March 2012 smelt at bushfire forge.

[owen bush 108]

well about time too!

Mick Maxen Myself and Eli Sideris had a great smelt yesterday.

I think the best yet . certainly joint best.

we started with a hot furnace .

pre burn wood and acharcoal.

we ran the furnace well keeping the load intervals at 10 minute drops. (or at least the furnace ran well despite us)

we were aiming for iron with a 1.2 to 1 ore to fuel ratio.

there was a lot of slag.

we used 50 kg magnetite ore and 60 kg fuel including pre burn (so we got one to one fuel ore in the end).

the bloom ended up being a big flat concave centred dense bloom 11kg or so there was another 2 or 3 kg of good bits . I think we lost a lot of ore in the slag which was plentiful and dense .

run time was just over 4 hours...

here are some piccies.

 

150kg of charcoal before sizing

 

cooking the furnace

 

Eli modeling the ritual tatas! (got to keep the fire gods happy)

 

Our furnace is endowed.

 

Owen loading wood for the pre burn

 

first slag tap

 

tapping slag with the family looking on

 

dragging out the bloom

 

initial forging with the 28lb sledge (too big for the job realy)

 

squish that bloom

 

bloom to the shop

 

Alldays and Onions 200 weight eats bloom while Mick fire fights

 

flat bloom

 

thick dense pancake of a bloom

 

bloom with a master blacksmith for size reference

 

our notes jusf for my reference!

[peter johnsson 111]

Beautiful Owen. Just beautiful.

Great to see.

[Lee Sauder 7]

Looks rather delicious, nice one!

[Mike Blue 1]

A good job Owen.

[ZebDeming 4]

Awesome! Cool to see the kids looking on, not too many kids get an education like that.

 

Zeb

[Rogerrr 0]

Awesome! Cool to see the kids looking on, not too many kids get an education like that.

 

Zeb

 

I was thinking the same thing. it's like my musician friends...their son grew up with 2 musicians as parents in a house full of musical instruments with a recording studio in the basement...and now as a teenager he's already an excellent jazz musician

[Niko Hynninen 1]

Thats a nice looking organic bloom pancake

 

...next some slices..bars...twists...square up...some welding...Viking sword

Or...?

 

 

Niko

[Howard Clark 2]

Well Done Lads! Wish I could be there too.

[Troy Christianson 1]

Looks like a hearty time. Fire, iron, family and friends!

[Alan Longmire 458]

Looks like a great success!

 

Unlike the one Chris and I (well, Chris, I just sat there) tried to do at F&B this weekend... I now know our problem: The stack had no tatas.

[Mark Green 16]

Awesome!!!!

[Mick Maxen 3]

Here are a few photos of a section of the flattened bloom. The size is 6 x 5 x 1.25".

 

 

 

 

 

Mick.