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So as of late while gallivanting around the site, I stumbled upon the concept of "Aristotle's Furnace", so I got to thinking; I'm an amateur with some free time coming up due to fall break, I have an excess of clay that I processed, and I have a passion to make some good steel. So the thought occurred to me that rebar could perhaps be a cheap alternative that is readily available and can be cut into bits and melted down in the furnace. I am even thinking of making my own charcoal for this project. Does anyone have any other suggestions for cheap, readily available iron or steel sources? Also your thoughts on the process of purifying rebar into good steel would be greatly appreciated. I've read that the steel content varies greatly in rebar, so perhaps after a go or two through the furnace I could sort out the soft steel from the brittle steel much like Japanese smiths do. If there are any experienced folks that would be willing to weigh in on multi use clay bloomery/furnace designs that may prove to be more fruitful, then I'd highly appreciate it. Side note: it is preferable to keep the furnace reasonably sized and transportable.

Hey everyone! This is my first post, and I am making it as I ramp up towards my first smelt. I have been going over the posts here and have been able to get a lot of the details of my first smelt down, like ore type, flow rates, charcoal creation, furnace design, etc... What I haven't seen though is any talk about the internal pressure of the furnace and what effect it has on a bloom. I was thinking of modifying one of the Rockbridge furnaces to increase the internal pressure as a way of increasing the temperature. Has anyone tried doing this? If so, was it helpful? Hurtful? Aside from a different way to regulate temperature, I'm speculating that the rate of reactions inside the furnace would increase at a higher pressure, so I wanted to try it to get a better yield. Anyways, thanks for all the great info so far! -Bryan

Hi, everybody! I was never too active here, actually I guess I never posted anything on the forum, but I'm trying to change! =) This is a video I made sometime ago about a bloomery furnace I did on my workshop. I'm a complete newbie on this stuff, this was my fifth try on making a bloom, the first one that I got an actual bloom, after I decided to read some more material about it. Anything you can say about it will be very, very useful for a next try. I talked with some more experienced people on the web and they already told me to make improvements on the process, but other people, other minds and anything you can say about it will be great for me, so I can grow on this path. The main stuff I would like to ask is how to get a result with a lower carbon content. I tried to put as much ore as I could, with just a few charcoal between the charges, I tried to blow more air inside it, but even so it wasn't enough and I got a very high amount of carbon. It was useful for the project I had in mind, but for a next run, it would be nice to get a more "carbon free" result. Hope you like the video, thanks for watching!