First try at making steel

[K. Bryan Morgan]

A project that I've been working on since Tuesday. Some friends and I worked on making steel. We had ABS Master Bladesmith Bill Burke to head the project. After many hours of hard work we broke apart the furnace and found....not much. It was a terrible disappointment. We had hoped for about 300 pounds of usable tamahagane steel.  The leaders of our team are very experienced and knowledgeable, however many variables can contribute to a poor outcome. Weather wasn't great. The iron sands were from an unproven source. It could have been any number of things that lead to the less than hoped for result. After going through 400 lbs of iron sands and two tons of charcoal we estimate that we ended up with about 7-10 lbs of material that will have to be can welded to be usable.  Getting together one more time tomorrow to see what can be done and to salvage what we can.  Still, I would totally do it again. 

[phabib]

That's really interesting.  My son and I have been talking about collecting some ore and trying to refine the iron out of it for a project.  I was thinking of a smaller scale project using some terra cotta flue tiles and then throwing in more ore and charcoal as it burns down and (hopefully) taking some iron from the bottom the next day when it all cools down.  After that we'd turn it into wrought iron.  With no real info to go from, I was thinking that getting 10% iron from the ore would be acceptable to us.  A bucket of ore and a couple big bags of charcoal could give us a couple pounds of iron and we'd have enough to make some small project from the resulting wrought.

Any advice or reality checks from someone who'd done it?

[Frosty]

Good GRIEF Bryan, that was quite the project! Did you concentrate the ore with a magnet? Roast it first? Details please, I REALLY wish I could've been there.

Where did you guys do it? I'm no longer familiar enough with the interior to recognize the neighborhood but that isn't in the bush. I also love to see a typical Alaskan project, if we aren't burning diesel we ain't serious. Power tools forever!

If you were to want to drive to Haines I can point out a big black mountain of magnetite that's listed as a hazard to navigation it's so magnetic. The highway cuts the toe of the slope so you don't even need to pull all the way off the road to fill a truck. Hmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

[K. Bryan Morgan]

Phabib, yes doing it using flue tiles is possible.  We ended up with about 20-25 lbs total.  I have more pics to post as soon as I find my phone.  Now where did I put that?  So yes.  Terra cotta flue tiles and a shop vac blower.  The largest expense for the project was the 4000 lbs of charcoal.  Now it was hardwood charcoal not soft wood.  I don't know if that made a difference.  The ore was untested.  It came from SE Alaska and was all sorted by magnate.  All 600 lbs of it.  We used approximately 400 lbs. 

 

Frosty, yes we dried it out on a big bit of 3/8" plate with a turkey burner under it.  We dried it out.  I don't know if that's what you mean by roasting it, but that's what we did.  Bill Burke has done this about a dozen times.  We did get very usable material and it was forged into a blade.  I don't have pictures of that particular blade but everything else.  He used the tamahagani method.  Sorting and stacking, smashing folding and welding.  No rice paper, no rice straw just borax.  It all stuck very well and the steel had a very good grain structure. 

The location was at Mark Knapps shop, The Cutting Edge, in the rail yard.  We were basically in town.  Hoodoo brewery is right next door.  We have a small group of artists, knife makers and blacksmiths who meet there monthly.  Well one blacksmith anyway...lol.  Mark is super talented. 

Everyone was very excited to try this and we had a wonderful time.  I mean fire, steel, large hammers, how much better does it get?  We were disappointed by the small return, but then its the first time we've ever done this and the first time this particular ore was ever used for this purpose that I know of.  So there were several unproven factors.  We had a sheet steel vapor barrier between the bottom of the furnace and the ground.   An airspace made with  concrete block, a hardy board barrier, then fire brick mortared with sand, clay and grog, with sawdust mixed in.  We fired the furnace and then covered it over night letting it dry out.  The next morning it was still just a little bit damp on the exterior but the interior was quite dry.  We began filling the furnace with charcoal and started the blast.  Filling it to the top.

 When it was full we started adding the dry iron sands, one coffee can for every 25-30 gallons of charcoal, wait 12-15 minutes and repeat.  That was done for about 24 hours. Durring the night one of the tewyars blocked up and was removed.  The next day we let it burn down to the lump and started taking it apart.  When we first saw it we were very hopeful but as we broke things up it became apparent that we hadn't had very good success. 

All that said we did have a very good time doing it all.  Bill was very knowledgeable and was happy to answer questions.  We got lots of people from next door at the brewery coming over and asking questions.  One guy even started chopping charcoal up.  His guest from Germany asked lots of questions and we were happy to accommodate. 

[DanielC]

If it is magnetite, you wont have to roast it. Hardwood charcoal is the preferred charcoal for smelting. Softwood for forging.

Very cool experiment guys!! Lots of charcoal and ore. Several factors can lead to a poor return. Air pressure ran too high, and low yield ore are obvious ones.

Question, did you guys test your slags? Often the first slag tap or so will be magnetic, and the following taps should start to be mostly pure impurities, of course this would be hard to tell if you allowed it to self tap. I would check the slags and see if they are very magnetic. This could be indicative of running the furnace too hot, as you were essentially creating cast iron, and it was pouring out with the slags.

Normally I would change only one variable per smelt until you get it somewhat dialed in. Every smelt is a little bit different as no two ores are exactly the same. Some slags require lower or higher temps to be runny. At least you know you weren't running it too cool, as it didn't irreversibly freeze up.

Also from here I would try the ears of both Lee Sauder and Mark Green for any further suggestions. Both have the experience of smelting over 100 times in the recent decade.

[Frosty]

It came from SE eh? That could very well be Iron Mountain magnetite from the Hoonah, Angoon area just outside Haines. I suppose iron sand would be easy to collect from one of the streams coming off it. It's a big black mountain, everybody in the area knows it and it really  messes up a compass.

You could unplug a pipe on the air belt by pulling the plug in the T and ramming with a rod but that might not have been an option. Boy, I could've made a real pest of myself. Maybe next time.

Frosty The Lucky.

[K. Bryan Morgan]

These were iron sands from a gold mine.  So I don't know if it was magnetite or not.  I know it was magnetically sorted.  Other than that I don't know. 

 

The one pipe that blocked up was really blocked up they had a piece of 1/2 mild they were using for blockages and usually it would clear with no problem.  This one blocked up tight.  And yes we unscrewed the plugs to check the air flow to do that.

[Nobody Special]

Save the slag, some of it will be full of iron-y goodness.

[Frosty]

Yeah, there're a lot of gold mines in SE. Iron Mountain is the one serious iron deposit I know of. I'll stop second guessing now, I'm just a little jealous you know. <sniff>

Frosty The Lucky.

[teenylittlemetalguy]

We really need to do one of these in south central.

also the Fairbanks guys are meeting once a month? We should meet more often as well.

 

[K. Bryan Morgan]

Well we are a very informal group of mostly knife makers.  I'm the lone blacksmith I think.  I know Mark had blade and knife classes from time to time through a local teaching group. The last one I was aware of they made tomahawks.  But those are all pay for events.  I wish there was a local blacksmithing group.  But people here have a real aversion to organization for some reason.  I know there was some sort of educational grant to offset costs for this event.  It was very expensive to do.  I know we have a couple of Second Lieutenants in our group, 5-6 very good knife makers and me.  The core of the group stays pretty much the same people with some other coming and going from time to time.  Right now I'm working on making dividers... because I want to.  I really want to make blades at some point though. 

[phabib]

Any idea how the taconite ore pellets would work for making wrought iron?  I think they might result in cast iron rather than wrought since they contain a flux that might cause the iron and slag to separate  instead of forming the inclusions that wrought includes.  You can get the ore pellets for $1 a pound on ebay where its sold as slingshot ammo.

[ThomasPowers]

The iron making group I was a member of for over a decade (till I moved 12 years ago; they are still going strong...) found that taconite pellets were the worst ore of the many types we had tried.  First they had to be crushed to get good reduction, then the premixed flux made for WAY more slag than we have gotten with any other ore so consolidation was more like consolidating iron soup---we couldn't start with a hammer but used tongs and a piece of wood to persuade the iron to consolidate

[phabib]

Thank you.  I was afraid that would be the answer.

[ThomasPowers]

Isn't CA rather famous for it's "black sand"---Magnetite---a great ore found in the creeks and streams of the gold country?  (Be VERY careful that any sourced from gold panners has NOT been treated with mercury to recover micro gold!!!!!)

[Frosty]

Put a strong magnet in a plastic bag then run it over river sand or let it lay in the water on the bottom. Every once in a while remove the plastic bag over a bucket the black sand will drop off. Repeat till you have enough for a smelt.

If you think you're in mercury "contaminated" material check by rubbing it gently on a clean copper sheet. Any mercury will amalgum with the copper and show as shiny silver stain.

If you're collecting anything in California or heck any gold country streams there is mercury everywhere there is gold. Cinnabar is everywhere you find gold, silver, copper, etc. When Dad was prospecting and selling extraction machinery we used to see more $/ton. in mercury than gold, silver and copper together recovered from California screams and rivers. Especially the west side of the Sierras, lots of mercury naturally. The Basin and Range country on east is pretty mercury rich but not like the west side of the Sierras.

Dad and I always carried a 1lb. bottle of mercury, a squeeze bottle of 25% nitric acid and a little dish soap. Dawn became THE dish soap when it came out. We always had our prospecting  kit when we were fishing. Funny how trout like to rest in back eddies where food comes to them and gold settles out of the flow. Catch a trout, scoop a pan load and see what you get. You'd be amazed how 3 drops on mercury put in the pan to amalgamate with gold would turn into 10-15 drops of mercury. Yeah, we carried sample bottles, notebooks and maps so we could log our results. Both gold and trout.

Just learn to check for mercury, I like the copper sheet especially vibrated though some guys would just stir the concentrates with a copper rod.

No matter where you are or what method you use stay out of the exhaust from the smelt. Cinnabar also contains cyanide, lots in the really RED cinnabar. The colors: RED, orange, yellow, etc. aren't only a warnings on animals.

Frosty The Lucky.

[phabib]

The big newspaper where I live is called the Mercury News after the New Almaden mines that provided a lot of mercury for the gold rush.  The nearby lakes still carry warnings that pregnant women shouldn't eat the fish and others should limit to a couple servings a week.

There is a beach near San Francisco called "Black Sand Beach" which should provide what I need.  We're also in the gold country a fair amount so I can look there.

I don't have to explain the too many projects too little time problem to this group, I'm sure.

[Frosty]

Black Sand Beach should be a good spot to extract magnetite.

Thinking about it a little later it's not cyanide that turns so many mineral such pretty reds and oranges it's usually arsenic.

Nope, the list so long the life so short is no mystery to us or our spousal units.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[phabib]

I did a bit of research and found out that right near where I'm going to move in Santa Cruz there was a company in the 1920's that owned 2 miles of beach near a river and refined the black sands that gathered there into 50 tons of iron blooms per day.  They used a 6 stage electromagnet setup to pre-sort the sand.  They also used the black sand in special concrete mix that was extra heavy to make counterweights for equipment and window sashes.

That sand also contains a titanium iron oxides and the titanium can be refined from it by burning up the iron using oxidation from a thermite reaction.

 

[Frosty]

Oh great, where is the kid asking about the Korean titanium steel alloy? He's going to be moving in next door to you if he finds out. If his Mom will let him that is.

Frosty The Lucky.

[phabib]

What's interesting is that in a 1920's USGS publication where they talk about the commercial value of the black sand from that beach, they mention that the resulting iron is "contaminated" with a certain percentage of titanium, but they say it doesn't hurt the iron's qualities so it can just be left in there.

I don't think I'll be encouraging my son to burn out the iron with a thermite reaction, as much fun as that would be.

[DanielC]

Titanium was a common element in the iron sands used in Japan.

 

Our magnetite has a percentage in titanium in it as well. This is just another impurity to fight with in both the smelting and forging process. From what I understand, it will come out with the slags in both processes of smelting and reifnement through forging.

 

I also understand that iron sands in Australia are dredged by japanese dredgers, because their composition more closely resembles the ores used in feudal Japan. This bit of info I have come across different conversations with different smelters on Don Foggs. Now whether that means they are bending over backwards to get a titanium baring sand or a non-titanium baring sand, I do not know.

 

Either way, if it has at least 50-60% FeO3, and little to no Cu, I say it is worth a snag.

[Frosty]

Ti isn't going to alloy with iron at temps we're going to achieve in hoe forges so I suppose it'd drive out with the slag. . . Maybe.

Now if you had black sands with a decent % of manganese, vanadium or molybdenum we'd be talking SWEET ore.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

North Georgia was in the heart of gold country, very little black sand. Lots of goethite and mercury though. I've found some pretty pretty cinnabar in the mountains.

A lot of the goethite and limonite around here is more or less non-magnetic, and non-responsive to a magnet, except a weak field that shows with very large masses (a formation in a clay bank will throw your compass off, a rock won't even register.) Becomes more responsive to a magnet after roasting though.