Joshua States

Yes that is correct. Iron grain, either small pieces or these handy 1mm spheres I got. I have about 30 pounds of magnetic black sand. I believe this is magnetite. The short stack furnace that Aiden is using refines iron into steel bloom. Bloom needs further refinement through forging, folding/stacking and welding to become a homogeneous (or mostly homogeneous) material. The crucible method takes raw iron or iron ore, and combines it with a carbon source to create a homogeneous steel ingot.

Looking really good Aiden.

@Hoy's Forge see this thread by @Aiden CC:

The two pucks above were made from pure iron fed stock and charcoal, with a little something for carbide donor. The black sand try was on a whim. Pringle says he does that all the time, so I figured I'd try it. What Pringle didn't say was "Watch out for the carbon boil, it will really freak you out". You can certainly re-melt all those scraps and broken dreams knives into useable stock. An A4 crucible handles a 1 kg charge easily. It might get a little more carbon from crucible uptake, but that never hurts. You would need to cut them into small pieces to get them in the crucible as tightly packed as possible. Or you could build a short stack ala Emiliano does and melt it all into a handy bloom and process it from there. I have wanted to make steel ever since the first time I saw a video of @Mark Green pulling a bloom out of a stack. Liz took a dim view of me building Frankenfurnace in the back yard, so that wasn't an option. Then she decided that she wants to melt and cast metals like copper and aluminum........now she needs a crucible furnace. So I can do crucible steel.

Whatever it was, it made a freaking mess! I sanded the windows to 220 and tried a light etch to see any dendritic patterning. First puck, not much to see. Second puck looks better

Later. I'm going to bring these to the show in OKC this weekend. Just to have on the table as bait. I also did a third melt today. This one was rather exciting. I used nothing but black sand and charcoal for the charge. The furnace got so hot it started to boil violently. No photos, but a video is coming to a YT channel near you.

Beautiful work.

@Jan Ysselstein I think I get what you are saying, but I'd love to see your setup. Mine is still a little finicky. I did manage to get two melts done over the weekend. The first one had to be fired twice, was an absolute bear to get out of the crucible, and looks a little weird. It wasn't sparking very well at first and I was not confident that it was a good melt. 916 g out of the crucible. Dan Cauble suggested I grind a small area on the side to see the interior and that proved to be a good idea. I can see some porosity, but it was sparking much better the deeper I went. The second melt provided a very nice puck that fell out of the crucible after removing the glass slag. This one sparks very nicely and looks much more solid. 992 g weight out of the crucible.

Back in business! How do you have the burner controls configured?

That's some impressive finishing work.

It can be used for either ferrous and non-ferrous materials. Yes the hole in the top is where everything exhausts. The ball valve is very difficult to get small changes in airflow. Small changes in airflow yield large changes in temperature. Both upward and downward. I have a gate valve on my ribbon burner forge and it works great for small changes in airflow. It's not a needle valve. It's one of those 4-detent ball valves. When you fire this thing up cold, it doesn't need much fuel to get up to 800 or 1K degrees C. As it warms past that point, the fuel consumption to get above that increases dramatically. The 4-detent function allows for starting at half-open, increasing in smaller increments as the heat rises. I have the same valve in my gas line on my ribbon burner forge. Crack that open a half-click and you go from forging heat (1900-2000 F) right up to welding heat (2150-2250 F) in about a minute. Adjust the air flow with the gate valve about 1/4 turn and you have a pretty nice almost neutral flame. The orifice is an 1/8" hole in the brass pipe. I start at 8 psi on the gas line and as soon as I open the red valve (yes, it's a shut off switch) the pressure on the line reads basically zero maybe 1 or 2 psi. When I open it all the way, it's zero. The blower isn't rated for variable speed, but I have used a simple light dimmer to try that method. It's also too difficult to get small adjustments. It's a small slide and I have fat fingers

Welcome back to the madness.

After another failed crucible run, I decided to put this thing together. I only had two bolts, three washers, two nuts, and this weird piece of sheet metal left over. I seem to remember someone saying I should grease something or the other on this saw, but I cannot remember what, or where the grease goes on.

It looks to me like you were trying to polish right down to the edge and rolled it just a bit too far. The edge dug in and by the time your reflexes reacted, you had taken a bite out of the wheel. If you are going to try and use Trizac belts to polish down to the edge, you have to grind them edge down so the belt runs off the edge instead of against it.

So a few months ago I built this crucible forge kinda thing. I lit the wood fire in it and let it dry out for a bit. Then I tried running it to see how hot it would get. Then it sat dormant waiting for me to find time and acquire all the necessary materials for a run. This weekend, I went for it, but the results were less than desireable. Here is the setup. The air/gas mixing assembly. I need to change that ball valve out to a gate valve and there aren't any available in the size I need locally. I have to order it. I had a lot of problems with burner blowout and failed to get into the right temperature without excessive fiddling with the air/gas mixture. I only got the furnace above 1500 C for about 6 minutes before running out of gas. I have no idea what's lying below the slag layer.

That's a really nice bit of work there. Looking at it through the lens of Iron Age, I'm sure that was a most fearsome weapon.

Unfortunately, he said it's been so long since he bought an anvil, he has no idea. I'm trying some other contacts over there.

I've just sent a message to a pretty well-known Swedish smith. He may reach out to you.

Nice. Coop submits all his photos to various publications too (other photographers als do this). Maybe you'll appear in the next issue of Blade, who knows?

It just sounds so much better in Spanish

I didn't measure it

When I used the word "You" I meant it in the general sense, not as a specific reference to Jaro. But you should probably start selling it. There is likely a market for your work and selling something that is not perfect in your eyes does not diminish your value as a craftsman. We have a saying here in Arizona, translated roughly to Spanish (I hope I got that correct) it comes out as Hay un culo para cada montura

Petty much yes

Following. Your work in the art of bronze casting always fascinates me.

Done. The only question is how sharp does it need to be?