First steps in a smelt.

[Jammer]

Maybe this is the year!!
I have collected ore and all the little things I would need to do an Iron smelt.
First, the Ore. This is some I've picked up over the last 3 or 4 years. Mostly from Western Tennessee. Some from a furnace area in Georgia. I only ended up with a small amount of ore from Georgia, a lot of it turned out to be red sand stone, just stained on the outside.



Today I was playing with a refractory recipe I found online, I changed it a bit. It worked OK, held up to the max heat I could get out of my propane burner at 10 psi propane. I had some of the ore in it and it melted to a slaggy stuff and some magnetic bits. No noticeable Iron, probably just an Iron Oxide. The crucible didn't crack and had started to glaze on the top. It was kind of weak and I broke it apart with my hands. I wonder what I could add to make it a little tougher. It's Fireclay with Magnesia and Phos added with a little diatomaceous earth.



Now I need to run a test to see if I can get an idea of the percent of Iron in the ore. Then build the furnace stack and do a smelt. I need to pick up some sand.

[dallen]

nothing like the smell of molten metal on a arm spring day, keep us posted on your progress, if it wasn't so damn far me and the monster would drop by and help.

DA

[mite5255]

Thats just so cool Jerry, I would love to smelt some iron plus smelt some copper, trying to find some ore around here is the main issue as I don't know what I'm looking for, more so with iron ore

[Jammer]

There used to be a copper mine about 100 miles from here. It was a pretty nasty place back in the early 1900"s. They were mining copper sulfate and iron pyrite. They smelted copper for a while then switched to sulfuric acid and they cintered the iron to remove the sulfur. So much acid rain that the whole area was barren for 50 miles around. After they stopped production the area slowly came back and now it's a beautiful forested National Forest. The land will heal itself. There is still a huge pile of cintered iron there and it's being hauled out and shipped to China to make steel. ?? Metallic ore from upper Michigan would be nice to melt, but I don't think I would mess with any local copper ore.

I tried to smelt a small sample of ore to try to determine iron content. My home made fireclay crucible held up great until white heat and then melted.

[Harry]

Melting metal any way you do it is always cool. Making metal from rocks is something else entirely, I think you are gonna need a carbide crucible there to safely do this with any kind of volume to the melt.

[Jammer]

There isn't a crucible for smelting iron. I was trying a small amount in a crucible to check for Iron content. They build a stack on the ground like a cupola but without a tap hole. Start a charcoal or coke fire in it and start adding ore and fuel, a tuyere for air. Just keep adding until you have put in about 60 pounds of ore. Open up the front at the bottom, hopefully slag will come out and there will be a bloom inside. Work it loose and birth it out the front. It's like an iron sponge with slag mixed through it. You have to hammer it out to compress the bloom and force the slag out before it gets cold. You can end up with Iron, steel and cast iron all in the same bloom. Hopefully you end up with a 12 to 18 pound bloom.

[Jammer]

Well, March and now it's September. I did get the ore out today and roasted it. Basically just cooking it in a bonfire. this will burn of some impurities like Sulfur and it will help with the smelt. Makes the rock break up a lot easier. I was surprised that some of the rock popped and cracked. They were dry and have been in the 100F + garage all summer. Going to try to start building the stack this week. I need a 55 gal drum to put over it so it doesn't get soaked by rain.
I think I'll go with the conventional 10 inch bore, I had thought to got to 8 inch to condense the heat and use less charcoal. but, since it's my first time, I'll go with the usual methods. I hate doing that because I don't think some of them get very good results. Maybe 8 to 10 pound blooms from 100 pounds of ore. That's with ore that's supposed to be 60% Iron. I would hope to be able to get a 30 pound bloom from 100# of 60% ore. Too much heat and you get nothing, too little heat and you get cast iron or nothing. I hope to get some usable steel to make a knife and a hawk. Then I probably won't do it again.

[Jammer]

A quick sketch of the furnace.

This was my test for Iron content. No result the clay pod didn't hold up and just melted.

[Rasper]

There used to be a copper mine about 100 miles from here. It was a pretty nasty place back in the early 1900"s. They were mining copper sulfate and iron pyrite. They smelted copper for a while then switched to sulfuric acid and they cintered the iron to remove the sulfur. So much acid rain that the whole area was barren for 50 miles around.

Are you talking about Ducktown, Tennessee? I was there back in 1972 and it was a barren wasteland. Bare red dirt mountains with absolutely nothing growing on them for as far as I could see.

Then I went over to the Joyce Kilmer National Forest. I think it's the only virgin stand of trees left east of the Mississippi River. It was full of poplar, hemlock, and basswood trees that took four of us hand in hand to encircle. There was no underbrush because there was no sunlight down under those monster trees. It gives you an idea as to what this continent was like before the white man cut down all of the trees. (The politicians and businessmen call planting mono-specie trees in rows reforestation—it takes a thousand years to grow a forest.)

Richard

[Jammer]

Yes, Ducktown. You should see it now, all green and lush with growth. Just down the road from there is the course they used for the Olympic Kayak games from the Atlanta Olympics. Beautiful area with Lakes and rivers. Rafting trips, hunting and fishing.
I saw some pictures of the time you were there. They had shut down a short time before that so it took 30 years or so to recover.

Mt wife wants to go to the virgin forest area but it looks like a long hike in. I don't know if we could make it.