so which ores do you have in israel, bronze or brass and how much metal do you get from each kilo of ore, I would expect no more than 10% in weight of metal from the rock.

what process do you use to extract the metal from the rock, I would be interested to learn more

Wait. i may have been mistaken. We do not have ore. I have no idea where to get ore from. I can buy bars and smelt them. That is what i intended.

The goal is to do some smelting and to be able to make small trinkets and such. Nothing big. 

 

Well come to think of it, Near the dead sea there is a place that in ancient times used to be copper mines. But i think it is a national park now so they will not let me dig there ha ha ha 

Then just take off the s and you are melting the metal. 

M. Al.

The area that produced copper in Israel, was located in the Timna valley.

Copper has been mined there as early as the fifth or sixth millennia before the Christian era. (BCE) And 10,000 mines have excavated there

You are right that it is now a national park. The ore found there is in the usual copper sulfur form. (e.g. Malachite, Bornite, Chalcocite, etc. etc.).

That ore requires roasting to convert the copper sulfides, sulfates and other salts to copper oxides and then smelting them to produce pure copper.

It is simpler to buy copper and melt it for casting your desired products.

Mr. I. D.  bronze is very rarely found in a natural state. Most bronze was made from copper and tin that was found in very few places. There were some tin deposits in a few places in Iran and Afghanistan. The major source was mined in Cornwall England. The major source for tin is in Malaysia, in the form of stream tin. (Cassiterite  (SnO2, in placer form). But that source of tin is relatively recent.

Some deposits of copper zinc (brass) are more commonly found. But copper was once often treated with calamine ore to produce brass.

SLAG.

 

Yes a *MELTING* furnace not a "Smelting" furnace. Very common mistake around here---so much so that you can see us teasing you about it.

A metal melting furnace is also called a Foundry furnace.

thank you slag, was just trying to see if mike knew what he wanted to do

Well i do love the smell of Smelting in the morning (ha ha ha) but i have no idea where to get ore from. I think that as a learning experience i would love to do that (in case zombies will take over and i will have to make my own metal) but unless it can be bought in large quantities, i do not see that happens.

Sorry for lack of knowledge with the right terminology.   Still new to me. Yes, i want a small (up to 3 kg) foundry. Sorry for the mix up. Who knew that an S can be so meaningful :-) 

 

Now you got me wondering where i can get ore from...oh well, another item on the to-do list. 

1 hour ago, MikeAlmogy said:

Well i do love the smell of Smelting in the morning (ha ha ha)

Surely you jest. Smelting produces copious amounts of sulfur dioxide. YUM.

Then again, you just might love it.  But your neighbors will assuredly not.

Do I detect a fire department visit in your near future?

SLAG.

Just kidding.

Well as a teenager with no internet and lots of agriculture materials my friend and myself used to make our own fire powder. Not really black powder since we got the mixture all wrong but it did made a nice boom when we put it in a glass bottle, throw a burning match, quickly closed the lead   and run away. After the second time we, even being young and fairly stupid, that it was too dangerous so we switched method to a pile of powder with a pipe bomb sticking inside. not a big pipe bomb. maybe 8-10mm diameter that we took from old brass/aluminium antenna.  did make a nice fireworks. 

This powder was sooooo smelly. made load of smoke and stink of sulfur.  Happy days :-)

IForgeIron pushes safety and the use of fire powder, black powder, and other explosive mixtures IS NOT recommended. The world has changed and explosive materials and experimentation is heavily looked down upon by those in authority.  Please keep the conversation related to gas forges and the size of the burners.

How has the world changed? 3 days ago, a 19 year old girl was detained for questioning by TSA agents at a Huston Texas airport for showing a hand salute for support of Texas Tech University . Read more here

very well. You are right and under any circumstance i DO NOT recommend the use of any of those materials. I was young and very stupid. (30 years ago)

10 hours ago, MikeAlmogy said:

(in case zombies will take over and i will have to make my own metal)

We live in a world awash in scrap metal. If the zombies take over (or there is some other total breakdown of social order) there will be plenty of leaf springs to salvage, and we won’t have to worry about the legality of scrounging RR spikes. 

7 hours ago, Glenn said:

3 days ago, a 19 year old girl was detained for questioning by TSA agents at a Huston Texas airport for showing a hand salute for support of Texas Tech University

The TSA agents must have been Longhorns fans. 

You got a point there...but it does look like a nice thing to do. Anyway, pointless since i have no idea from where to get ores. 

 

I will post some new burner i am building soon. need to fabricate a blower to it and take some pictures and clips. Will post soon.

Slag:  I build my smelter from clay and straw, fire it with charcoal  and use iron oxide as the ore WHERE DOES THE SULFUR DIOXIDE COME FROM?????

Shoot we cook over the smelter! (a traditional smelting ritual: cooking in the reducing gasses----very hot but the meat can't burn as there is no O2)

As for ore; the scale that forms when you forge steel is a high grade ore.  Many places in the upper part of USA and Canada you can troll a magnet through creek and river deposits and pick up iron sand.  Other places you can find limonite or bog iron ores.  Also magnetite is sold as a pollution control item and we once bought 400 pounds, (minimum order and the shipping cost more than the material!)

T, P.,

There is no sulfur component from many commercial iron minerals (ores). (hematite, (Fe2O3), and Magnetite (Fe3O4) I was referring to the metallic sulfide ores of copper, nickel, zinc etc. which are usually found as massive sulfide deposits. Those sulfide ores were roasted to drive off the sulfur mostly as sulfur dioxide gas. That roasting produced metal oxide compounds. The metallic oxide ore was then heated to convert the oxide to metal.  Often the carbon monoxide generated by the burning coke or coal, reduced the oxide to metal in that smelting process. In other words, the oxides were converted to carbon dioxide leaving the molten metal behind.

Most of the non ferrous metals are mined from massive sulfide ore deposits.

But you already know that. 

I was not clear enough in my last post. Sorry about that.

I remember walking about the dozens of square miles around Sudbury Ontario where nickel ore, (Pentlandite, (Fe Ni 9)S8, Chalcopyrite (Cu Fe S2), and Pyrrhotite (FexS2) was roasted in the open. That practice was used for decades. Those sulfur containing ores are also commercially important sources for iron production.

The land turned into a treeless moonscape of black rock. (the moon bound astronauts trained there!).

They are still mining in the Sudbury basin after well more than 120 years.

Cooking over a smelter is an idea I never thought of. Great idea.

Magnetic iron ore, magnetite (Fe3O4) is commonly found in the heavy black sands in streams. scale in the smithy, it is magnetic iron oxide. Collect enough of it and it can be smelted into iron.

Hopefully I have now cleared up the confusion.

Regards,

SLAG.

Smelting using coke as the fuel can also produce sulfur issues---which is why most steel today contains at lease some manganese.

Smelting of bog iron can produce iron with an appreciable phosphorus content too.

I was told to go to Timna national park (witch was a very big copper mine in it's time)  and to bring some bags and a shovel. I wonder if the one who told me was serious.... 

Park Rangers get a tad hot under the collar here in the USA if you try that...

On ‎16‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 8:04 AM, MikeAlmogy said:

I was told to go to Timna national park (witch was a very big copper mine in it's time)  and to bring some bags and a shovel. I wonder if the one who told me was serious.... 

If you are serious about it, I suggest you contact the park authority and propose a copper production demonstration for the visitors.

You can study the proceess (YouTube knows it all), and have the park join you with a group of visitors (like school or boy scouts) for a day project. You"ll get acceess to mine ore, build a smelting furnace and fire it. Great experience.

I thought about it and after i will finish organizing my workshop i might even do that. It could be fun.