I think you're losing a lot of power/heat by using such a short furnace. By simply having it be taller, but keeping the charging cycle similair, you'll cause a lot more air to get sucked into the furnace as the hot air shoots up the chimeny and causes suction. Makes the whole thing more efficient. There's a reason every smelter I've ever seen work well is fairly tall. usually chest high or a bit shorter. If the flames are sitting on the edge like that, it's not tall enough. This will also keep more of the heat in place to melt the iron. You may also want to explore near your iron sludge for iron bearing rocks to get easier ore. That bacteria is getting the iron from somewhere and importantly swims towards iron. Follow the sludge, you'll find iron.
The taller chimney makes more natural draw, but I think this is a (short) experiment for the free wheel (I can't imagine working it for an 8 or 10 hour smelt)
He's done much taller furnaces in the past I believe, although for some reason his best yields tend to come from these shorter ones. Even still though, plenty of room for improvement, and there's just so many variables are work here that without modern techniques it's gonna be hard to get much out of such poor iron sources.
Seeing this dude do the real mundane work over and over, fighting tooth and nail to get every scrap of raw iron, really makes me appreciate how hard my own ancestors worked so I could be a couch potato
I think I first visited this channel at least a decade or more ago. I remember watching him make the ground stone axe. The waddle and daub huts, planting the gardens, all of it. This does more for me than sports game ever has or will. Many many thanks.
Long time viewer as well. I was blown away with all the stuff he made with just his hands. I do wish he'd revisit clothes and farming. But I understand that smelting is a great challenge to beat.
That this guy routinely gets a usable ember from only 5 pulls on that hand drill is one of the most amazing feats in all of bushcraft IMHO. It never gets old & is always a highlight of every project video
as i was watching it this time i was thinking, would he not just easily get the world record for most friction fires in an hour, or fastest single light?
ikr - i always thought he would be better of with creating a double brick layer around the fire so less heat gets lost. idk if he got actual iron ore around his place, cs that would generate more iron too
Watching this whole process that was often done by a community, being done single handedly, and producing pills of iron is mad impressive. Creating a useful, functional tool from iron from scratch like this must have been mindblowing the first time humans pulled that off. Why the iron age came after other metals starts to make more sense.
I keep wanting to micromanage and minmax these builds. "No, use clay to seal the furnace. Now add a few more bricks to it. Can we prep some more charcoal first?"
@@xyzero1682I honestly just wish he had a better source of iron. It’s annoying to just watch him putting in so much work for so little I can’t imagine having to actually do all the work.
ngl, that triggered some memories from my boy scout days. My recollection was that rope splices did not go so easily. Although, those were usually with three strand ropes, not two strand. Everything's easier when it's well practiced, obviously. But I always found splices to be quite a trial.
He's run a _bunch_ of experimentation at this point on the furnace and I'm here for it. But I constantly reflect when I watch these videos how he went into the forest and created things that took humans millennia to figure out. He's applying skills any of us could do (eventually, after more or less the same work he has put in) that would have been mind-blowingly magical before someone thought them up.
He's a bit ambitious, though: jumping straight from the stone age to the iron age, completely skipping bronze. I know he doesn't have proper ores on his parcel, but he could "invent" trade and trade some of his pottery for copper and tin ores.
@@jaceksiuda Iron was used during the bronze age as well. Humans prefererred copper alloys like bronze because iron is a pain to smelt and work with given the technology of the time (as you can see on this channel).
@@jaceksiuda I think he wants the channel to be a "what if you had to recreate advanced tools alone in the woods" more than a "trying to recreate civilization" channel. Honestly though, iron is better in most cases than copper, unless he reaches electricity. The iron age came after the copper/bronze age mostly because iron is harder to find or work. Natural copper can be found just laying on the surface, or as a greenish ore in natural cave walls that can be broken off with sticks or rocks. Copper is also soft enough to cold forge it, so smelting wasn't originally needed. Iron oxide/rust is pretty common in any red dirt or clay, and has been used to make red pigment for as long as copper has been used, but it needs to be smelted. You also need to know iron metal is even a thing, since any iron exposed to air rusts away pretty quickly. Iron ore requires mining fairly deep, or you have to use rare iron rich black sands like in Japan, to get a good yield of metal. Modern knowledge lets us know you can use red dirt or his iron bacteria as a low-yield source, but that's only because we know iron metal and iron oxide exists. Without that knowledge, and without decent mining, forging, and making iron by experimentation and luck, copper was the only option for the world after the stone age.
Primitive technology without use of animal resources makes things extra challenging. Skins for bellows or leather cordage, sinews, hide glue. Ethics make the using them not an option, using substitutes makes it inauthentic which isn't in John's nature. Kudos man.
John can cook wheat to get an watersoluble glue, press nuts to get oil as waterproofer, plant fibers to replace the sinew to some degree. What‘s difficult to substitute is leather, a.e used for roofs, and membranes (drums, bellows)- roofs can be achieved by weaving plantfibers and then waterproof with oils, but the membrane thing is difficult to replace. Yea, he takes the longer way, but I wished he would invest in this parts of the primitive techs too. It probably would help with his main quest at some point, especially oils and glues are key, in such a warm, wet clima
John might try to weave a textile from fibers, then dunk into a rubbery or oily/waxy tree juice to achieve an membrane for an bellows. Should be possible.
Having put the requisite 10,000 hours in to master a couple different trades now, it is a joy for me to watch John work his craft. There is no hurry, just practiced motions-and few wasted ones. The quiet, with background birdsong, and camera focused on the hands, suggest a reenactment of our ancient ancestors’ everyday lives. I particularly enjoy the exploration of different ways to construct the blower and drive it in this series: I imagine a myriad of different systems were tried and refined in different parts of the world according to materials available in different environments-likely multiple times before writing systems and means of preserving said writing became widespread.
John hasn't put any points in that part of the skill tree. Hunting animals and killing animals is one thing. Making leather is a whole different story.
yeah is like my relaxing session from my office work. its just relaxing even that it similar project with some experiments the whole process is relaxing.
For those who somehow don’t know, turn on captions, he goes into detail about what he’s doing or … don’t. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
Hi from southern New Zealand 👋 cool of you to point that out. I like to watch John without subs on first and then rewatch with the explanation because it's so interesting 😂👍👋
There's something hypnotic about how he turns that floating pulley. Maybe something about the unbroken concentration on a single task. I could just watch it for hours on end.
A foot treadle to turn the wheel is something I can't wait to see. With wood and wicker it should be easy to make a chair and pump the fan around in comfort. The next smelt with a taller chimney and narrower exhaust might increase the pressure and keep more heat in too. Every iterating of this is exciting to see as it gradually builds to smithing. Once you finish smelting and smith a proper tool, you will have to update the channel name to Iron Age Technology. 😄
@@TheHothead101I was watching this thinking…. If I was a prehistoric human and one of my village elders knew how to do this, I probably WOULD believe he was some kind of shaman/druide/magi with gifts of power from gods or something 😂
I tried doing that irl while camping last month but it ended up being remarkably hard to find a long straight dry stick, and even harder to make a point or the notch on the firestick even with a modern folding knife
@@griz561 Try a larger stick or log that's been split, or even a thick piece of bark, to get a flat surface to make a fireboard. That way you don't have to try balancing on a round surface, you don't have to sharpen the drillstick to a point, and if you need a notch guide you can sit a small rock on it and hammer it to make a depression. You also don't have to make the two parts from the same wood. A harder drillstick with the softest available fireboard works best, and makes the drillstick more durable and last longer if you want to reuse it. For the type of wood, don't use anything with a lot of resin like pine, because the resin prevents ignition. The softer the wood, the easier it is to make an ember since the wood dust made from friction is the main source of generating heat and embers. As a general rule, the faster growing trees like birch or cedar tend to be the softest, while slow, long-living trees like oak or maple are the hardest. A quick search of types of trees in your area would show the best ones. You might also want to try to make a bowdrill, the version with a bow to spin the stick and a cap/bowl like a concave rock to push it down. Good string is easy if you don't have to make it yourself, and a bowdrill is MUCH easier to use. You can also use a shorter drillstick if you use a bow. I saw a comment by the channel creator once that said he considered upgrading to a bowdrill, but by the time he could make decent string, he was so skilled at the firedrill version that it was faster and easier for him to do that, instead of replacing the low-quality string often. When you have to make every part from scratch, more parts is always more trouble.
@@ParsnipCelery I sometimes watch the videos twice. Once without CC so I can try and suss out what he is doing, and then once with CC to find out what he did.
I think it is important to remember that this whole iron smelting series only started because he found some bacteria one day looking for clay (if I am remembering his videos from years ago correctly) He isn't trying to recreate all of civilization, just what he can with what is found on his property If he hadn't found the bacteria he would doing another cool activity This is his relaxing weekend/downtime activity, we should all be greatful he is sharing it with us *gets off soapbox and rewatches the video while drinking my coffee*
Exactly. If you read his book, which is excellent by the way, he goes into great detail about a number of projects and barely mentions smelting at all in them. Plus, I’m guessing he’s made quite a profit from this channel and his book sales so this would be his passion project now.
I am a huge fan of showing these steps that might be in a different videos of yours. Even if it would be repeated every time, it helps to understand what goes with what and how to get there. Stuff like showing the friction fire, building the forge out of bricks, setting up the stakes for the blower. It is really important, because if someone new would find this exact video, for example, the viewer could have a problem with finding out why things work like that. Thanks for keeping these moments in the vid!
Love this new blower concept, and the rope pulley in place of the clay one! I'm guessing that the floating handcrank is better than the fixed one because you can control the tension better, accounting for all the dimensional roughness by feel. In that case, you could use a hybrid approach: a handcrank on a fixed axis, but without staking its frame into the ground. Instead, balancing it as a mono/bipod, so that it can support its weight but will still freely move closer or further away from the blower for a constant tension.
I've never seen a fire get that hot from a pulley system. That is just amazing. Its ALMOST blue its so hot. Seeing purple fire seeping through the cracks in the bricks was soo cool. I can only imagine how tough his hands are. Those are some serious callouses.
@@rq0733 It may also be the burning of Carbon monoxide, this was more common near the starts of smelts where he used a lot of charcoal and the stick blower (less oxygen in the furnace -> incomplete combustion, CO generated -> Hot CO burning when it reached atmospheric oxygen)
@@huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhn The "How to Make Everything"(@htme) channel has made a few versions of ancient versions of the lathe at this point if you want to see it in action. They're more a learning channel than a crafting channel like this one, and use modern conveniences to get materials/have multiple people, but they've been recreating tech using only what they make themselves to go from Stone Age tech to Industrial Age tech. They're around the pre-industrial age right now, so it's a great binge channel to see the whole journey.
@@dimitar4y I was thinking the exact same thing. When he was making the pulleys out of clay I thought "it might be better and easier to just whittle a couple of those out of wood", then I pondered how I'd go about trying to make a nice round pulley and recognized you'd need to make a lathe. BUT, you'd probably have to make a real shitty lathe *first* out of poor materials, then use your shitty lathe to make superior parts for a later, better lathe lol.
Great video. This is a good lesson to keep spare parts on hand, like ropes, loops, posts and even blower housings. It stinks to break something in the middle of a successful job.
12:29 that he includes his failures always adds to the authenticity of his hobby, and it's very much how it was back then; you just tested any kind of idea and saw what worked best
I also thought that the pulley could be easily made from a few offcut leather strips, I think that might provide less friction and wear than string on string action
@@fivethree0 The latter would be kind of lame, but tanning leather with tree bark from an acidic tree would be intersting. Unfortunately it takes about a year, even with oak bark.
It's interesting to see your test furnaces get smaller and your clay work get neater as you progress. Also, it was cool to see how splicing cordage works!
Somehow this is the one of the most impressive of your videos. Just the way all these individual skills you've mastered come together to build what is essentially a primitive machine is fascinating to me.
I hate making suggestions on RUclips because I know that I am nowhere near qualified to question what you are doing.... But, I might suggest soring the surface of the clay and using clay slip between layers to create a better and stronger bond. It is something I learned in college while taking a pottery class. I hope it helps. I am also curious if that is a blister or a callous in your palm from starting fires with a stick. You are a badass and I love your content, thanks for putting in all the work for the superior content that you provide for free.
I just keep wondering why he doesn't fire his clay tools like he does with bricks and tiles. They'd be more durable that way, but I guess making a kiln is too much trouble unless he's also making a lot of bricks and tiles.
@@ethanhodges4283The time and labor it would cost to fire the blower housing and lid is too high. Think: hours upon hours to make enough charcoal for the firing, hours to make the furnace big enough to fire the pieces, and many more hours to fire and let the pieces cool down. It doesn’t need to be waterproof, and it doesn’t need to be particularly durable, it’s already an awkward and fragile piece. In this strange prehistoric world “good enough” is great.
Я преклоняюсь перед Вашими знаниями и умениями! Спасибо Вам, за то, что щедро всем этим делитесь с нами. 👏👍 Привет Вам из далёкой России, из Санкт-Петербурга! 👋🤝
Ну вот, снова крупицы железа достались огромным трудом. Уже видно на сколько умело автор строит воздуходувку из глины, конструкция весьма удачная. Как теперь это железное сырье превратить в изделие? Я готов ждать ещё 10 лет, долгих лет автору.
It's a work in progress. He had already concluded some matter about ore quality through manufacturing differences between cultures. There's many variables going into this.
Thats his ultimate goal Once he figures out metallurgy, he's gonna figure out how to make a time machine out of clay, tree branches, and bog iron, and go reset the timeline to get Humanity off the bad timeline and get us back on track to being an interplanetary species.
Like the Mark Twain book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," where the main character starts bringing the medieval age into the industrial era based on his knowledge of engineering.
Twine and cord and rope and cable ( all different things, and fascinating how different they are ) are such OP technologies. I have been making rope and cable from New Zealand flax, and it is astonishingly strong, ridiculously strong. Once I got the hang of it, I have made 5 mm cable that I can't break with my full weight, 85 kgs. It has about 40 strands of the fibers in it at that thickness, and cabling it makes it just strong to the point that it rivals a nylon rope I think. I have been making short lengths and testing it to destruction, the only advantage I think that modern fibers clearly have, is "shock" it doesn't like a really fast pull. I want to make a long piece of cable, and use it as a lead on my dog, to see how long it lasts in daily use.
I got bored recently and made a length of twine with my hair. I haven't cut it in almost 15 years, so it's about two foot long, and I could have made a mile of twine at this point just with what I pull off my brush. I kind of wonder if human hair twine might have been the original cordage. With just one twisted braid a millimeter thick, it takes 20-40lbs of force to break, and it handles fast pulling well. It isn't as easy or fast to gather as plant fiber, but it does seem stronger since the strands are naturally really long. It's somewhat equivalent to horse hair as a fiber. It's also neat that hair seems to reach a set length and then stay around that length. It reached a bit below the middle of my back a long time ago, and hasn't gotten longer despite not cutting it, but I've seen some women with hair almost to their ankles. Making a lot cordage with 4-5ft hair would be really efficient+easy to do while watching children in a hunter gatherer society. The natural tendency of long hair to tangle and dread is like a natural source of rope. From that, making passable twine would be easy to figure out, so cordage made from hair might have been one of the first tools of mankind. Sheep's wool or plant fiber is likely a higher-yield source for a society, but one or two women could probably make more than enough rope for a small tribe.
so coooool. These last two video really make me feel like all the pottery/ basket weaving classes and rope making projects have actual use lol not just for "art" although this is its own kind of art.
This is such a leap from previous videos. Not just recreating historical techniques, in the order they were likely discovered, but using modern know how and methods mashed up with primitive materials. Pulleys and key ways, spliced fibre rope and involute centrifugal fans! Wow!
Very impressive! I especially like the amount of air your getting, you can hear it roar. If I can make a suggestion, look up "iron age bloomery furnace" on the internet and look at one. They were made to look like an amphora or vase. All the combustion took place in the belly of the furnace, and the smaller top kept a lot of the heat from escaping. It also concentrated the unburned gases in the furnace, letting them add to your fuel.
He mentioned that he’s going for the higher carbon iron prills that are smelted later rather than a lower carbon iron mass. Did you watch with closed captions?
Which is why I recommended a bloomery furnace design. It increases carbon absorption by the iron. By taking the bloom out of the furnace still hot and gently working it, slag and other impurities are removed and instead of small prills, a more homogenous lump of metal, high-carbon steel, is formed. Smelting high-carbon steel prills will actually causes them to loose carbon if its not done in an oxygen-low environment. Low carbon smelting isn't a bad thing though, it creates wrought iron, which is a wonderful iron to work with and is fairly resistant to the elements because it forms a resistant layer due to its low-carbon content and chemical make-up due to impurities.
Considering the hunting laws in place, I have been wondering if you've looked into making leather from fish skins. The process is essentially the same as traditional hide tanning! You've already demonstrated the making of fish traps, and the eels shown in previous videos look to be suitable.
The eels aren't really *renewable* though. He'd need to make sure he's got plenty before offing any native eels, lest he be left with none when he needs more eel products in the future. I have no idea how he'd go about cultivating more eels, either, as they'd need more fish to eat and at that point he'd need to be running both an eel fishery and a feeder fishery, and something to feed the feeder fishery... Or just keep checking the nooks in the creek for dead eels to collect and hope they handle the repopulation on their own..?
You should probably try to make the inlet hole of the fan quite a bit bigger. A hole with such a sharp edge will be effectively smaller for the entering air, since there will be strong turbulence at the edge. I'd do it ~twice as big.
The technique you show for splicing lengths of cordage together is new to me. Thank you very much for sharing. I always learn new stuff from your videos. 🙏❤️
have you considered using pitch or an adhesive/binder of some kind to provide more durability to rope and woven constructions? also even extending the height of the furnace slightly and minimizing the cracks can greatly increase yield as it can give more opportunities for chemical reactions to take place. I also wonder if reusing the slag from previous melts can help increase access to ore as certainly more than 15/1200g on average has to be iron. I would wager that the slag has a considerable amount of iron left in it.
The problem hasn't been anything to do with the belt. The problem is the clay pulleys keep cracking at the thin wall with so much use, so it makes it harder for the belt to stay in place. He's had to make so many pulleys more than he's had to make rope. That is all.
The hand held version might feel smoother RN but it's probably worth troubleshooting the axle version if you ever want to get your hands free by introducing a foot pedal mechanism with a flywheel to be able to do something else on the side. Always love the chill vibe and simple format of the videos with no talking and calm doing. Cheers
"I have been following you for a long time, since I was 8 years old. Now, I am almost 15. I sincerely hope that you will continue to produce new videos."
John are you searching for the best method to yield a lot of iron before (as we often joke about) going through the "iron-age"? Your videos are awesome, I have the bell notification on and never missed an upload! Keep up the awesome work!
I work in senior program management at a large IT company. We learn all these fancy buzzword philosophies like SCRUM, Agile, and other iterative processes and they all fall apart in real life. But this channel shows us the real embodiment of iterative technology processes. This channel should be mandatory training for all program managers regardless of the industry they work in.
Multiple failures of the crank system would plague a pedal powered mechanism. You need to have it resting on an axis for that, and he's already not had a lot of fun with it. He opted to the floating version so that he can put the tension and mechanics under his control, and it worked a lot better that way.
I was thinking something similar. We've seen many vids making pellets. Now, I think it's time we see some vids making something useful out of them. (Really, I just want more FIRE!! 😂)
@@Phil_KaneONite_Wood He made a simple blade a long time ago(I think that's what he used to cut the chord in this video), but since then I think he just tries to find more efficient ways to make iron metal so he can have a lot when he gets back to forging. That's why he listed the yield amounts he's achieved so far, because the current goal is to get high yields for less work.
Yeah, as@@johnfisk811 says you can't have bronze without the two metals bronze is made from! As it happens, copper and tin aren't usually found in the same geographical regions. Bronze production happened because of different nations trading with each other. So, unless he has either copper or tin on site, and unless he's going to trade with another primitive technology youtuber to get the other one, bronze isn't going to happen :)
The small intake holes are cutting into the blower's efficiency. It's the same volume of air entering and exiting, but that air is meant to move faster at the output and slower at the input, and to get the same amount of air in at a slower speed you need a larger hole.
HMMM, so maybe make your blower and tuyere output in something like a wide, flat oval shape instead of a circular one? That way your blower can be way deeper without requiring a larger spoke inside. I'm also pretty surprised that he's never tried attaching a flywheel of some sort to the spoke. It'd probably help keep the blower spinning at a more regular speed, and might make it easier to operate. Of course I'm saying this like constructing this whole thing didn't already take him about 15 steps lol.
i think that despite going in with "single handfuls" and "double handfuls" on his measurements in his captions its cool that behind the scenes he actually kept track of precise measurements in grams for comparisons between his smelts. i believe this is the first time he showed this data in the captions and it was a pleasant surprise!
I think anyone looking at this as a "moving through the tech tree of humanity" series is kinda looking at it the wrong way. It's just working from scratch to figure out how to do things. While we like to organize historical civilizations into ages like stone, bronze, iron ect, it was never as clear cut as that. Bronze age civilizations (hell, "stone age" civilizations) knew about iron and had access to it, they just hadn't developed methods to use it effectively at scale for anything practical. Real life wasn't a tech tree. A million things were in progress at once. Small groups of people found solutions that wouldn't be adopted at a civilization level for much longer. And different civilizations were figuring this stuff out at different times. In short, I don't know why anyone would view the iron experiments as "getting stuck". The goal isn't to reach the industrial age from scratch or anything, it's to experiment and figure stuff out, and he's learned a lot. He could read dozens of books and research papers on the topic of iron smelting and figure out an "optimal" solution, but where's the fun in that? It's much more interesting to see how someone figures something out when they have severe limitations put on them, like not having access to any modern tools on-site.
You should apply your working knowledge of rotary motion to wood turning. Put smelting on hold. Make a lath and use it to turn wooden components(shaft, pulleys, etc.). Then you can make more effective blowers and mechanisms with your upgraded components.
Since you started your experiments on smelting iron, I can't wait to see you acheiving consistent results, getting forgeable bars and reaching the next step of technological evolution. Achieving the equivalent of the iron age will surely make amazing videos (if it is one of your objectives of course).
I think you're losing a lot of power/heat by using such a short furnace. By simply having it be taller, but keeping the charging cycle similair, you'll cause a lot more air to get sucked into the furnace as the hot air shoots up the chimeny and causes suction. Makes the whole thing more efficient. There's a reason every smelter I've ever seen work well is fairly tall. usually chest high or a bit shorter. If the flames are sitting on the edge like that, it's not tall enough. This will also keep more of the heat in place to melt the iron.
You may also want to explore near your iron sludge for iron bearing rocks to get easier ore. That bacteria is getting the iron from somewhere and importantly swims towards iron. Follow the sludge, you'll find iron.
Lol, 10s ago
The taller chimney makes more natural draw, but I think this is a (short) experiment for the free wheel (I can't imagine working it for an 8 or 10 hour smelt)
He's done much taller furnaces in the past I believe, although for some reason his best yields tend to come from these shorter ones. Even still though, plenty of room for improvement, and there's just so many variables are work here that without modern techniques it's gonna be hard to get much out of such poor iron sources.
"Follow the sludge, you'll find iron."
I live my life by this motto.
Thought "Creator Of The Torment Nexus" Emporium???
Seeing this dude do the real mundane work over and over, fighting tooth and nail to get every scrap of raw iron, really makes me appreciate how hard my own ancestors worked so I could be a couch potato
And now he's casually inserting his long term analysis across the various smelts and furnace builds.
Shows the importance of easy acces to high grade ore and what it could have done to a tribe.
i know which nail youre talking about
YEA... RIGHT? :D Crazy to think about..
Smash that like🎉🎉🎉
John leaves instructions like “prop up the spout with clay so it won’t slump” as though we’re all out doing this at our own huts in the jungle
You aren’t?
I left my jungle and opened RUclips just to like this comment.
I built my own smartrock™, telecommunications service and sms operator just so i can come here to watch this.
Pfft. I wish...
it's instructions for the future obvi
One of the best RUclips channels ever. No clickbait, no sponsors, no nonsense.
Honest and educational.
Cheers, Mr. Plant! 🍻
I think I first visited this channel at least a decade or more ago. I remember watching him make the ground stone axe. The waddle and daub huts, planting the gardens, all of it.
This does more for me than sports game ever has or will. Many many thanks.
Imagine a crowd of 50k people in a pro sports stadium going nuts when the tinder starts to smoke.
Remember when he made the sling? That was Olympic level sports right there.
Long time viewer as well. I was blown away with all the stuff he made with just his hands.
I do wish he'd revisit clothes and farming. But I understand that smelting is a great challenge to beat.
Dude has 10 mil subs, never seen him talk 1 time and never seen a Ad, this is pure devotion to his art and yes this is a ART!
1 trillion 180 million views, too.
right? someone worse would have an overlay of themselves in the corner yakking away the whole time.
I literally just got two unskippable adds in a row.
@gerardwalker2159
I wasn't paying attention. Can't tell ya.
@gerardwalker2159 It's inevitable since you're not paying RUclips premium.
What they meant was in-video ad like sponsorship and whatnot.
That this guy routinely gets a usable ember from only 5 pulls on that hand drill is one of the most amazing feats in all of bushcraft IMHO. It never gets old & is always a highlight of every project video
Look at his palms, they're well adapted to fire makin by friction
Knowing the type of wood and what combinations work well… I like maple and willow for mine and have it in abundance around my house
It is seriously impressive. It's like video game level speed lol, man is holding E to start fire
as i was watching it this time i was thinking, would he not just easily get the world record for most friction fires in an hour, or fastest single light?
30 seconds with the drill, less than 90 to visible flame. The man is practiced.
16:13 despite the inefficiency, seeing little purple flames leak out the cracks is beautiful
It looks like a magical glowing liquid dripping upwards
ikr - i always thought he would be better of with creating a double brick layer around the fire so less heat gets lost.
idk if he got actual iron ore around his place, cs that would generate more iron too
could the lack of yield just be the ore?
@@Aerational Totally. Nobody use that slime "ore" for a reason. But he is probably doesnt have a nice magnetite deposite on surface nearby, so...
@@AerationalI just meant it’s probably not optimal for flames to be going somewhere besides up the chimney lol
John is an amazing scientist and content producer, and I know 11 million people agree.
Watching this whole process that was often done by a community, being done single handedly, and producing pills of iron is mad impressive. Creating a useful, functional tool from iron from scratch like this must have been mindblowing the first time humans pulled that off. Why the iron age came after other metals starts to make more sense.
the way the fire leaks out of the side of the furnace is incredible
actually i think it might reduce productivity
@@legospin4004Yeah I was surprised he didn’t seal them up with mud but maybe it would just come off right away
I keep wanting to micromanage and minmax these builds. "No, use clay to seal the furnace. Now add a few more bricks to it. Can we prep some more charcoal first?"
@@A_youtube_channel_ he can't see it, the camera picks up a bit of infrared light
@@xyzero1682I honestly just wish he had a better source of iron. It’s annoying to just watch him putting in so much work for so little I can’t imagine having to actually do all the work.
The rope splice was really cool and unexpected! Nice work
Seconded. Nice to see that. So quick and easy. I've always been a bit intimidated about splicing laid rope, but no more!
ngl, that triggered some memories from my boy scout days. My recollection was that rope splices did not go so easily. Although, those were usually with three strand ropes, not two strand. Everything's easier when it's well practiced, obviously. But I always found splices to be quite a trial.
The metal working stuff is great, too, but i think there's also a lot of cool stuff that could be explored in basket weaving / rope making / fabrics.
I was expecting a primitive marlin spike 😂
And no splicing tools no less!🤌
Impressive!
He's run a _bunch_ of experimentation at this point on the furnace and I'm here for it. But I constantly reflect when I watch these videos how he went into the forest and created things that took humans millennia to figure out. He's applying skills any of us could do (eventually, after more or less the same work he has put in) that would have been mind-blowingly magical before someone thought them up.
He's a bit ambitious, though: jumping straight from the stone age to the iron age, completely skipping bronze.
I know he doesn't have proper ores on his parcel, but he could "invent" trade and trade some of his pottery for copper and tin ores.
he's the best boy scout, for sure! i have tried his videos for myself. i don't have the space or the resources, but i have a fire pit.
@@jaceksiuda Iron was used during the bronze age as well. Humans prefererred copper alloys like bronze because iron is a pain to smelt and work with given the technology of the time (as you can see on this channel).
@@jaceksiuda bronze age blower is needed for iron age smelts i guess life really is a video game
@@jaceksiuda I think he wants the channel to be a "what if you had to recreate advanced tools alone in the woods" more than a "trying to recreate civilization" channel. Honestly though, iron is better in most cases than copper, unless he reaches electricity.
The iron age came after the copper/bronze age mostly because iron is harder to find or work. Natural copper can be found just laying on the surface, or as a greenish ore in natural cave walls that can be broken off with sticks or rocks. Copper is also soft enough to cold forge it, so smelting wasn't originally needed.
Iron oxide/rust is pretty common in any red dirt or clay, and has been used to make red pigment for as long as copper has been used, but it needs to be smelted. You also need to know iron metal is even a thing, since any iron exposed to air rusts away pretty quickly. Iron ore requires mining fairly deep, or you have to use rare iron rich black sands like in Japan, to get a good yield of metal. Modern knowledge lets us know you can use red dirt or his iron bacteria as a low-yield source, but that's only because we know iron metal and iron oxide exists. Without that knowledge, and without decent mining, forging, and making iron by experimentation and luck, copper was the only option for the world after the stone age.
The past few videos have been a real treat. Seeing him experiment and try new methods has me excited for what that furnace can do!
Primitive technology without use of animal resources makes things extra challenging. Skins for bellows or leather cordage, sinews, hide glue. Ethics make the using them not an option, using substitutes makes it inauthentic which isn't in John's nature. Kudos man.
John can cook wheat to get an watersoluble glue, press nuts to get oil as waterproofer, plant fibers to replace the sinew to some degree. What‘s difficult to substitute is leather, a.e used for roofs, and membranes (drums, bellows)- roofs can be achieved by weaving plantfibers and then waterproof with oils, but the membrane thing is difficult to replace. Yea, he takes the longer way, but I wished he would invest in this parts of the primitive techs too. It probably would help with his main quest at some point, especially oils and glues are key, in such a warm, wet clima
John might try to weave a textile from fibers, then dunk into a rubbery or oily/waxy tree juice to achieve an membrane for an bellows. Should be possible.
Having put the requisite 10,000 hours in to master a couple different trades now, it is a joy for me to watch John work his craft. There is no hurry, just practiced motions-and few wasted ones. The quiet, with background birdsong, and camera focused on the hands, suggest a reenactment of our ancient ancestors’ everyday lives. I particularly enjoy the exploration of different ways to construct the blower and drive it in this series: I imagine a myriad of different systems were tried and refined in different parts of the world according to materials available in different environments-likely multiple times before writing systems and means of preserving said writing became widespread.
John hasn't put any points in that part of the skill tree. Hunting animals and killing animals is one thing. Making leather is a whole different story.
Never thought of it that way. Using John's methods, even a stranded vegan could leave the stone age... eventually.
This guy doesn't get old. I have been watching this for years. Awesome content.
Seriously he doesn't age at all. Kinda spooky.
he didn't get vaccinated and rain forests repel some portion of 5g.
@@delphicdescant healthy exercise?
yeah is like my relaxing session from my office work. its just relaxing even that it similar project with some experiments the whole process is relaxing.
12:52 Spider inside the blower: "Bit windy in here!"
I didn't even notice
New fear unlocked: Spider Blower
It fucken WIMDY
"It heckin wimdy"
I was wondering about it for like 5 minutes in the video lmao, shouldn't she get sucked in ?
For those who somehow don’t know, turn on captions, he goes into detail about what he’s doing or … don’t. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life.
Hi from southern New Zealand 👋 cool of you to point that out. I like to watch John without subs on first and then rewatch with the explanation because it's so interesting 😂👍👋
@JosiahroLsari Now I'm gonna do that too, what a great way to both experience and learn it, AND give double the watch time!
These videos are fake
Are you f5ckin kidding me? Ive been watching his videos for over ten years and i didn’t know this…. Fml
THANK YOU. Did not know that the captions had anything.
There's something hypnotic about how he turns that floating pulley. Maybe something about the unbroken concentration on a single task. I could just watch it for hours on end.
A foot treadle to turn the wheel is something I can't wait to see. With wood and wicker it should be easy to make a chair and pump the fan around in comfort. The next smelt with a taller chimney and narrower exhaust might increase the pressure and keep more heat in too. Every iterating of this is exciting to see as it gradually builds to smithing.
Once you finish smelting and smith a proper tool, you will have to update the channel name to Iron Age Technology. 😄
He could make 10 straight videos of different blower setups and get million+ views on all of them. Amazing.
Yes. But I know the connection is a tuyere. 😂
He has though haha. This is like the 10th or 15th video I've seen him trying different blowers
I love how he always leaves the entire fire starting process in, every time. ❤
It's a great way to get new viewers learning how the basics are done.
Kind of a flex too, considering he can go from nothing to licking flame in like a minute or 2
@@TheHothead101I was watching this thinking…. If I was a prehistoric human and one of my village elders knew how to do this, I probably WOULD believe he was some kind of shaman/druide/magi with gifts of power from gods or something 😂
tis peak youtubema
"Fire by friction"
Bro, this edging you're doing with the iron age is killing me.
In his defense he's probably preoccupied with barbarians to focus on science production
@@firstnamelastname1837 gotta keep pollution low as to not attract the biters!
Iron Edging?
Dude, just imagine how the edge is going to be once he's got enough iron.
@@firstnamelastname1837 that or he's going for a great prophet first
That’s got to be the finest piece of claywork I’ve seen done on this channel so far, great stuff!
Original and probably only genuine primitive tech channel.
I never skip or fast-forward when you start a fire, no matter how many times I've seen it, in an acknowledgement of past efforts of mankind.
I expect at least 1 fire to be started with friction in every video. I never tire of it either.
They're usually done in less than ninety seconds, its a small price to pay
I have learned so much from this channel, i am the fire keeper in my family. and i teach anyone willing to listen. listening is the key
I tried doing that irl while camping last month but it ended up being remarkably hard to find a long straight dry stick, and even harder to make a point or the notch on the firestick even with a modern folding knife
@@griz561 Try a larger stick or log that's been split, or even a thick piece of bark, to get a flat surface to make a fireboard. That way you don't have to try balancing on a round surface, you don't have to sharpen the drillstick to a point, and if you need a notch guide you can sit a small rock on it and hammer it to make a depression. You also don't have to make the two parts from the same wood. A harder drillstick with the softest available fireboard works best, and makes the drillstick more durable and last longer if you want to reuse it.
For the type of wood, don't use anything with a lot of resin like pine, because the resin prevents ignition. The softer the wood, the easier it is to make an ember since the wood dust made from friction is the main source of generating heat and embers. As a general rule, the faster growing trees like birch or cedar tend to be the softest, while slow, long-living trees like oak or maple are the hardest. A quick search of types of trees in your area would show the best ones.
You might also want to try to make a bowdrill, the version with a bow to spin the stick and a cap/bowl like a concave rock to push it down. Good string is easy if you don't have to make it yourself, and a bowdrill is MUCH easier to use. You can also use a shorter drillstick if you use a bow.
I saw a comment by the channel creator once that said he considered upgrading to a bowdrill, but by the time he could make decent string, he was so skilled at the firedrill version that it was faster and easier for him to do that, instead of replacing the low-quality string often. When you have to make every part from scratch, more parts is always more trouble.
The zoom on the banana stalk at 7:00 has to be one the most comical things I´ve seen on this channel so far. And I love it.
A few videos ago: "A squirrel eating nuts, as is their custom."
One of the only channels I’ll ALWAYS hit the notifications for immediately, EVERY time. ❤️
One of the only channels I turn on closed captions for.
@@ParsnipCeleryI'm deaf, even I know that's funny. 😅
@@ParsnipCelery I sometimes watch the videos twice. Once without CC so I can try and suss out what he is doing, and then once with CC to find out what he did.
Showing the mistakes and workarounds captures the ingenuity and tells a story. Love these videos!
Dude every time I watch your videos. It makes me respect our ancestors who had to figure out this stuff for them selfs. Massive respect to them!
Might be the greatest channel on youtube
I think it is important to remember that this whole iron smelting series only started because he found some bacteria one day looking for clay (if I am remembering his videos from years ago correctly)
He isn't trying to recreate all of civilization, just what he can with what is found on his property
If he hadn't found the bacteria he would doing another cool activity
This is his relaxing weekend/downtime activity, we should all be greatful he is sharing it with us
*gets off soapbox and rewatches the video while drinking my coffee*
Exactly. If you read his book, which is excellent by the way, he goes into great detail about a number of projects and barely mentions smelting at all in them. Plus, I’m guessing he’s made quite a profit from this channel and his book sales so this would be his passion project now.
Exercise... nice way to trick the brain into work.
If he isn't going to the moon by the end of the series I will be so mad
I am a huge fan of showing these steps that might be in a different videos of yours. Even if it would be repeated every time, it helps to understand what goes with what and how to get there. Stuff like showing the friction fire, building the forge out of bricks, setting up the stakes for the blower. It is really important, because if someone new would find this exact video, for example, the viewer could have a problem with finding out why things work like that. Thanks for keeping these moments in the vid!
Love this new blower concept, and the rope pulley in place of the clay one!
I'm guessing that the floating handcrank is better than the fixed one because you can control the tension better, accounting for all the dimensional roughness by feel. In that case, you could use a hybrid approach: a handcrank on a fixed axis, but without staking its frame into the ground. Instead, balancing it as a mono/bipod, so that it can support its weight but will still freely move closer or further away from the blower for a constant tension.
I was watching this channel for years and only just now realized there are captions in which he explains every step...
I've never seen a fire get that hot from a pulley system. That is just amazing. Its ALMOST blue its so hot. Seeing purple fire seeping through the cracks in the bricks was soo cool. I can only imagine how tough his hands are. Those are some serious callouses.
The fire doesn't get hotter than white. Purple flame color is infrared light getting too strong for IR filter in camera to filter it out completely.
@@rq0733 I think it does. It goes a kind of pale purple before it completely goes out of the visible range of the spectrum.
@@rq0733 It may also be the burning of Carbon monoxide, this was more common near the starts of smelts where he used a lot of charcoal and the stick blower (less oxygen in the furnace -> incomplete combustion, CO generated -> Hot CO burning when it reached atmospheric oxygen)
Having built and wood-fired all-clay pottery kilns, purple flame is what you see late in a firing when the back end of the firebox gets over 2000 F.
Using a wood lathe built from a tree branch and string, you could grind wood into pulley-shapes and those might work quite well.
omg a wood lathe, why hasn't he done that yet.
I always wondered how that might look because long before we had professional lathes people already used similar techniques to make round objects
@@huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhn The "How to Make Everything"(@htme) channel has made a few versions of ancient versions of the lathe at this point if you want to see it in action. They're more a learning channel than a crafting channel like this one, and use modern conveniences to get materials/have multiple people, but they've been recreating tech using only what they make themselves to go from Stone Age tech to Industrial Age tech. They're around the pre-industrial age right now, so it's a great binge channel to see the whole journey.
The Clickspring channel has done just that for his antikiythera project. Hand powered mini lathe seems possible.
@@dimitar4y I was thinking the exact same thing. When he was making the pulleys out of clay I thought "it might be better and easier to just whittle a couple of those out of wood", then I pondered how I'd go about trying to make a nice round pulley and recognized you'd need to make a lathe.
BUT, you'd probably have to make a real shitty lathe *first* out of poor materials, then use your shitty lathe to make superior parts for a later, better lathe lol.
Great video. This is a good lesson to keep spare parts on hand, like ropes, loops, posts and even blower housings. It stinks to break something in the middle of a successful job.
Did you notice he had 3 or so spare ropes? they were at the base of the outer blower support stick.
12:29 that he includes his failures always adds to the authenticity of his hobby, and it's very much how it was back then; you just tested any kind of idea and saw what worked best
The ability to make leather seems like a must for this process. Efficient bellows are easy to make.... if you have leather.
Not allowed to just kill animals willy nilly I think. But maybe he could buy some raw hide. 😀Or just go for Chinese bellows
I also thought that the pulley could be easily made from a few offcut leather strips, I think that might provide less friction and wear than string on string action
@@fivethree0 I just learned from another comment that apparently fish or eel leather is a thing that exists, so he could do that.
@@fivethree0 The latter would be kind of lame, but tanning leather with tree bark from an acidic tree would be intersting. Unfortunately it takes about a year, even with oak bark.
@@andersjjensen tannin tanning is also wicked toxic, so he'd need to be really careful...
It's interesting to see your test furnaces get smaller and your clay work get neater as you progress. Also, it was cool to see how splicing cordage works!
Thanks!
Thankyou!
We may have lost the outdoor boys, but at least we still have the OG outdoor boy.
Somehow this is the one of the most impressive of your videos. Just the way all these individual skills you've mastered come together to build what is essentially a primitive machine is fascinating to me.
Bro made a new advancement in his tech tree
I hate making suggestions on RUclips because I know that I am nowhere near qualified to question what you are doing.... But, I might suggest soring the surface of the clay and using clay slip between layers to create a better and stronger bond. It is something I learned in college while taking a pottery class. I hope it helps. I am also curious if that is a blister or a callous in your palm from starting fires with a stick. You are a badass and I love your content, thanks for putting in all the work for the superior content that you provide for free.
Improved pottery technique will be learned later down the tech tree.
And there are several slip-pery branches of clay vitrifecation to explore
I just keep wondering why he doesn't fire his clay tools like he does with bricks and tiles. They'd be more durable that way, but I guess making a kiln is too much trouble unless he's also making a lot of bricks and tiles.
@@ethanhodges4283 I think it is partly due to furnace size for firing
@@ethanhodges4283The time and labor it would cost to fire the blower housing and lid is too high. Think: hours upon hours to make enough charcoal for the firing, hours to make the furnace big enough to fire the pieces, and many more hours to fire and let the pieces cool down. It doesn’t need to be waterproof, and it doesn’t need to be particularly durable, it’s already an awkward and fragile piece. In this strange prehistoric world “good enough” is great.
3:09 “Fire by friction” lets goooooo! This gets me every time
started a fire faster than I was able to with matches and fire starter liquid
that part is fire
Я преклоняюсь перед Вашими знаниями и умениями! Спасибо Вам, за то, что щедро всем этим делитесь с нами. 👏👍
Привет Вам из далёкой России, из Санкт-Петербурга! 👋🤝
Ну вот, снова крупицы железа достались огромным трудом. Уже видно на сколько умело автор строит воздуходувку из глины, конструкция весьма удачная. Как теперь это железное сырье превратить в изделие? Я готов ждать ещё 10 лет, долгих лет автору.
man this dude is the absolute master of the hand drill, much love from Texas.
I wish there'd be "conclusions" portion in the videos where he goes more in-depth on what he learned and what he'll do with it in the future.
He wrote some additional thoughts in the description
Check the description and (if it exists, depends on the video) the pinned comments.
It's a work in progress. He had already concluded some matter about ore quality through manufacturing differences between cultures. There's many variables going into this.
John's the kind of guy who could be teleported into prehistory and have humanity out of the stone age a thousand years ahead of schedule.
I was thinking the same thing, yo! John would have become their Merlin.
Thats his ultimate goal
Once he figures out metallurgy, he's gonna figure out how to make a time machine out of clay, tree branches, and bog iron, and go reset the timeline to get Humanity off the bad timeline and get us back on track to being an interplanetary species.
Like the Mark Twain book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," where the main character starts bringing the medieval age into the industrial era based on his knowledge of engineering.
This man deserves all the good things life has to offer.
I just flew in from Adelaide, and boy are my arms tired. Love the new set up and the fire pushing through the back side bricks.
Just wheni went to bed , i love watching John as asmr
clay is like the 3D printer of nature
amazingly coomer take
You can even make cartoon animations with it 😂
Twine and cord and rope and cable ( all different things, and fascinating how different they are ) are such OP technologies. I have been making rope and cable from New Zealand flax, and it is astonishingly strong, ridiculously strong. Once I got the hang of it, I have made 5 mm cable that I can't break with my full weight, 85 kgs. It has about 40 strands of the fibers in it at that thickness, and cabling it makes it just strong to the point that it rivals a nylon rope I think.
I have been making short lengths and testing it to destruction, the only advantage I think that modern fibers clearly have, is "shock" it doesn't like a really fast pull.
I want to make a long piece of cable, and use it as a lead on my dog, to see how long it lasts in daily use.
I would guess that modern rope would hold up to the elements far better. Your homespun one would probably work great until the humidity got it.
I got bored recently and made a length of twine with my hair. I haven't cut it in almost 15 years, so it's about two foot long, and I could have made a mile of twine at this point just with what I pull off my brush. I kind of wonder if human hair twine might have been the original cordage. With just one twisted braid a millimeter thick, it takes 20-40lbs of force to break, and it handles fast pulling well. It isn't as easy or fast to gather as plant fiber, but it does seem stronger since the strands are naturally really long. It's somewhat equivalent to horse hair as a fiber.
It's also neat that hair seems to reach a set length and then stay around that length. It reached a bit below the middle of my back a long time ago, and hasn't gotten longer despite not cutting it, but I've seen some women with hair almost to their ankles. Making a lot cordage with 4-5ft hair would be really efficient+easy to do while watching children in a hunter gatherer society. The natural tendency of long hair to tangle and dread is like a natural source of rope. From that, making passable twine would be easy to figure out, so cordage made from hair might have been one of the first tools of mankind. Sheep's wool or plant fiber is likely a higher-yield source for a society, but one or two women could probably make more than enough rope for a small tribe.
so coooool. These last two video really make me feel like all the pottery/ basket weaving classes and rope making projects have actual use lol not just for "art" although this is its own kind of art.
This is such a leap from previous videos.
Not just recreating historical techniques, in the order they were likely discovered, but using modern know how and methods mashed up with primitive materials.
Pulleys and key ways, spliced fibre rope and involute centrifugal fans!
Wow!
Not sure how many times I can watch this guy make the same thing over and over, but it's at least one more.
He's not making the same thing, he's testing variations of furnace design. If you aren't interested in the process, why watch?
I think there is a spider just chilling inside the blower at 13:04
AC
He’s holding on for dear life
Add a lid with a small hole on top of the furnace will make it hotter inside.
Loving how the fire start has become just a trivial moment in your videos.
Impressive patience and work on display here.
The actual primitive technology channel. Not the cheap asian bs. Love the content. Cheers from Estonia
We’re making it out of the stone age with this one 🔥🔥🔥🔥
he already made iron knife
Very impressive! I especially like the amount of air your getting, you can hear it roar. If I can make a suggestion, look up "iron age bloomery furnace" on the internet and look at one. They were made to look like an amphora or vase. All the combustion took place in the belly of the furnace, and the smaller top kept a lot of the heat from escaping. It also concentrated the unburned gases in the furnace, letting them add to your fuel.
He mentioned that he’s going for the higher carbon iron prills that are smelted later rather than a lower carbon iron mass. Did you watch with closed captions?
Which is why I recommended a bloomery furnace design. It increases carbon absorption by the iron. By taking the bloom out of the furnace still hot and gently working it, slag and other impurities are removed and instead of small prills, a more homogenous lump of metal, high-carbon steel, is formed. Smelting high-carbon steel prills will actually causes them to loose carbon if its not done in an oxygen-low environment. Low carbon smelting isn't a bad thing though, it creates wrought iron, which is a wonderful iron to work with and is fairly resistant to the elements because it forms a resistant layer due to its low-carbon content and chemical make-up due to impurities.
Considering the hunting laws in place, I have been wondering if you've looked into making leather from fish skins. The process is essentially the same as traditional hide tanning! You've already demonstrated the making of fish traps, and the eels shown in previous videos look to be suitable.
Fish leather is a thing?! Huh... Honestly, that not being well known might be the reason.
Dude, leave the animals alone. Let's indulge our silly primitive tech fantasies, but not the killing. Evolve.
@@idontthinkso666 We are omnivores mate, If we hadn't ever have eaten meat we'd never evolved and all be like you...get over it...
The eels aren't really *renewable* though. He'd need to make sure he's got plenty before offing any native eels, lest he be left with none when he needs more eel products in the future. I have no idea how he'd go about cultivating more eels, either, as they'd need more fish to eat and at that point he'd need to be running both an eel fishery and a feeder fishery, and something to feed the feeder fishery... Or just keep checking the nooks in the creek for dead eels to collect and hope they handle the repopulation on their own..?
Omnivores, that's the thing : we do not NEED meat...
Bruh this guy been really hard on that primitive ironworking for like 3 years. Looking forward to the next gardening or construction video
This is and will always be the best channel on RUclips
You should probably try to make the inlet hole of the fan quite a bit bigger. A hole with such a sharp edge will be effectively smaller for the entering air, since there will be strong turbulence at the edge. I'd do it ~twice as big.
bell mouth
The technique you show for splicing lengths of cordage together is new to me.
Thank you very much for sharing.
I always learn new stuff from your videos. 🙏❤️
have you considered using pitch or an adhesive/binder of some kind to provide more durability to rope and woven constructions? also even extending the height of the furnace slightly and minimizing the cracks can greatly increase yield as it can give more opportunities for chemical reactions to take place. I also wonder if reusing the slag from previous melts can help increase access to ore as certainly more than 15/1200g on average has to be iron. I would wager that the slag has a considerable amount of iron left in it.
Where's he going to get pitch from, though?
@@Hyperlynx2 Pitch and tar can be made from tree sap.
The problem hasn't been anything to do with the belt. The problem is the clay pulleys keep cracking at the thin wall with so much use, so it makes it harder for the belt to stay in place. He's had to make so many pulleys more than he's had to make rope. That is all.
The way you have it set up right now reminds me of how my dad's stationary recumbent bicycle is set up.
The hand held version might feel smoother RN but it's probably worth troubleshooting the axle version if you ever want to get your hands free by introducing a foot pedal mechanism with a flywheel to be able to do something else on the side. Always love the chill vibe and simple format of the videos with no talking and calm doing. Cheers
So early the dinosaurs were still there
same
So early the primordial soup was still boiling down
6000 years ago?
I watched the video instead of commenting. "uploaded 1 minute ago"
@@sarcasm2kvery nice. Whats the temp in your mom’s basement?
Yes! More of the Quest for the Iron Age! 🔥
Goddamn it, i was gonna go sleep but now i have to watch this video.
me to bro, where are you from
"I have been following you for a long time, since I was 8 years old. Now, I am almost 15. I sincerely hope that you will continue to produce new videos."
have changed my phone four times."
🇹🇭❤❤
All these years of... And i still get blisters just watching him start a fire....
Unmatched dedication. Even though we know it's gonna be a fan, it's fascinating work. Loved to see the splicing technique 🫡
04:20 "I move away from the fire to breathe in"
Chocolate rainnn
One of the only channels I turn closed captioning on for.
just found ur video and it makes it get real clear
With out fail every time I watch one of his videos it’s magic like the first time I’ve seen one in like 2016
John are you searching for the best method to yield a lot of iron before (as we often joke about) going through the "iron-age"?
Your videos are awesome, I have the bell notification on and never missed an upload! Keep up the awesome work!
I work in senior program management at a large IT company. We learn all these fancy buzzword philosophies like SCRUM, Agile, and other iterative processes and they all fall apart in real life. But this channel shows us the real embodiment of iterative technology processes. This channel should be mandatory training for all program managers regardless of the industry they work in.
bla bla bla, I work in... don't spoil our fun with your bs analysis. keep polluting the environment, not our channel
@@OscarDuMeilleurChienDeGarde whoaa shots fired
13:49 - Have you thought about building a bicycle instead of using your shoulders for rotation?
Multiple failures of the crank system would plague a pedal powered mechanism. You need to have it resting on an axis for that, and he's already not had a lot of fun with it. He opted to the floating version so that he can put the tension and mechanics under his control, and it worked a lot better that way.
I really want this channel start to have progression from stone age to bronze age
I was thinking something similar. We've seen many vids making pellets. Now, I think it's time we see some vids making something useful out of them.
(Really, I just want more FIRE!! 😂)
@@Phil_KaneONite_Wood He made a simple blade a long time ago(I think that's what he used to cut the chord in this video), but since then I think he just tries to find more efficient ways to make iron metal so he can have a lot when he gets back to forging. That's why he listed the yield amounts he's achieved so far, because the current goal is to get high yields for less work.
His location is a bit deficient in copper let alone tin.
Yeah, as@@johnfisk811 says you can't have bronze without the two metals bronze is made from!
As it happens, copper and tin aren't usually found in the same geographical regions. Bronze production happened because of different nations trading with each other. So, unless he has either copper or tin on site, and unless he's going to trade with another primitive technology youtuber to get the other one, bronze isn't going to happen :)
I hope you'll never stop making videos . Cheers from Slovakia
Awesome video! Put the wheel on a stand, sit on the ledge behind you, and petal using your feet
The small intake holes are cutting into the blower's efficiency. It's the same volume of air entering and exiting, but that air is meant to move faster at the output and slower at the input, and to get the same amount of air in at a slower speed you need a larger hole.
HMMM, so maybe make your blower and tuyere output in something like a wide, flat oval shape instead of a circular one? That way your blower can be way deeper without requiring a larger spoke inside.
I'm also pretty surprised that he's never tried attaching a flywheel of some sort to the spoke. It'd probably help keep the blower spinning at a more regular speed, and might make it easier to operate. Of course I'm saying this like constructing this whole thing didn't already take him about 15 steps lol.
@@DustinHorvath1987 He did try flywheels in the either the last video or the one before, mounting them to an axle durably is somewhat challenging.
@@DustinHorvath1987 I remember the flywheels. They were a bit too much.
OG Peak RUclips 🐐
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These videos are fake
i think that despite going in with "single handfuls" and "double handfuls" on his measurements in his captions its cool that behind the scenes he actually kept track of precise measurements in grams for comparisons between his smelts.
i believe this is the first time he showed this data in the captions and it was a pleasant surprise!
One of the view channels that once i click the video, I'm guarenteed to finish it in full.
I think anyone looking at this as a "moving through the tech tree of humanity" series is kinda looking at it the wrong way. It's just working from scratch to figure out how to do things. While we like to organize historical civilizations into ages like stone, bronze, iron ect, it was never as clear cut as that. Bronze age civilizations (hell, "stone age" civilizations) knew about iron and had access to it, they just hadn't developed methods to use it effectively at scale for anything practical. Real life wasn't a tech tree. A million things were in progress at once. Small groups of people found solutions that wouldn't be adopted at a civilization level for much longer. And different civilizations were figuring this stuff out at different times.
In short, I don't know why anyone would view the iron experiments as "getting stuck". The goal isn't to reach the industrial age from scratch or anything, it's to experiment and figure stuff out, and he's learned a lot. He could read dozens of books and research papers on the topic of iron smelting and figure out an "optimal" solution, but where's the fun in that? It's much more interesting to see how someone figures something out when they have severe limitations put on them, like not having access to any modern tools on-site.
I'm a simple man. I see primitive technology, I click, I like, I turn on captions, and I enjoy the video.
You should apply your working knowledge of rotary motion to wood turning. Put smelting on hold. Make a lath and use it to turn wooden components(shaft, pulleys, etc.). Then you can make more effective blowers and mechanisms with your upgraded components.
Don't you need sharp knives for wood turning? The knives he's been able to make so far aren't particularly sharp.
@@Hyperlynx2 Is the stone age a joke to you?
Since you started your experiments on smelting iron, I can't wait to see you acheiving consistent results, getting forgeable bars and reaching the next step of technological evolution. Achieving the equivalent of the iron age will surely make amazing videos (if it is one of your objectives of course).
It is not easy getting into the iron age by yourself, amazing work, please keep it going. :)