I got started thinking about all the scale around the anvil. And the thought came to me to build a clay furnace, and toss all the scale into it and see what comes out.

 I'll fire it with charcoal, and see if I can create a bloom of forgable steel.  Also what about tossing in clinker as well.  Clinker contains a mix of scale, flux, dirt, etc.

I would leave out the clinker

Agreed. 

Yeah, I guess I will. Too much unwanted stuff in clinker.

A large part of the bloomery process is getting rid of slag like clinker.

Frosty The Lucky.

Since the clinker is primarily impurities from the coal and largely composed of silicates which are the result of sand and silt (mud) washing into the coal swamps there will be little iron in it.  Just the bit of scale it picks up in the forge.  So, about all you would get is more slag to pour off the bloom with little gain in the amount of iron.  

BTW, I expect that the bloom will be pretty much iron rather than forgable steel.  I expect that you will have to work it down into wrought iron.  The scale is pretty much iron oxides which will approximate iron ore.  So, the process will be very close to getting metal from ore.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

My one contribution is that unless you're forging all day most days, it's gonna take you a long minute to get enough scale. The last bloom I did took a lot of ore, I can't imagine collecting enough scale flakes to make anything more than a mini-bloom.

You're in northern Georgia, right? If you want to make a bloom, there's a crap load of good goethite at and around Red Top Mountain, in huge fist size chunks that you can easily pull out of the red clay banks. I used to ruck it out in my ALICE pack. It was mined heavily there up through the Civil War. They still mine red ochre up there. Heck I've got some of it here in WA, not to mention a bit of mostly cooked bloom (unexpected GA thunderstorm and stupidly hot clay furnaces don't mix).

If you're not near there, there's iron ore practically everywhere in North Georgia. I used to see limonite all over near Macon.

Yeah I’m also curious as to how you are getting that much scale.

I’ve been thinking of trying a similar thing with all my lil bits of scrap metal.
if it you blooming works out I might have to start hoarding scale to.

definitely let us know how it goes and take pictures if you can!

Put a magnet in a plastic bag and pass it around your anvil, floor, yard, pickup bed, etc. when it won't pick up more turn the bag inside out over a bucket and put the magnet in another bag. When you stop getting filings, scale, pinch offs, etc. Go visit another blacksmith. Lather rinse repeat.

When you have say 20lbs or so you might get a 4lb bloom.

Frosty The Lucky.

Thomas told once he used scale and grinddust. Can't remember where on ifi i read it.

He did and also said the amount of steel cuttings was enough of a higher % than the bits of broken garnet, silicon carbide, etc. from the belt as to make little if any difference.

We had a good discussion about it a while back. It's in the sections. . . somewhere.

Frosty The Lucky.

It’s been a little bit but I’m curious if someone is using just scale pinch offs and other small scraps won’t that have practically no impurities.  if one wants to make something more like wrought iron would just throwing in a clinker or sand remedy this?

The difference/problem is that the impurities in wrought iron are distributed in layers which are created by the forging process.  Hence, the wood grain pattern of wrought iron.  On the other hand, if you just added silica to a melt it would be evenly distributed throughout the liquid metal.  To get layers you would have to forge it out.  The forging process is why the iron is called "wrought."

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

Buy yourself some strap stock, say 1/16" x 1 1/2", shine it up, sprinkle it with silica, stack and weld it into a billet. Then cut, fold dust with silica and weld. Lather rinse and repeat till you have the silica content you wish. You can so a specific gravity to determine the % or steel vs silica.

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks Gorge and frosty, glad to see you posting!

so what your saying is kinda like making Damascus. 

Maybe, I guess. I just gave it some thought years ago for making a wrought analogue but I couldn't figure out how to eliminate the carbon in a realistic way so didn't pursue it beyond thinking.

Frosty The Lucky.

Technicus Joe (I don’t think he’s been on the forum for a while) had a video on YouTube making “wrought” iron by forge welding nails with silica sand as a flux. I can’t remember the details, and he has unfortunately taken this and many other videos down. I can see how this would leave silica layers and even drop the carbon content from multiple welding heats/passes.

Keep it fun,

David

Il look it up thanks!