Dan Waddell

Yes!

That’s an interesting read Tim. As far as crucibles are concerned, it seems it doesn’t matter a whole lot what they are made of. They just need to stay together for at least 1 run. Overshooting the carbon content and then decarbing the steel seems like the easiest solution if the clay can’t handle higher heats. I think I’ve had it backwards in thinking there was a secret ingredient to make the perfect clay. Daniel I have been that person...not by desire. Just stubborn curiousity.

I’ve never heard of using oil instead of water in the clay. That sounds like a fun method to try. Should canola be an acceptable oil in this application?

I second Charles. Thank you to everyone contributing. Who needs present when you’re gaining knowledge.

I like all the pics of stacked plates. I'm sure it's even more satisfying for you to look at! Is your feed stock all wrought / bloom iron?

Thanks for the link Charles! I haven’t read that yet.

I think I get the basics of what's going on. The relationship between iron and carbon is very intriguing, and I'm looking forward to learning more about how they interact with each other.

Thank you Jan, So if I'm understanding what your saying correctly. It's not that hydrogen makes the iron melt at a lower temperature. Just that the iron carbonizes faster. So comparing 2 other wise identical crucibles, 1 using charcoal and 1 using green leaves, the temperatures would be the same, but green leaves would possibly lower the soak time required to go full liquid. I think I may be misunderstanding the context of some of this information.

There was a comment, about hydrogen in organic matter lowering the melting point of iron, made by Al Pendray at about 14:30 from the following post. It seems like a pretty big deal to be able to achieve liquid iron at lower temperatures. Could this be explained a little further? I'm confused why more recipes don't use organic matter. Even in recipes that use cast iron, having relatively lower temperatures still seems desirable. Does the inconsistency of carbon content end up outweighing the benefit of lower melting points?

Thanks guys, much appreciated! I have to do another run or two before I have enough material for a decent blade. So it will be a while before some updates. Mark, I went with two tuyeres because I was struggling with a single tuyere. I thought with 2 apposing hot spots I would be less likely to freeze slag. Also since remelting this material takes me a relatively long time, compared to pure iron remelts, I thought using 2 smaller tuyeres would help keep ash from building up so bad. My main goal was to accommodate a 2-3lb bloom with as few cold spots as possible, while maintaining a redu

Thanks Alan! I'm really happy with how this furnace ran, and look forward to future attempts. Soon I should have a few folds done on my puck so i can get a test etch in. I'm really excited to see what the steel looks like since it is behaving so nicely up to this point.(only 1 fold complete)

The Past few months I have been experimenting with refining bloom slag, particularly the fluff / mother. I had my first notable run which consolidated 8lbs of slaggy iron into 1.8lbs of high carbon steel. The puck was weighed after the first weld. Previously my attempts only hinted at victory so, with this furnace, I rolled the dice a little and overhauled almost every detail. The most drastic change being the addition of a second tuyere. In my opinion this solved 2 problems. First it helped prevent slag from freezing under the tuyere. Second it allowed for a higher pressure while maint

Looking good! Is that all your steel I see?

I like the idea of an extension as well. Hopefully I can make a new blade a throw my name back in.

I decarbed my blade in heat treat and don't have time to make a new one. Here's the list with my name withdrawn. 1. Brian Dougherty 2. Timothy Artymko 3. Doug Crawford 4. JJ Simon 5. Scott Wright 6. Wesley Alberson 7. Robert Dowse 8. Kevin Hopkins 9. George Ezell 10. Michael Lenaghan 11. Dan Bourlotos 12. Aiden Carley-Clopton 13. Mike Andriacco 14. Emiliano Carrillo 15. Francesco Muci 16. Juho Voutilainen 17. Pieter-Paul Derks 18. James Fuller 19. John Page 20. Nate Runals 21. Scott Cruse

Thanks Alan. It seems I misremembered the thread back from 2013 on kiln heat treating 1084 in my haste. The silver lining is that the blade being just barely usable means I cant let anyone but me use it. So I get to keep my frankensteinish jelly roll:/ and at the very least I want to see what the full pattern ended up as. I'll have to follow your advice on the next one. Man I read kilns(especially the low V ones) take a while to come up to heat, but I really underestimated that time until I saw it for myself.

I tried using a kiln for heat treat for the first time, and I'm pretty sure I ruined my blade. Here is what I did. My blade is PW 15n20 and 1084(1/8" at it's thickest), and I applied a thin layer of satanite between heats to try to prevent scale. 3x normalize @ 1700f, 1600f, and 1500f heat for quench with 10min hold @1550f quenched into ambient temp canola oil (attempted 2 quenches) The blade did harden a little that a file will bite just the slightest bit. All together the steel was in the kiln for about 4 total hours. As far as I can tell 1 of 2 things happened. 1 I decar

For my KITH blade I decided to use some pattern weld that I gave up on several times for various reasons. Through out the forging I had to adopt new techniques to make the steel usable. I didn't take many pictures so I'll have to fill in the gaps a bit. It starts at 17 layers drawn out to 20" x 2" x .25" Luckily I got to do this under a friends power hammer. All the other work was done by hand. I cut that bar in 2 and made jelly rolls with them. I then drew the jelly rolls out to about 1.25" octagons, and attempted an accordion unfold. This did not go well as

1. Brian Dougherty 2. Timothy Artymko 3. Doug Crawford 4. JJ Simon 5. Scott Wright 6. Wesley Alberson 7. Robert Dowse 8. Kevin Hopkins 9. George Ezell 10. Michael Lenaghan 11. Dan Bourlotos 12. Aiden Carley-Clopton 13. Mike Andriacco 14. Emiliano Carrillo 15. Francesco Muci 16. Juho Voutilainen 17. Pieter-Paul Derks 18. James Fuller 19. John Page 20. Nate Runals 21. Scott Cruse 22. Dan Waddell

Lookin good! nice and clean.

I think part of the problem is when you watch people using a power hammer or belt grinder it looks easy. Almost so easy it must be cheating. Generally the people shown have years of experience. If you were to put those same tools in the hands of the inexperienced I bet you could make a video entitled "how to hurt yourself, break a machine, or ruin a good blade in 3 seconds" It really does seem odd that efficiency is looked down on by some. Maybe smiths should start purposely slipping with their hammers or something of that nature. Wouldn't that really give it that handmade look?:P

I can't speak for anyone else, but I follow some guidelines with decisions made in the moment. No one run is exactly the same. We did not start with ore so it really isn't a bloomery/smelter. We just started with scrap steel/low carbon steel, and turned it into high carbon steel. To the best of my knowledge the end product is more or less the same as a bloom, but to start from ore is worlds more difficult. The implied starting material makes a big difference though, and what name to give what we made is up for debate. I call them pucks just because "puck" is a short word.

Thanks for posting these pictures. It sure was a fun time, and we got quite a bit of high carbon steel made:D

Now Gerald did you use the same material that would have been used historically along with the historic techniques?:P

My cheap belt grinder is 1/3 hp and can do that. I'd bet 2hp would do it well.