Jon Stormm

Hey Guys, I'm Jon Stormm, from the western NY area. This past weekend, I did my very first smelt. I started researching this in february and started prepping in June. I did a 30inch stack (after reading a post from Mr Ric Furrer to another hopeful smelter) made from clay (hand picked out of the forest) sand and vermiculite. My air supply was an old computer vacuum. I went through about 110lbs of charcoal and roughly 50lbs of spanish red iron oxide and another 5 lbs of scale from my shop. After about 5 hours, my brother and I pulled about a 20lb bloom out of the fire. This was th

Nice work, Mark! I'll be doing my first smelt tomorrow (or rather, later today) 105lbs of spanish red, 200lbs of charcoal and a 30 inch high furnace with a 10-8 inch inside diameter. Should be interesting...Hopefully it works. Lol -Jon Stormm

I have that video. You can buy it on Amazon Video on Demand. It's not expensive and Kazda still gets his royalties. And Ric, PLEASE release a couple videos. -Jon Stormm

Absolutely amazing work, Chuck! Quite inspirational. There's a guy who wanted me to make him a native styled knife, and I've been going through hundreds of design ideas in my head and on paper (native designs aren't my style) and I haven't like any of them. I think you just help point me in the right direction. Thanks man!

Hey Ric, I'm doing a smelt on 21 Aug of this year. I'd like to produce a steel bloom and having been reading up on this for a few months now. I guess I should do a two to one ratio, charcoal to ore (spanish red iron oxide from a ceramic dealer, evidently it's 85% Fe) but I'm using a 1.5 gal shop vac as my blower. I don't have any other specs on the vac because it was a "cheapy" I picked up from Harbor Freights. How do think that should fair, given that I use your suggested smelter dimensions? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. -Jon Stormm