Andrew W

What kind of firebrick are you using? I've found that some of the cheap, thin ones from Amazon aren't good to forgewelding heats (despite any claims on their packaging). A proper hard brick should hold up better.

Here are three of them! Horn handles, as per the early Anglo-Saxon period originals on which they're based.

The steel I made in this smelt has worked up very nicely. (The welded-on edge of the longest blade is hearth steel I made from scrap metal from the shop floor—everything else is bloomery steel from this smelt).

Checked the mail tonight and found this waiting for me. Ready for round 2

It's in Malim, T. and Hines, J., (1998). The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Edix Hill (Barrington A), Cambridgeshire: excavations 1989--1991 and a summary catalogue of material from 19th century interventions. This has now been put online as a (legal) pdf, which you can download here: https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/issue.xhtml?recordId=1075286&recordType=MonographSeries The metallurgy analysis of the spearheads starts on page 250. There are some great line drawings of the blade cross-sections, and a detailed discussion.

This is wonderful. You see this in historical blades sometimes. For example, 6 of the early medieval (6th century Anglo-Saxon) spearheads buried in the cemetery at Edix Hill (Cambridgeshire) were made from scrap, including bits of pattern welded swords. I've been wanting to make one for a few years just to see what it looks like--your results are inspiring!

"Looks like you got a little cast in that pic on the stump." I did, yes (600g when I sorted it, and 1840g low-carbon iron). I found most of the cast down in the bottom when I tidied up. I've added it to the "once I make enough to decarb in an Evenstad hearth" pile.

First off, hello! This is my first post here--I've been lurking for months, reading the archives and enjoying how much knowledge everyone has shared. I appreciate what you've all built here. Last week I smelted iron for the first time. I'm a medieval technology historian, and my book-research specializes in early medieval English iron bladesmithing. I'm also a novice bladesmith, and I've always wanted to smelt my own iron, since I saw Darrell Markewitz give a demo at the Kalamazoo ICMS in 2013. I drove up to Mark Green's place in December, and he walked me through the process. I was excited to build my first stack and try for myself. And I made metal! Unfortunately, my tuyere melted part way though (I used a ceramic kiln shelf support, and it didn't make it). I think this is what caused most of the slag in my stack to freeze up. I still got 4lb of iron (as well as a bucket full of iron-heavy slag for resmelting later), so I'm pleased for a first attempt. I've got a copper pipe on the way for next time, and I'm hoping I can achieve a solid bloom on try #2 next weekend. So far, the iron is forging up well! Here are two blog posts with some more photos and a discussion of the equipment I used, if anyone's interested: 1) http://andrewwelton.com/smelting-iron-a-first-attempt/ 2) http://andrewwelton.com/forging-a-bloom-into-iron-bars/ Thank you to everyone here for sharing so much knowledge. You helped me avoid a lot of newbie mistakes