thoughts on refining the iron out of lava

[Justin Garrett]

OK so I r ecently moved to the big Island of Hawaii and through out my treks here I've notice that a lot of the lava is very iron rich. I've been looking at the legalities of it and it seams that if your not taking it off the island it's not illegal.  still waiting on some phone calls back about that. But my thought is to build either a cupola or Blast Furnace and try and refine lava into a bloom to make a knife for myself. Thoughts? I've done a lot of this stuff before just not sure about the lava side of things.

[ThomasPowers]

Well a blast furnace and a cupola don't make blooms; a bloomery makes blooms.  You probably don't want  lava as the ore has to have more iron in it than the slag does and Iron rich is probably not that rich... *HOWEVER* if you can find a place where you can troll a streambed with a strong magnet for magnetite sand then that's a high grade iron ore and what the Japanese use in their tatara furnaces (a type of bloomery) to make iron/steel for their blades.

"The Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" Rehder has plans for a "foolproof" bloomery using modern refractories and air equipment as an appendix.

MUCH faster if you can get some hands on experience before you try it on your own.