a heavy hammer tiring job, but spent plenty of time resting waiting for the next heat.
Perhaps with a better suited tongs, we could do an extensive series of squishing operations, could shave off a half dozen heats. Im not just trying to be lazy here, I want to have some Iron left at the end of the process as well.
Ill read up a bit more, and take a bunch of pictures all day.
Thanks
Jared

On thing about using light surface taps is you tend to leave more slag in the center of the piece and then when you go to a bigger hammer/harder hits you can get gushes of slag coming out or pieces falling off.

Having the entire piece to a true welding heat really helps---remember that if it's a low carbon bloom then the welding temp is higher than if it's a high carbon bloom.

I never tried anything like that before, but if the problem is lack of intgrity of the bloom perhaps forgeing it in a swedge or V block would speed up the job.

Where does one obtain iron ore? If say, making a bloom, "running pig iron" etc. is the object then where does one obtain some suitable raw iron ore these days???:confused:Dan

I believe pottery supply companies carry haematite and such.

Use a magnet in a sand pile, stream bed, backyard dirt etc. A good trick is putting the magnet in a plastic bag before you dredge, that makes it easy to get the iron filings off and they'll already be in the bag.

If you live near a bog you can try wading around feeling for bog iron in the mud. I've never done this myself but it used to be the main source for high grade iron ore for centuries.

Frosty

Bog iron can be fairly easily located by looking for that rainbow oily slick on the water, now assuming that it is not actually a bit of old motor oil that's been spilled, it's where to start looking. Use of a magnet increases your odds greatly.

In upstate NY you should be able to drag a magnet through beaches/streambeds for magnetite---a gift of the glaciers. Knowing that it's relatively heavy and how water works on sediments should allow you to select places where it's been concentrated a bit for you.

Magnetite is also sold as a pollution control additive, it's cheap the shipping is more expensive! (when we went that route)