Yeah that's no joke. I wonder if he could improvise some kind of grinding wheel, though you'd need a round stone and either a way to drill a hole in it or some other way to mount it to a wooden shaft
@@DanKaschel The real key would be to find a way to forge the blade flat or close to the final desired shape so that you don't need to remove so much material later. Of course he'll have to figure out how to make a Bessemer Converter so he can convert the cast iron into a forgable material(IE, steel). Considering what else he's done, a small BC should be easy for him to cobble. He needs to forge himself a steel sword, the Sword of the Gods. Then he can set himself up as the King of all known territory.
@@rmkenney i was thinking he maybe should have melted the metals then poured it into the mould rather than melting them together inside it. may have made the sharpening a lot easier but i have no idea how much extra work that would have been.
Just watched SunnyV2's video on all the fake primitive construction videos out there and I just wanted express my gratitude for staying down to earth and honest about everything you do. You're the man John!
Daily reminder that this is one of the only "primitive tech" channels with ANY repute and he 100% deserves the audience he has because he's an absolute mad genius.
This is the first iron tool I've made. The method I used is reproduceable and relatively simple so the viewer should be able to get similar results to what I have. Watch the video with captions on to see information on the steps in more details. The ore I used is iron bacteria and it lives in soil everywhere though it only becomes visible when it becomes saturated with water. The viewer has probably seen it before when out hiking along streams but may not have known what it is. Any questions about the process let me know. Thanks.
Would "Cement" like the quicklime and any kind of pottery/ceramics be possible to use as the mold ? Are there any other metals like Copper or Tin that is also accessible ? Maybe Pb but that might be too dangerous with fumes and other problems and all. 😀This stuff is brilliant!
Normally I'd say that is too big of a claim but in this dude's channel it's true. I'd only say that this channel, JonTron, Filthy Frank and Nakey Jakey make up the .01%
Just goes to show how thoroughly cherished a tool or sword passed down through the family would be. These tools had HUNDREDS of hours put into their creation. Amazing video as always.
Indeed. During the latter days of the Bronze Age, around 1500-1000 B.C, iron was exceptionally rare. Rare in that it was very difficult in most developed nations at the time to be able to find the ore, let alone get fires strong enough to smelt it. Iron was thought to be found only in meteorites, as the iron oxide content was far more visible than other ore sources found on Earth. Thus, in the early days of iron-smelting, tools and especially weapons made of this "meteoric iron" were elevated to priceless treasures and relics. They were legendary artifacts that came "from the stars."
@@sethraelthebard5459 All iron on Earth actually comes from meteor collisions with the Earth. The ones we find in the ground is just from very long ago.
More insane that the result is so shitty, relatively speaking. All that effort for something not that much different from just another sharp stone. Must've taken a whole lot of convincing to get a solid amount of iron to make something worthwhile out of that a stone couldn't do.
The amount of effort and work to actually create an iron tool with basically sticks and stones in a solo effort is beyond incredible. Especially so when you realize how long he's been working at furnaces and smelting.
Well this was how copper, bronze and eventually iron was smelted for the longest time. It wasn't till the industrial age that it changed a whole lot. Just in the 1600's or so they'd make essentially a huge tower version of this in a town.... Kind of why so much of Europe lost it's forests to make coal for metal processing. (Well that and the huge ships)
I've been waiting for this moment for years. I've never seen anyone work through these levels of technology so diligently and so knowledgably. Please continue making videos as you are living my dream and that of many others! Fantastic work!
It is amazing how the entities that built the matrix we live in thought of everything. What else did they plant (no pun intended) that is waiting to be found.
I’ve been waiting 3 years for this. I greatly respect you sticking to form and painstakingly grinding the blade with rocks. I’ve watched many channels accomplish less with the help of modern tools. Excellent job.
I also promise the other channels cheat, even the ones that seem honest. If you look at the iron-making for some of those large channels it's clear they added like 1 kg of metal shavings.
From the way his hands were shaking taking the knife out of the mold, I bet he was crazy excited to have made a metal blade from nothing but the world around him and his hands! An amazing achievement!
John's hands might also be shaking from not just the excitement, but also because of what he is doing. This is insanely hard stuff to do, 10 hours of sharpening etc.
This is one of the most monumental jumps in Primitive Technology videos, a true, tho crude, iron tool made from dirt, wood, and goo. Really amazing. And honestly, I'm shocked that dried iron bacteria is a ~3% grade iron ore.
Well... Where do you think we got iron from? Lol there's a reason it took humans tens of thousands of years to go from the stone age to the bronze age, and then thousands of years from bronze to iron. We basically just did this stuff until we had enough materials to spur a new wave of technological development (which requires a surprise of material to work with).
@@bigmike- Bog Iron is my personal likely first forged iron candidate, as it feels much easier to stumble on than the bacteria goo. It is totally possible someone collecting clay for pottery collected it in a particularly gooey place, and when the eventual pottery was fired the goo turned into little iron pellets along with their pottery, and they went from there. Either way, it's amazing how much iron is in these bacteria colonies, and how it's an actually useful amount.
This is what I've been looking forward to since his first iron making video. The gradually progression to a usable thing. It kind of feels like watching thousands of years of human development and understanding. He's has the the knowledge, but skill and understanding only come with time. Knowledge can speed up the process but never eliminate it.
Yess, and seeing only one person at work, you can see how with a group of laborers contantly performing their tasks and the true artisans trying to perfect the craft with the right leadserhsip behind them, you're talking about the early city states of Eurasia. They would have already perfected the smelting aspects and casting with their knowledge/technology of copper/brass/bronze and allowys which melt at much lower temperature (less work, less time. This was the next natural progression in that learning curve which resulted in first iron works in Eurasia and elsewhere with empires like the Hittites. Videos like this make that progression of history feel palpable.
You did it! For years you've been trying to get a useful amount of iron out of that bacteria in an efficient way! I'm so amazed and vicariously proud of your accomplishment. All the years have paid off PT. Congratulations and well done!
Dear John, I'd just like to let you know (though by this video's response you've already probably understood yourself) how ecstatic this video has made me and so many others feel. I've been following you for years, got your (wonderful) book and I'm now eagerly awaiting the second installment. I believe I can speak for most of your viewers when I say that ever since I saw your first video I've been hoping against hope that eventually you would advance into ores and metals. And boy did you deliver. I hope you are making a good living out of this channel or at least this passion of yours. This is for me the pinnacle of youtube, videos that are not just mesmerizing and entertaining but will also stand the test of time due to the sheer nature of their content. Please, no pressure, but never leave us again.
Bruh he has over a billion video views. Even if you put him at the very lowest ad rate (which he is not at), he has certainly made over a million dollars from youtube. More likely closer to 3M. Plus $3400 from patreon for every video. Plus his book has been out for over two years and is selling extremely well. He is making more than a good living.
The ignorance some people have about their favorite creators bewilder me. Like do you realize for every dick you suck here on RUclips there is millions of dollars behind it? In this case, 10 million subs, probably 10+ million dollars. None of your creators care about you. They probably wouldn’t blink twice if they saw you dying on the street… this is coming from someone who loves primitive technology just as much as the next person but damn the cringe
@Zach no reason to put any one down man this is in his own words his first Iron tool so regardless its still a massive achievement. I doubt the owner of this channel would be proud of his fan base if all they did was put eachother down. Hope you're doing well tho.
can we just appreciate how valuable clay actually is, from making pots to carry water, to making his house, to being able to survive the high heats of the bottom of the fires and blow air directly on the metal to melt it, everything he has done all traces back to clay and thats fucking awesome
Okay THAT is extremely cool. Particularly from 9:40 onwards. Just like that, an ape can get a metal blade. At a time when all the other animals are having to make do with claws and teeth. I've been dying to see you do metalworking stuff. Ever since that video with the small pellets of iron. Strongly encourage you to consider stuff like arrowheads, spearheads, etc. Fascinating to watch!
Me too. I’ve been waiting for him to get enough iron to make something out of it since I first saw his original iron bacteria-forge video. Also your channel is super cool as well. You helped me decide which bow to buy. Vielen Dank!
Yeah after his first bacteria attempt i had this wish too. he has finally done it. ^^ Now he needs to work out Ambos and Hammer better so he can form the iron better.
We've reached the Iron Age! John, this is the video that many of your fans have been waiting for since the original Iron Prills video 4 years ago. Absolutely stunning achievement and a credit to all your hard work that we've been privileged to share.
@@jamesgrist1101 It’s unfortunately not quite that simple. Cast iron doesn’t refer to just the shaping method, it also has a very high carbon content, which makes it very hard and brittle. This makes it unsuitable for forging, it’ll just shatter upon impact even when heated (hence why it has to be cast). To truly enter the iron age, he’ll need a better smelting process (mixing with the charcoal adds a lot of carbon), and possibly a better source of ore (the bacterial ore is very impure).
Он узнал как раздобыть шлак от сварки и попытался его нагреть в печи. "Круто". Интересней было если он переплавил свинец. Проще и правдивей, но к сожалению нет в округе свинцовых руд. Хотя мог и в сценарий вложить пару свинцовых камней. А в печи уже добавить чистый свинец.
And to think this guy is re-enacting and blending historic time periods it's mind blowing, our ancestors also had to crawl their way through all these stages themselves. Hats off to you John, you are an inspiration
He is also applying knowledge of chemistry, biology and physics accumulated by humanity over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. He would be viewed as some kind of wizard by our ancestors XD
@@Greener01 I wonder how similar the technologies were in the past. Surely we don't exactly know and he is using modern knowledge. But stone age people were incredibly smart and could do some amazing stuff. They used iron oxidizing microbes for making pigments, which also required heating them up to 800°C. But I could not find if they used it to make tools.
@@zagreus5773 they were always smart, they just improvised and utilised whatever they had, similar to computer scientists in 1950s when Internet etc didn't exist, doesn't mean they are dumber than modern day computer scientists
I always wonder what makes me so lucky to alive in this time. I'm sure past generations thought the same and I'm sure future generations will also think the same. Life is fascinating
I dropped off your videos when you had a lengthy break. I recall at the time, you had extracted a few iron pellets and hinted at metal work in the future. That was probably in 2018. So great to see in 2022 you revisited the topic and created a blade!! All from nothing but the raw materials in your local environment, your physical effort and your mental intelligence. Amazing really.
@@baikia777 I think he needs a better forge. these guys have just perfected it; ruclips.net/video/tsFpl9eFaDc/видео.html The primitive technology metal wars resume. It's amazing how John has managed to catch up with the rest with just one video. I also tthink he may have made steel in this video. So smelting tools instead of forging them will be the best way for him to go.
Finally! Iron Age achieved! We waited for so long for it and we are so proud of You! Thank you for the journey! Can't wait to see the crafts you make with iron tools, because even the stone tool made ones were amazing!
I don't understand why the haste to the achievements and the metal ages..we lived 300k in the paleolithic, only 10k in the neolithic, 2k in the copper & bronze age, 3k the iron age..and remember..this is only a eurocentric point of view..in parts of africa, oceania & america the stone age ends 2 hundred years ago or less..and made increible well works with stone & wood...we forced them to a really speed changes in euro-asia needs hundreds years in decades..(how"easy"can find and work wood & stone make we can adapt around the diferent enviroments of the Earth, our actual manufactured superspecialitzation and enviroment destroyers maybe make us like chetah to the extintion..not to space explorer like StarTrek or StarWars..we have the same social & psychological problems we had at the beggining of"history"recorded and by the way probably we create new tech than will solve that..) we will need 500k more in stone age to evolve adecuately to can use appropiately our actual tech..we can live mutualistic symbiosis with Earth biosphere, we can be the brain & inmune system of the Earth, but we destroy the enviroment who evolved us, some individuals can be clever but as specie we are to stupid..xD
I consume A LOT of different kinds of media, and Primitive Technology is easily the most consistently fascinating series of all media. Your editing and captions provide 100 % substance and 0 % fluff so it respects the viewers' time. You obviously do a lot of research on this subject and your continuous desire to learn keeps the content fresh. The upload frequency is often enough to remember the existence, but rare enough to allow for superior quality and desireability through scarcity. The multitude of copycats simply cannot make all these things work consistently, so you through your passion will remain the king of the hill.
And he's done a phenomenal job since the very beginning. I have learned more from his content over the years than all other YT channels I've watched combined.
I love this channel you can tell by how big the projects are and that even with all the parts skipped and the episodes still being up to 10 min that it’s not just something easy to do there is so much work and effort put into it and it shows how well people can do if they work hard enough
It's amazing we basically get to watch a realistic recreation of how we advanced early technology. Primitive Technology has been harvesting Iron in many of his videos, but this is the first he's been able to begin forging with it.
Indeed, to be very very precisly, is not forging is casting; to "forge" iron is a little bit more complicated, if he would heat that iron knife until is orange/yellow (1100ºC) and hammer it (maybe with a stone hammer out of a very strong stone) and continue hammering until make a ingot, that would be forging and that iron indeed (due to the previous casting process) it would be steel, way more harder than casted iron (that is that he had)
@@thomaswinzy you can make steel out of that way you mention or the way i told, for example to do katanas the process is the one i mentioned, they melt iron powder like this man and make small pieces of "casted" iron (that carries carbon) and later on they smash the pieces with very high temperatures to make steel. When you take casted iron (that had one molecular structure) and re heat and hammer it with enough strenght the molecular structure changes and also you can erase the worsr parts (the molecular structure could go to martensita or even austenita if you heat enough and later on cold down)
@@nomellameshomerollamamehomer Sorry I removed my comment before I saw that you replied. i thought re-heating and hammering, cooling and re-heating was something called "hardening". to make steel out of actual iron don't you need to de-oxidize it and add carbon, cast iron have way more carbon than steel and you need to melt it to like 1700C to de-oxidize it. I think cast iron is too brittle to hammer, its hard but cant handle tension, but maybe it works when its red hot
@@thomaswinzy yes of course it won't be the perfect steel or method (not nowadays 😅😅😅) but i mean, that superheroe had made iron out of debris of bacteria!! Is a very good product hehehe, I only mentioned that to say that if he wanted to improve his casted iron knife.
@@nomellameshomerollamamehomer i dont even think it would be steel at all, thats all im saying. im not trying to argue hes not doing a good job, but its iron, not steel :) but im no expert its just what i read
Congratulations on making a workable amount of iron! You've worked so hard over so many years with so many experimental techniques to achieve this! Thanks for sharing your journey with us all.
The combination of chemistry, geology, biology, botany, construction, engineering, physicality, and everything else is astounding. Specialization is for insects and your well-rounded nature inspires me.
if you think about it, its the other way around. all of those fields stem from primitive technology, such as this. and when it all got to much for one person to know, it was branched out.
@@Phoenix-zu6on It's also much or efficient to get really good at one task, increasing the volume of production of everyone. Imagine if everyone had to do every step of the supply chain today.
Civilization is utterly built on specialization. What he's showing you took ages of special study and practice to achieve higher understanding and efficiency. What he presents is the cumulation of all of this knowledge and experience. Being well-rounded means not having peak understanding or experience at anything. It's not a bad thing, but by your logic an insect knows more about any one of those things than he does.
@@michaelscott-joynt3215 no, specialization is stagnation. Progress is made by polymaths and groups brought together consisting of diverse specialists. Everyone likes to quote the saying, "jack of all trades, master of none..." but leaving it at that is misleading and completely changes to the original meaning of the whole proverb, "...better than a master of one." We are not meant to specialize, we are meant to play to our strengths and cooperate with others to cover our weaknesses. And we are not limited to just one strength, we all have many. Even the best at a certain task will get bored or tired of performing that, so you have others that can do that task when that happens, so they get a break or change of pace. All specialization has ever done is support, empower, and entrench the elite and powerful. From the God-Kings of the bronze age, to the monarchies and church of the medieval era, to the corporations and military-industrial complexes of today.
Wow, just astonishing. Can you imagine how much an iron knife like that would be worth back in caveman days? And we didn't even get to see him making all of the equipment necessary to make that blade. And to think, the manufacturing technology used to make modern knives, as well as the camera used to record this video and the computer to type out comments that are instantly visible all over the world... all came from THAT.
@@theappel That doesn't mean it wasn't there or that it wasn't being utilized. Fermentation, boiling water, even knife making (apparently) are all actions involving or in response to bacteria, even if the person didn't know what bacteria was.
@@theappel humans have been using prokaryotic bacteria for (as well as eukaryotes like mould and yeast) for millennia without knowing what they are on a fundamental level.
i love the fact that this guy can just be like: "i wanna make a furnace" and he just makes a whole ass functional furnace. like that is some serious skill
That's actually simple enough. It's just an intake, an impeller to drive the air into the furnace, and a stick with string around it to allow for fast enough rotation. The problem is actually making those first parts. The difficult part of that is that it takes a lot of fiddling to get an impeller to not fall apart when you're working with extremely primitive materials. Everything else is just clay/other materials & knowledge of how airflow and heat works. All it takes is time and materials, it isn't that complex conceptionally.
@@memelord9965 I have, but it took about 14 hours of work from two people. He's not incorrect - it's not very complex, but if you don't have a nice source of clay it is back breaking work. Still not too much skill involved, just a lot of labour.
Excellent work! Are you able to melt the iron in the open top crucible without worrying about oxidation because the surrounding charcoal reduces the rust back to iron again? Are there any natural fluxes in your area to improve the melt?
Charcoal is such a dry fire that it can pull the oxides right out of the iron. The co2 made by the fire acts as a shielding gas to prevent the iron from oxidizing and it also adds some carbon to the iron.
@NightHawkInLight can you help John figure out how to get all the Spam Bots banned please ? I know some YT content creators now have scripts to find and block the spam comments. @4ncient people and @D3felsts or some such bot is doing "Reply" to peoples posts including yours here.
The sheer brute force patience of this man, I really am impressed. Ever since his first video talking about how to get iron from bacteria I've been waiting for him to make an iron tool and now he has. It's been an amazing ride!
@@evanflagg8386 I mean, definitely. You can see in previous videos him basically building his technological base to make this possible, like all the different experiments with his impeller system, optimizing the coal production process, improving his furnace designs. It was all to get to this point.
It's interesting because he fully skipped any copper or bronze age, just with the knowledge that there's iron in that orange sludge. History would have been very different if people realized that way back then.
@@jerotoro2021 People were making iron this way long before the iron age. The small yields just made it unsuitable for weapons. Also most of it would have rusted away so there's little archaeological record.
Wow, incredible. I didn't think the process of refining your own iron and creating your own tools could be as simple as this. Of course, the results are crude, but with a bit of practice and further refinement it seems very promising!
First of all: glad to see you active again. Second: Congratulations of reaching the Iron Age! You, in these series of videos, illustrate very well how each invention needed for the next - and why was so incredibly slow the progress.
I believe this method of iron gathering was used even quite far into the renaissance. To my knowledge the majority of iron for the peasantry was bog iron usually forming under wet grassland by the same or very similar bacteria. Tooling got a bit more sophisticated of course, but mined ore was not particularly affordable for the poorer strata
Because transportation wasn't easy I think you are right, most iron making didn't involve ore. If you look at places like East Anglia and West of London there isn't any ore of note (though there may have been local mines)
"Prior to the industrial revolution, most iron was obtained from widely available goethite or bog ore, for example during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Prehistoric societies used laterite as a source of iron ore. Historically, much of the iron ore utilized by industrialized societies has been mined from predominantly hematite deposits with grades of around 70% Fe. These deposits are commonly referred to as "direct shipping ores" or "natural ores". Increasing iron ore demand, coupled with the depletion of high-grade hematite ores in the United States, led after World War II to development of lower-grade iron ore sources, principally the utilization of magnetite and taconite. " You can actualy search information in internet... no need to write comments about your "believe"...
@@Bialy_1 I do appreciate double checking my "belief" though the words I used seems to have been incorrect. Bog ore is what I referred to. Hematite was mined, and while a very good iron ore, is also not that common to be found everywhere, making transportation for the poorer strata extremely rare. You will not see peasants fixing their plows with them, unless there was a larger city nearby they could travel to (before train it usually meant 12-ish kms, as that was the distance you could make on foot and back in a day). Laterite is a soil type, most common in the tropics and near the equator, so it's not exactly useable to to peasants outside of those regions. It's that red soil you see in australia for example. Goethite was first described in 1806, but I'm not sure how widespread its usage was beforehand, it's been a while since I had my minearology classes, you might be absolutely correct about this one being used. However I would like to point out that my original comment was about the peasantry, the people who coulnd't afford the mined ore, those who had to till the land from sunup to sundown. Those people had to make do with what they had nearby and bog iron (or bog ore if you will) was the most convenient. For the nobles, and the nation itself, sure mined ore was absolutely more important and convenient, if for nothing else the pure difference in scale that mining can achieve.
@@Bialy_1 No, when you use the term "To my knowledge" or "Believe" you are actually putting yourself as the source of the information you are talking about. When a random internet comment writes matter of factly about any information on the internet it is important to mention the source so false information can be tracked and corrected before it becomes public misconception. By saying he is the source you can naturally assume it not to be 100% accurate and do what you did, research it further.
I really like how this thinks about the problem of ironmaking from the start rather than copying historical sources: even the early bloomeries were big enough that you'd need an organized community to operate one. This shows that it can be done on a *much* smaller scale, reducing the work to something one person can handle, and it uses a very common but small-quantity source that's not commercially viable. Looks like your next step is to make a grinding wheel!
This is more interesting and involved archeological work than what goes into many a PhD nowadays, I imagine. There are similar projects, like smelting iron-laden sands and such, but this one-man amateur jobbie produced the most viable results yet.
@@Celebmacil Hard rock on a stick and an apparatus to make it easy to spin. Or the good old 'human wrist' as you said. Better yet find a rock that already had a starting dent and go from there.
The work of this man may become a milestone reminder of the most essential knowledge of human civilization carved inside a digital world. For three years, the contents have always been surprising. I have great respect for him and wish him all the best.👏
This was nothing less than absolutely remarkable. The amount of effort put into such a small, but essential piece of metal really solidifies how much we really do take for granted all the small hand tools that have led us to this point in our technological advancement. Thank you for the massive amount of effort you put into making this, and THEN making a whole edited video about it. As I said before, truly fucking remarkable.🤙🏼🖤
Congratulations. This is what everyone was hoping and waiting for. Now I'm sure that whoever first discovered that they could produce iron, immediately wanted MORE. The same applies here! I'm very curious to see how you will streamline and expand your iron making and discover primitive metalworking techniques.
@@olavl8827 I'm pretty sure that first iron for tools was taken out of meteorites as the oldest iron tools are made from steel that is full of nickel... Also your comment kinda ignores how hard/expensive is production of a charcoal and how crapy this tool is if you compare it with good quality stone tool. I saw a flint tool that was less than 1m under a constantly plowed field for who knows how many years and it was razor sharp 12-13 cm long 2cm wide blade with perfect flat triangle shape(3 to 4 mm tall triangle) all over its lenght. "Enlarged 10,000 times under an electron microscope, the edge of a steel scalpel blade 'looks like the Rocky Mountains,' said J. Jeffrey Flenniken of Washington State University. On the other hand, stone blades have keen edges because they are fashioned 'naturally.' He said they can be broken to the last molecule." You do not need an electron miscroscope to tell that this blade is not as sharp as a good quality stone tool...
@@Bialy_1 sharpness is important, yes. but in the days of old, time had to be spent carefully to ensure survival in harsh environments. for that reason, a stone tool is less useful due to a more common need for replacements or repairs. yes, stones such as flint and obsidian may sharpen well, but against harder surfaces, they are likely to crack. for sharp tools, iron and steel are hard to beat for durability and longevity.
@@Bialy_1 Flint is brittle though, steel is a lot more reliable if you maintain it, it will last you a lifetime. Charcoal isnt expensive to produce at all in forested areas. You're also comparing 'good quality stone tools' with a man's first attempt at creating an iron tool, he didn't even forge it.
@@SherifBender I'm fairly certain it isn't, back then he used a different method and he never cast anything. You can also see the impeller he made in a video fairly recently
I have watched this channel for awhile, and to see an iron tool made is nothing short of incredible. Congrats on the achievement, looking forward to future vids.
If you'd have told me before discovering this channel that I'd be cheering for some guy making a dull knife in what's effectively his back garden I'd have said you were crazy, but I'm seriously impressed by your progress. Really makes you appreciate something as simple as a knife that you might use every day.
Thank you for doing these videos. My two young boys are loving it! We homeschool and it's such a great way to teach them how things are made in such a fundamental way.
I can't help but wonder how many collective human lifetimes' worth of discovery, experimentation, and innovation we just saw encapsulated in the process of divining an iron tool from bacteria. Congratulations, John!
this has to be at least 50 generations....considering how much fucking about each generation would need to do to even get to the point of "hey these rocks melt when fire gets hot" the first person to actually figure the whole thing out....person probably ended up the base of some early religion I'd bet
Iron ore deposits made by those bacteria in soils are sometimes known as "Bog Iron" and historically have been some of the easier and earliest exploited deposits in certain areas of the world. Its pretty cool tbh.
SO MANY 'recipes' handed down for dozens of generations just to reach the next level. So many mistakes and happy accidents and right-place-right-times. To think it could have all started with just a hominid looking at a weird gloopy clump of lead next to a fire one day and realized they could shape it like they do stone.
@@Dullahan00 That's awesome! I started getting into pre-history recently and have always loved anthro. Knowing that society spread for reasons like trade has always been basic stuff, but to start to learn that Britain had Tin and Cyrpus was named for it's copper, how much this all changed everything. Easy to nerd out!
I love how if you just watch the video, everything looks super simple and straightforward... Then you turn on the captions and start reading things like "collecting the dilute iron oxide precipitate" and realize this guy REALLY knows his stuff.
@@Jay_in_Japan Oh yeah, but it's a heck of a lot more technically specific than "rusty water," and the science talk lends a serious amount of cred to the channel that many people may not be expecting! Ya love to see it.
In a previous video he specifically mentioned calcining as a step when he was making mortar from ashes. He's definitely studied the chemistry behind what he's doing, and it shows.
Love this guy, doesn’t fake anything, and makes great content! At 9:13 tho, he lights a fire literally right next to his wood storage. You sure thats a good idea?
So, I watched John make the iron this morning and was inspired to spend some time in my workshop. While I was working on filing out a hole, I said out loud "G'day Chris here, and welcome back to Clickspring".
Very impressive, but a little advise, avoid inhalating the gases that come out from the smokestack because its really heavy on PM10 and PM2.5 particles that will damage your lungs over the time. Always try to make sure to do the foundry in a nicely ventilated environment. Take care, great content.
I knew this day would come! Watching your technology improve over the years has been fascinating, but this is certainly a massive milestone. The new blower seems a very big step towards achieving the temps you need for iron smelting, and great to see that the iron yield is improving over previous attempts. Keep it up with the quality uploads...they're only getting better at the moment, and your detailed breakdown in the description greatly appreciated.
@@metformin3154 i think its a joke coming from this video ruclips.net/video/Hvk63LADbFc/видео.html that sunnyv2 did about fake primitive building channels
I cant think of any primitive channel more legitimate that this. Thank you for sharing us your hard work. Thru your channel we are having an insight about the evolution of human engineering.
Well, not really. Iron knife at his 'level of civilization' is not much better than stone ones which are far easier to make and replace. Chisel would be far more useful for any possible stone work (can't really do any with just stone tools). But since it's cast iron, the usefulness is very limited either way. Making it into better form would be good next step.
@@lazyman7505 Yeah, a chisel might be stronger in certain cases. I'm thinking he could probably hybridize that head and partially convert it into a multitool of sorts. I don't think he has any flint blades, but I don't entirely remember all of this videos, so he might have something that cuts.
It's even more mind blowing to realise that 99% of the humans don't realise how hard it is to make even the simplest metal tool that they use every day. This is really sad.
@@ScienceDiscoverer I do not agree that this is sad. It is only amazing. We have to remember someone built this life just so we could forget what it was really like. Should we ever forget? No. We should only be grateful.
@@ScienceDiscoverer To be fair making iron tools nowaday is far less hard. But it is amazing to see that the method he used here is basically the same one that is used still today just on a much smaller scale.
Glad to see the the one and only true Primitive technology advancing to the iron age! Ive watched other channels and they not only use machine's but the so called raw materials they seemingly produce with no effort are a total tip off that they are just fakes. if anyone's tried to do some of these projects they know the amount of time it really takes to complete them. This Channel is pure gold. great seeing each and every video. You Sir are truly an original.
iirc alec steele made some videos showing how hard it is to extract barely decent lump of iron, even with modern tools he still did some trial and errors to extract said iron, primitive technology shows us what can be extracted with ancient iron extraction techniques, a small barely shaped iron plate for a knife meanwhile the other "primitive channels" made large amount of iron ingots from digging out some dirts and stones they found along the way in just one try, it's kinda funny how they thought that people would stay believing them when it's really obvious by now
I'm trying to figure out how you could create a forging process using a dead fall of sorts but lack experience and knowledge. Of course without the proper alloying elements it probably wouldn't work anyway... Great job, I admire your creativity and hard work.
Dude he have 10 million subscribers and have millions of views on all his videos do you still think he don't have proper knowledge and experience i think he have a proper team and the do proper homework and research for all his videos
To improve sharpening time I'd recommend finding 2 pieces of quartzite and grinding them against each other to form a flat surface. Then using the flattened quartzite to sharpen with. Works wonders for the tools I've got.
Better even yet, 3 stones so you know their surfaces are flat and not just matched. Though that is probably more than necessary since you wouldn't be trying to achieve machined precision.
But wouldnt your real issue be material removal? I would think roughness would be more important than hardness for just making an edge. A broken, flat piece of granite for instance
Jumped right over the bronze age! Congrats on a big milestone, John. Its been amazing to see the development over the years. Even more amazing is trying to imagine all of the labor, research, time- all the off camera work that you've put into your project!
African cultures like Nok also skipped bronze age, actually, I think in Africa only Egypt and its surroundings used bronze other than ornaments, the rest of Africa went straight to iron age, either for Roman/Carthaginian influence, or for own merits
This is such an unbelievable Achievement! I don't even dare to imagine how many Days and hours you spent, to reach this point! The shaking of your Hands, as you relieve the precious piece of your work from it's mold speaks more than words! I love your work, your videos and your style! My deepest respect for this - and.. have fun with your knife!
@@nauseoustracks6430 It was roughly 15 minutes to smelt the iron he retrieved, but it took longer to create the buckets, collect the water, evaporate it, build the furnace, etc
I have been waiting a long time before for you to reach Iron age tool, now you've reached it. literally the best survival channel I have seen so far since before until now.
The best smelting video ever. Thankyou so much for all of your great films. I was terribly impressed by the quick charcoal, the leaf fan, and the water oxide! The efficiency of it all. I feel as though you have shown us real history. Earlier this year I made a turquoise necklace with stone age technology. Fifty beads. It was slow going, just takes time, but well worth it for the artifact and the knowledge. Your videos make me want to try smelting.
This man went from making tools out of stone and wood to build his first waddle and daub hut to making an iron blade from some creek water in a brick house. The word "legend" is often thrown around on the internet, but this channel honestly deserves it. He created his own genre on RUclips. While Bushcraft RUclips sold out, becoming peddlers of expensive gear, this man went the other way, and made something from nothing. I was here when this channel had 4 videos and was just a curiosity with 20k-ish subscribers. To make it to the iron age from that really is a massive accomplishment I really hope the iron experiments continue, better blades, more refinements of the process, get yourself a whole set of iron tools
All these videos help us to understand the level of advancement humans have achieved over thousands of years and how immensely we must appreciate the technology we currently have... Imagine what great effort it took only to craft this small iron tip...
Imagine being there at the tail end of the stone age and some dude pulls up with a shiny rock thats even better than normal rocks. That would literally shake my understanding of life. Its absolutely crazy how many innovations mankind has gone through to reach our status today
I see that the knife started rusting even when you were sharpening it. Here's a trick I learned about making iron items rust resistant: When the iron item is covered in a thin coat of red rust, boil it in water. This converts the red rust, which is Fe2O3, into Fe3O4, which is black oxide. (The transformation is something like this: If you set the two formulae to have equal numbers of iron, they become Fe6O9 and Fe6O8. Boiling red rust in iron causes one of the oxygen atoms that are wedged into the lattice in a stressed position to migrate into an unstressed position, spreading it out into more of the iron crystal lattice.) Black oxide is not expanded relative to the lattice of iron, so it doesn't flake off and doesn't expose more iron under it to corrosion. Red rust is expanded relative to iron because of that one oxygen atom in a stressed position, which is why red rust will creep into iron and corrode it further, whereas black oxide protects the iron from further rust. This is called "rust bluing" and is what was used in old guns to make gun metal rust resistant, back before alloying with nickel and chromium was discovered. After rust bluing the iron, you can further make it rust resistant by heating it up until it is hot enough to make oil smoke, and quenching it in oil. This effectively "seasons" the iron, almost like how one would season a cast iron pan, but when used in combination with rust bluing, this affords pretty good rust resistance.
@@kondziu1992 its easier than making iron tools, a lot of fruits, seeds , plants, woods have natural oils that are not that hard to extract with simple tools
Nice work. If I may suggest something, during smelting process you can add fern to iron ore and ( this is important) enclose it. That way your iron tool will be less brittle and more durable ( you gonna get layers of nitrogen on its surface which will protect it from oxidation and it will make iron-carbon bonds more regular).
@@DanKaschel literally several leafs will do - you simply put them on top of ore. As for enclosing ,pretty much just close form with clay to prevent air from interactions with iron.
And IIRC in that video he only had a few ingots (like a couple of milligrams). Using the porous container to filter the iron from the water seems to have done the trick of getting lots of material quicker. I think in the first video he was just kind of scooping it out of the river and immediately cooking it? I'll have to go back and watch.
I’ve been watching John for years and decided to watch this one again. The iron from the "iron oxide precipitate" is the orange colour in the water. The much higher density iron is in the sand so this method yields tiny amounts of iron. What you need to do is dam and divert the creek and dig up the riverbed and process the resultant ore via the methods we’re all familiar with.
Congratulations sir! As a blacksmith I have been watching for years waiting to have something in my area of expertise to be able to comment on. Your smelting looks awesome but I would highly suggest not trying to consolidate the iron through casting. Casting iron will make it very brittle and in such small batches will result in lots of imperfections. The issue is the high carbon content that is introduced when casting which you note. I recommend watching Ilya from That Works - a blacksmithing youtube channel. You can use a stone hammer and anvil, and even wooden tongs, but you want consolidate your bloom through forge welding to get rid of impurities and to make a billet with a homogeneous carbon content. Then you can forge it into whatever shape you want. Alternatively I would say consolidate your ore in a crucible with a lid so you can control the carbon content. Check out forging of a famous viking sword ulfbert on youtube here as well for this method. Cheers!
I apologize if this is a dumb question, how do you control how much carbon content you want in your iron (I know you suggested a lid) and how do you measure that?
@@codyhartman3358 with modern tools he can add powdered substances (containing known quantities of carbon) measured amounts to control that. Back then, part of the craft was knowing what to add and how much-- knowledge most blacksmiths learned from a master or tutor.
@@codyhartman3358 the carbon comes from the charcoal. So you can control it by wrapping your ore in clay or something, to prevent the charcoal from touching it.
These videos are genuinely so helpful for fictional world-building (not to mention fun to watch!). It's one thing to read about how to make clay or iron or tools etc from scratch, but it's different to actually watch someone do it. Plus the insight in the subtitles provides details that aren't mentioned in written sources. It provides an entirely new perspective that makes more basic world-building a lot more interesting to think about. Honestly inspiring, and I think it's helped get me out of a writing block, so thank you!
Fr I get what you mean 100%. Simply reading about something can get you hung up on details that either aren’t there or you don’t fully understand. Actually *watching* something happen is a different story entirely because you get the scope of how everything is done. I’m also using these for world building lol.
This was a very cool video to watch. I just read the comments section and read about turning on the captions for more information about what you are doing. I am both excited and daunted to go back and re-watch the 40-50 videos I've already seen, but you make some very good videos. 👍
Ive waited years for this moment. Congratulations! This is incredible!! Keep doing what ur doing, u clearly have a devoted audience now. This information on a singular level for each individual, and practice of skills would help all of us in my opinion. Everything from starting fires to smelting!
the iron tool is amazing, but i am more impressed at how he got most of the procedures involved simplified yet efficient, from the harvesting of iron bacteria, making charcoal etc
This has been my favourite youtube channel for years, and I honestly cant even describe how happy I am now to see you have finally made a tool from Iron after your previous video making the prills so many years ago. It's such an achievement and I am looking forward to more metallurgical videos, and how your new iron tools improve the rest of your activities.
This is so incredibly mind-blowing, absolutely in love with what you are able to accomplish. It's also crazy impressive to think that humans way back actually invented those things. Like smelting bog iron absolutely was thing, but how in the hell does anyone go from "Huh that water looks especially dirty" to "Yeah, I'm gonna make a knoif outta that dirty water" it really boggles the mind.
the fun thing is, the knife has tiny little parts of steel in it because of all that charcoal use used, thats how the romans were able to make such great tools, they melted their iron with it in the "crucible" and it just happened to make better iron which we now call steel
@@vanillaicecream2385 it is said the vikings had a similar thing happened to them - they'd use bones and stuff in the process in the hope to "transfer the spirits of the dead" into the blades, inadvertently making somehing closer to steel thanks to the carbon in them !
First, huge respect for the time you put in to these videos, absolutely love them. Second, have you seen the possibility of making glassware? It might seem simple to some, but I've actually never seen someone do it with primitive tools.
Guess that's the stage where you need to built some kind of rotary grind stone setup. Also: Excellent work with the captions! Nice to see that the detail level still keeps improving!
Depending on the availability of rocks he could also get a lot further by doing some basic forge work, economizing on the amount of grinding. I suspect he initially wanted to make a spear head and got tired of grinding.
If he can make iron, he can make iron oxide, the main component in most grinding wheels today for industry. You could bond the iron oxide with a hardened blend of charcoal, clay, tiny stones, and tree sap. You can form a mold by working the iron with a stone hammer tool on a flat stone surface, forming the metal around a hardened clay wheel already formed. Need simple wooden tongs to move hot iron while forming. Then you can make wheels accurately enough to do fine sharpening and even polishing, depending on wheel grit count and porousness. With this softer iron you can use as hard a wheel as you desire. Then with vines and such natural lubricants, you can build a wheel station to turn with feet as you sharpen. Realistically, I would start by profiling out as perfect a flat surface as possible. This can be done with simple optical comparetors and strings at tension. That why you have an accurate surface for producing many other things. SO go big, large quantities, etc. ... that why you can build an anvil asap.
@@muddyfalcon, When it comes to generating a flat surface, the oldest and most reliable technique is simply rubbing three surfaces against each other, switching off so that each surface rubs against each other surface. When you rub two surfaces together, one becomes convex and the other concave. When you rub the convex with another surface, that one becomes concave. When you rub the two concave surfaces together, they correct each other until they're both more flat and eventually one is convex and the other concave. Lather rinse repeat until all are smooth. This is how the first precision measurement devices were made.
This is remarkable, honestly I always imagined it would get here, but the fact that we've been able to see you go from sticks and stones to the literal iron age I'm totally astounded
I sit here with my head in my hands thinking that I really don't appreciate the world around me and all the energy it took to make it. Videos like this really puts things into perspective.
Next project should really be some sort of grindstone, will help improve of not only his iron tools, but the stone tools aswell and to help shape wood for joints etc.
@@TheSergeantWaffle I wouldn't wish stone carving on man without any metal tools. Maybe if gets enough material to make a chisel head, but I think thats too far up the tech tree, so to speak.
Carving might not be needed, depending on what stone he's got available. An acidic broth is 100% doable to set up, and while it would be very slow, he's obviously no stranger to long term projects. The viability would vary widely depending on the local stone though. There's slow, as in a month or so, and then there's slow as in a year or two.
This is amazing, every bit of what I expected years ago, this channel has far exceeded all of my hopes and expectations, by far one of my favorite channels. I can't wait to see where we go from here, because you've nailed the process of making Iron from nothing, and have managed to get 80g's of good cast iron in a few hours of work, with a few days work, I can easily see hammers and axes being made. I know you won't stop at cast Iron though, it's far too brittle and difficult to work with, I can't wait to see your purification process, it'll be so ridiculously cool when you forge a sword in the middle of the jungle using literally nothing but your two hands and the materials around you. Watching your videos really makes me fully appreciate just how advanced humanity is compared to literally every other species on the planet. I may never find myself at the point where humanity has collapsed to the point of not even having metal around, but should I ever somehow get stranded in the middle of the Amazon with no way out, I'm confident in the knowledge that you've taught me legitimate techniques to build my way out of there.
Man its cool to see you finally make an iron tool after all these years. Its surprising to see just how much more iron you got from this compared to previous attempts. I guess the extra heat from the better blower really made a difference. Would making the impellor bigger move more air? Or could you find a way to run two blowers at the same time? Interesting to think of how you could make it even better. Also the charcoal production method you used was interesting. I would of thought that leaving it open like that would of let too much oxygen in, but I imagine that the heat and/or the gases coming off shield it from the air somewhat. Is a normal charcoal mound more efficient or does it make higher quality charcoal compared to this method?
According to Cody'slab at least, the method shown here (the cone method) is more efficient at converting wood into charcoal compared to the tort method (where wood is heated in a closed container, using more wood outside to heat it). This is at the expense of a softer and more crumbly charcoal, which is bad in some cases but apparently ok here
I was surprised more wood wasn't added as the charcoal burn progressed. But yeah, the bottom of the pit burn is a very low oxygen environment, leading to low combustion and higher pyrolysis.
11 million subscribers is no easy task, but this guy does it gracefully, I enjoy watching because I long for meaningful work I think we all do, bless him and his channel 😮
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
10 hours of sharpening, i felt that deep in my soul as a knife guy.
this guy is a legend.
Yeah that's no joke. I wonder if he could improvise some kind of grinding wheel, though you'd need a round stone and either a way to drill a hole in it or some other way to mount it to a wooden shaft
@@DanKaschel once hes done with that knife the stone he used probably has a hole in it xD
@@gRleF lmao
@@DanKaschel The real key would be to find a way to forge the blade flat or close to the final desired shape so that you don't need to remove so much material later. Of course he'll have to figure out how to make a Bessemer Converter so he can convert the cast iron into a forgable material(IE, steel). Considering what else he's done, a small BC should be easy for him to cobble.
He needs to forge himself a steel sword, the Sword of the Gods. Then he can set himself up as the King of all known territory.
@@rmkenney i was thinking he maybe should have melted the metals then poured it into the mould rather than melting them together inside it. may have made the sharpening a lot easier but i have no idea how much extra work that would have been.
Just watched SunnyV2's video on all the fake primitive construction videos out there and I just wanted express my gratitude for staying down to earth and honest about everything you do. You're the man John!
👆
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@Pakistani Nationalist *Israel wants to talk with a bot*
👆
Same
He has officially reached the iron age. Next is the steam engine and the industrial revolution!
speedrun of history any% no glitch
The long road of evolution ha
and microplastics
Actually the next vid will start with a clay and twig satellite in orbit somehow.
cant wait for the steam engines😤
Daily reminder that this is one of the only "primitive tech" channels with ANY repute and he 100% deserves the audience he has because he's an absolute mad genius.
This is the first iron tool I've made. The method I used is reproduceable and relatively simple so the viewer should be able to get similar results to what I have. Watch the video with captions on to see information on the steps in more details. The ore I used is iron bacteria and it lives in soil everywhere though it only becomes visible when it becomes saturated with water. The viewer has probably seen it before when out hiking along streams but may not have known what it is. Any questions about the process let me know. Thanks.
Why not forge it into a flatter shape with more of a blade profile so that you didn't have to do so much work grinding it?
Not about the process, but are you going to make a bigger tool, like an axe? Or perhaps forge the steel to burn off some carbon?
Would "Cement" like the quicklime and any kind of pottery/ceramics be possible to use as the mold ? Are there any other metals like Copper or Tin that is also accessible ? Maybe Pb but that might be too dangerous with fumes and other problems and all. 😀This stuff is brilliant!
How would this be done with bronze?
I like that this implies people will be following this as example
This is truly in the top .01% of RUclips channels. Thanks for all the entertainment and knowledge over the years
Jésus-Christ
Normally I'd say that is too big of a claim but in this dude's channel it's true. I'd only say that this channel, JonTron, Filthy Frank and Nakey Jakey make up the .01%
so are you, bro
@@Iced_Milk_NNF 0.01 is like a few million channels
YES!
thank you, I've been stuck in the stone age for a while and have been looking for a tutorial on how to advance, this helped me alot!
😅
🤣🤣🤣
Dr stone
We should appreciate that this guy made a 1080p camera before a knife
Cave men be like
Just goes to show how thoroughly cherished a tool or sword passed down through the family would be.
These tools had HUNDREDS of hours put into their creation.
Amazing video as always.
Depends where u live.. in columbus Ohio we have globs of ore the size of grapefruit in our creeks that don’t need refined
Indeed. During the latter days of the Bronze Age, around 1500-1000 B.C, iron was exceptionally rare. Rare in that it was very difficult in most developed nations at the time to be able to find the ore, let alone get fires strong enough to smelt it. Iron was thought to be found only in meteorites, as the iron oxide content was far more visible than other ore sources found on Earth. Thus, in the early days of iron-smelting, tools and especially weapons made of this "meteoric iron" were elevated to priceless treasures and relics. They were legendary artifacts that came "from the stars."
@@sethraelthebard5459 All iron on Earth actually comes from meteor collisions with the Earth. The ones we find in the ground is just from very long ago.
many tools and especially swords (post 2000bc invention) were thrown into rivers and lakes
More insane that the result is so shitty, relatively speaking. All that effort for something not that much different from just another sharp stone. Must've taken a whole lot of convincing to get a solid amount of iron to make something worthwhile out of that a stone couldn't do.
The amount of effort and work to actually create an iron tool with basically sticks and stones in a solo effort is beyond incredible. Especially so when you realize how long he's been working at furnaces and smelting.
I, Pencil meet I, Iron Blade.
He just sharpened an iron triangle on a rock for 10 hours. His determination is crazy.
Things are so difficult (nearly impossible) without a little help from our friends.
Well this was how copper, bronze and eventually iron was smelted for the longest time. It wasn't till the industrial age that it changed a whole lot.
Just in the 1600's or so they'd make essentially a huge tower version of this in a town.... Kind of why so much of Europe lost it's forests to make coal for metal processing. (Well that and the huge ships)
@@menthols4625 Think about the fact that Iron Bacteria gives you 3.3% cast iron per unit collected. if he wanted to make anything bigger...
I've been waiting for this moment for years. I've never seen anyone work through these levels of technology so diligently and so knowledgably. Please continue making videos as you are living my dream and that of many others! Fantastic work!
Dudes more advanced than subsaharan Africa already.
@@dmurray2978 how many times do you need to make the same comment?
It is amazing how the entities that built the matrix we live in thought of everything. What else did they plant (no pun intended) that is waiting to be found.
Same. Ever since the iron pill experiment, I have been waiting for this day. It makes me excited to see what may be down the line.
Skipped the bronze age, straight to iron age.
I’ve been waiting 3 years for this. I greatly respect you sticking to form and painstakingly grinding the blade with rocks. I’ve watched many channels accomplish less with the help of modern tools. Excellent job.
were in the mfing IRON AGE BROTHERS!!!!
@@cavemanvi he need to make hammer now :)
I also promise the other channels cheat, even the ones that seem honest. If you look at the iron-making for some of those large channels it's clear they added like 1 kg of metal shavings.
@@cavemanvi he's passed every civilization except Europe and Asia!
A paddle operated brick wheel would have made it easier for him to sharpen that blade.
From the way his hands were shaking taking the knife out of the mold, I bet he was crazy excited to have made a metal blade from nothing but the world around him and his hands! An amazing achievement!
John's hands might also be shaking from not just the excitement, but also because of what he is doing. This is insanely hard stuff to do, 10 hours of sharpening etc.
Could also be autoimmune or neurological. He was shaking in other scenes as well. Might have MS, parkinsons, etc...
@@fluffy6489 It is probably more time consuming than anything. Most stuff here could be done by anybody with enough time and dedication.
@@bizmaster1221 Bro i dont even remember commenting this lmaoo
grinding metal against rock is very tiring.@@bizmaster1221
This is one of the most monumental jumps in Primitive Technology videos, a true, tho crude, iron tool made from dirt, wood, and goo. Really amazing. And honestly, I'm shocked that dried iron bacteria is a ~3% grade iron ore.
"And Goo" lmfaooooo
Well... Where do you think we got iron from? Lol there's a reason it took humans tens of thousands of years to go from the stone age to the bronze age, and then thousands of years from bronze to iron. We basically just did this stuff until we had enough materials to spur a new wave of technological development (which requires a surprise of material to work with).
@@bigmike- Bog Iron is my personal likely first forged iron candidate, as it feels much easier to stumble on than the bacteria goo. It is totally possible someone collecting clay for pottery collected it in a particularly gooey place, and when the eventual pottery was fired the goo turned into little iron pellets along with their pottery, and they went from there. Either way, it's amazing how much iron is in these bacteria colonies, and how it's an actually useful amount.
This is what I've been looking forward to since his first iron making video. The gradually progression to a usable thing. It kind of feels like watching thousands of years of human development and understanding. He's has the the knowledge, but skill and understanding only come with time. Knowledge can speed up the process but never eliminate it.
Yess, and seeing only one person at work, you can see how with a group of laborers contantly performing their tasks and the true artisans trying to perfect the craft with the right leadserhsip behind them, you're talking about the early city states of Eurasia. They would have already perfected the smelting aspects and casting with their knowledge/technology of copper/brass/bronze and allowys which melt at much lower temperature (less work, less time. This was the next natural progression in that learning curve which resulted in first iron works in Eurasia and elsewhere with empires like the Hittites. Videos like this make that progression of history feel palpable.
You did it! For years you've been trying to get a useful amount of iron out of that bacteria in an efficient way! I'm so amazed and vicariously proud of your accomplishment. All the years have paid off PT. Congratulations and well done!
next video: I made steel sword and steel tip arrow
Fun fact! His names John plant! He's also written a book!
@@KoeSeer Spoiler: spaceship in next video :3
Dear John, I'd just like to let you know (though by this video's response you've already probably understood yourself) how ecstatic this video has made me and so many others feel. I've been following you for years, got your (wonderful) book and I'm now eagerly awaiting the second installment. I believe I can speak for most of your viewers when I say that ever since I saw your first video I've been hoping against hope that eventually you would advance into ores and metals. And boy did you deliver. I hope you are making a good living out of this channel or at least this passion of yours. This is for me the pinnacle of youtube, videos that are not just mesmerizing and entertaining but will also stand the test of time due to the sheer nature of their content. Please, no pressure, but never leave us again.
Bruh he has over a billion video views. Even if you put him at the very lowest ad rate (which he is not at), he has certainly made over a million dollars from youtube. More likely closer to 3M. Plus $3400 from patreon for every video. Plus his book has been out for over two years and is selling extremely well. He is making more than a good living.
@@hn454 yea
The ignorance some people have about their favorite creators bewilder me. Like do you realize for every dick you suck here on RUclips there is millions of dollars behind it? In this case, 10 million subs, probably 10+ million dollars. None of your creators care about you. They probably wouldn’t blink twice if they saw you dying on the street… this is coming from someone who loves primitive technology just as much as the next person but damn the cringe
Also, you must not be that good of a fan considering he made iron fucking four years ago😂
@Zach no reason to put any one down man this is in his own words his first Iron tool so regardless its still a massive achievement. I doubt the owner of this channel would be proud of his fan base if all they did was put eachother down. Hope you're doing well tho.
can we just appreciate how valuable clay actually is, from making pots to carry water, to making his house, to being able to survive the high heats of the bottom of the fires and blow air directly on the metal to melt it, everything he has done all traces back to clay and thats fucking awesome
Even men were made out of Clay
@@Eng_Simoes what ive been made out of clay the whole time!!
if you saw my work in ceramics class you would change your mind lol
if plastic wasn't invented, we'd still do a lot of stuff with clay.
@@the_rover1 We do a lot of stuff with clay still lol
This is an incredible milestone, the first iron tool on your channel. Congrats on reaching the iron age!
Now he can mine diamonds!
Now we have to figure out how he'll reach the space age
@@SandJosieph minecraft hha🤣🤣
@@cboy-ou2hr a few hundred millenia worth of research. It helps building a library ;)
@@rydekk-4644 and burning other's libraries
Okay THAT is extremely cool. Particularly from 9:40 onwards.
Just like that, an ape can get a metal blade.
At a time when all the other animals are having to make do with claws and teeth.
I've been dying to see you do metalworking stuff. Ever since that video with the small pellets of iron. Strongly encourage you to consider stuff like arrowheads, spearheads, etc. Fascinating to watch!
hi sovie
ITS WOMBLE!
fix your upload schedule.
ayo
I guess now we know what Womble does when he isn't uploading
The only primitive channel I watch regularly. Actually legit and genuinely fun to watch
I was waiting for this video for years hoping you would advance to iron age 😃
He made iron years ago already
@Dont Check My About Page Link thanks! ill make sure i wont
Me too. I’ve been waiting for him to get enough iron to make something out of it since I first saw his original iron bacteria-forge video. Also your channel is super cool as well. You helped me decide which bow to buy. Vielen Dank!
Yeah after his first bacteria attempt i had this wish too. he has finally done it. ^^ Now he needs to work out Ambos and Hammer better so he can form the iron better.
@@GamerGoneFishing yes but he never fashioned a blade. This is a monumental step
We've reached the Iron Age! John, this is the video that many of your fans have been waiting for since the original Iron Prills video 4 years ago. Absolutely stunning achievement and a credit to all your hard work that we've been privileged to share.
Wait it 4 years ago?? It feel like yesterday, never realize i follow this man journey for so long
Yesssss I’ve been waiting 😭
@@gui577b just need to whack the iron with a hammer to convert it from cast iron into forged iron?
@@jamesgrist1101 It’s unfortunately not quite that simple. Cast iron doesn’t refer to just the shaping method, it also has a very high carbon content, which makes it very hard and brittle. This makes it unsuitable for forging, it’ll just shatter upon impact even when heated (hence why it has to be cast). To truly enter the iron age, he’ll need a better smelting process (mixing with the charcoal adds a lot of carbon), and possibly a better source of ore (the bacterial ore is very impure).
Он узнал как раздобыть шлак от сварки и попытался его нагреть в печи. "Круто".
Интересней было если он переплавил свинец. Проще и правдивей, но к сожалению нет в округе свинцовых руд. Хотя мог и в сценарий вложить пару свинцовых камней. А в печи уже добавить чистый свинец.
And to think this guy is re-enacting and blending historic time periods it's mind blowing, our ancestors also had to crawl their way through all these stages themselves. Hats off to you John, you are an inspiration
He is also applying knowledge of chemistry, biology and physics accumulated by humanity over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. He would be viewed as some kind of wizard by our ancestors XD
@@Greener01 I wonder how similar the technologies were in the past. Surely we don't exactly know and he is using modern knowledge. But stone age people were incredibly smart and could do some amazing stuff. They used iron oxidizing microbes for making pigments, which also required heating them up to 800°C. But I could not find if they used it to make tools.
@@zagreus5773 they were always smart, they just improvised and utilised whatever they had, similar to computer scientists in 1950s when Internet etc didn't exist, doesn't mean they are dumber than modern day computer scientists
@@memelord9965 I don't know what you want to tell me, I said nothing different...
I always wonder what makes me so lucky to alive in this time. I'm sure past generations thought the same and I'm sure future generations will also think the same. Life is fascinating
I dropped off your videos when you had a lengthy break. I recall at the time, you had extracted a few iron pellets and hinted at metal work in the future. That was probably in 2018. So great to see in 2022 you revisited the topic and created a blade!! All from nothing but the raw materials in your local environment, your physical effort and your mental intelligence. Amazing really.
"Primitive Technology: Forge Blower" was published *five years ago*. This is such an important milestone! Can't wait to see him advance further.
He demonstrates that you dont have to keep producing anything new.
But consistent.
Achievement unlocked : Iron
Next step probably is forging to make higher quality iron tools.
@@baikia777 I think he needs a better forge.
these guys have just perfected it;
ruclips.net/video/tsFpl9eFaDc/видео.html
The primitive technology metal wars resume.
It's amazing how John has managed to catch up with the rest with just one video.
I also tthink he may have made steel in this video. So smelting tools instead of forging them will be the best way for him to go.
bronze age collapse happened and it took 5 years for him to het out of the dark ages
Finally! Iron Age achieved! We waited for so long for it and we are so proud of You! Thank you for the journey! Can't wait to see the crafts you make with iron tools, because even the stone tool made ones were amazing!
Took me longer to work my way up to iron in Civilization. He's going to be flying to Alpha Centauri in a homemade rocket before you know it.
I don't understand why the haste to the achievements and the metal ages..we lived 300k in the paleolithic, only 10k in the neolithic, 2k in the copper & bronze age, 3k the iron age..and remember..this is only a eurocentric point of view..in parts of africa, oceania & america the stone age ends 2 hundred years ago or less..and made increible well works with stone & wood...we forced them to a really speed changes in euro-asia needs hundreds years in decades..(how"easy"can find and work wood & stone make we can adapt around the diferent enviroments of the Earth, our actual manufactured superspecialitzation and enviroment destroyers maybe make us like chetah to the extintion..not to space explorer like StarTrek or StarWars..we have the same social & psychological problems we had at the beggining of"history"recorded and by the way probably we create new tech than will solve that..) we will need 500k more in stone age to evolve adecuately to can use appropiately our actual tech..we can live mutualistic symbiosis with Earth biosphere, we can be the brain & inmune system of the Earth, but we destroy the enviroment who evolved us, some individuals can be clever but as specie we are to stupid..xD
I consume A LOT of different kinds of media, and Primitive Technology is easily the most consistently fascinating series of all media. Your editing and captions provide 100 % substance and 0 % fluff so it respects the viewers' time. You obviously do a lot of research on this subject and your continuous desire to learn keeps the content fresh. The upload frequency is often enough to remember the existence, but rare enough to allow for superior quality and desireability through scarcity. The multitude of copycats simply cannot make all these things work consistently, so you through your passion will remain the king of the hill.
Yes, I agree completely.
Watch it again this time with Captions on for those who didn't know he has captions
Stop consuming
And he's done a phenomenal job since the very beginning. I have learned more from his content over the years than all other YT channels I've watched combined.
@@Ral_Sera I didn't realize he added captions for a long time. When I discovered that it changed his content completely for me. Made it even better.
I love this channel you can tell by how big the projects are and that even with all the parts skipped and the episodes still being up to 10 min that it’s not just something easy to do there is so much work and effort put into it and it shows how well people can do if they work hard enough
It's amazing we basically get to watch a realistic recreation of how we advanced early technology. Primitive Technology has been harvesting Iron in many of his videos, but this is the first he's been able to begin forging with it.
Indeed, to be very very precisly, is not forging is casting; to "forge" iron is a little bit more complicated, if he would heat that iron knife until is orange/yellow (1100ºC) and hammer it (maybe with a stone hammer out of a very strong stone) and continue hammering until make a ingot, that would be forging and that iron indeed (due to the previous casting process) it would be steel, way more harder than casted iron (that is that he had)
@@thomaswinzy you can make steel out of that way you mention or the way i told, for example to do katanas the process is the one i mentioned, they melt iron powder like this man and make small pieces of "casted" iron (that carries carbon) and later on they smash the pieces with very high temperatures to make steel. When you take casted iron (that had one molecular structure) and re heat and hammer it with enough strenght the molecular structure changes and also you can erase the worsr parts (the molecular structure could go to martensita or even austenita if you heat enough and later on cold down)
@@nomellameshomerollamamehomer Sorry I removed my comment before I saw that you replied. i thought re-heating and hammering, cooling and re-heating was something called "hardening". to make steel out of actual iron don't you need to de-oxidize it and add carbon, cast iron have way more carbon than steel and you need to melt it to like 1700C to de-oxidize it. I think cast iron is too brittle to hammer, its hard but cant handle tension, but maybe it works when its red hot
@@thomaswinzy yes of course it won't be the perfect steel or method (not nowadays 😅😅😅) but i mean, that superheroe had made iron out of debris of bacteria!! Is a very good product hehehe, I only mentioned that to say that if he wanted to improve his casted iron knife.
@@nomellameshomerollamamehomer i dont even think it would be steel at all, thats all im saying. im not trying to argue hes not doing a good job, but its iron, not steel :) but im no expert its just what i read
Congratulations on making a workable amount of iron! You've worked so hard over so many years with so many experimental techniques to achieve this! Thanks for sharing your journey with us all.
The combination of chemistry, geology, biology, botany, construction, engineering, physicality, and everything else is astounding. Specialization is for insects and your well-rounded nature inspires me.
if you think about it, its the other way around. all of those fields stem from primitive technology, such as this. and when it all got to much for one person to know, it was branched out.
@@Phoenix-zu6on It's also much or efficient to get really good at one task, increasing the volume of production of everyone. Imagine if everyone had to do every step of the supply chain today.
Civilization is utterly built on specialization. What he's showing you took ages of special study and practice to achieve higher understanding and efficiency. What he presents is the cumulation of all of this knowledge and experience. Being well-rounded means not having peak understanding or experience at anything. It's not a bad thing, but by your logic an insect knows more about any one of those things than he does.
Ok but why be so rude lol
@@michaelscott-joynt3215 no, specialization is stagnation. Progress is made by polymaths and groups brought together consisting of diverse specialists. Everyone likes to quote the saying, "jack of all trades, master of none..." but leaving it at that is misleading and completely changes to the original meaning of the whole proverb, "...better than a master of one." We are not meant to specialize, we are meant to play to our strengths and cooperate with others to cover our weaknesses. And we are not limited to just one strength, we all have many. Even the best at a certain task will get bored or tired of performing that, so you have others that can do that task when that happens, so they get a break or change of pace. All specialization has ever done is support, empower, and entrench the elite and powerful. From the God-Kings of the bronze age, to the monarchies and church of the medieval era, to the corporations and military-industrial complexes of today.
Wow, just astonishing. Can you imagine how much an iron knife like that would be worth back in caveman days? And we didn't even get to see him making all of the equipment necessary to make that blade. And to think, the manufacturing technology used to make modern knives, as well as the camera used to record this video and the computer to type out comments that are instantly visible all over the world... all came from THAT.
Except it increases the chances of catching tetanus so cavemen fooling around with this stuff back in the day probably got lockjaw and died.
@@brainwashingdetergent4128 How does this increase the chances of catching tetanus compared to the usual cavemen stuff?
@@Leange5 rusty iron deadly poisonous for cavemen, caveman need silver blade.
@@Leange5 same bacteria, once its in your body it produces toxins which cause tetanus
It'd be worth 2 Korgs and an Oog
I would never have believed that so much iron could be extracted from the bacteria in a single stream. Must have been a lot of work. Hats off to you.
It really is amazing, I can't imagine what the first person to discover those Bacteria was thinking
@@rettichdergeile9361 bacteria wasn’t discovered until 1676.
@@theappel your point?
@@theappel That doesn't mean it wasn't there or that it wasn't being utilized. Fermentation, boiling water, even knife making (apparently) are all actions involving or in response to bacteria, even if the person didn't know what bacteria was.
@@theappel humans have been using prokaryotic bacteria for (as well as eukaryotes like mould and yeast) for millennia without knowing what they are on a fundamental level.
i love the fact that this guy can just be like: "i wanna make a furnace"
and he just makes a whole ass functional furnace. like that is some serious skill
That's actually simple enough. It's just an intake, an impeller to drive the air into the furnace, and a stick with string around it to allow for fast enough rotation. The problem is actually making those first parts. The difficult part of that is that it takes a lot of fiddling to get an impeller to not fall apart when you're working with extremely primitive materials. Everything else is just clay/other materials & knowledge of how airflow and heat works.
All it takes is time and materials, it isn't that complex conceptionally.
@@nikkiofthevalley 8 cobble*
@@nikkiofthevalley make it then
@@memelord9965 why should he? He explained it pretty obviously
@@memelord9965 I have, but it took about 14 hours of work from two people. He's not incorrect - it's not very complex, but if you don't have a nice source of clay it is back breaking work. Still not too much skill involved, just a lot of labour.
Excellent work! Are you able to melt the iron in the open top crucible without worrying about oxidation because the surrounding charcoal reduces the rust back to iron again? Are there any natural fluxes in your area to improve the melt?
I imagine the wood ash acts as flux, maybe deliberately putting a lot of wood ash on top helps
Charcoal is such a dry fire that it can pull the oxides right out of the iron. The co2 made by the fire acts as a shielding gas to prevent the iron from oxidizing and it also adds some carbon to the iron.
@NightHawkInLight can you help John figure out how to get all the Spam Bots banned please ? I know some YT content creators now have scripts to find and block the spam comments. @4ncient people and @D3felsts or some such bot is doing "Reply" to peoples posts including yours here.
fine sand can be a substitute to borax
why not give that a shot?
More advanced than subsaharan Africa
10 hours of sharpening. Your patience and determination is unbelievable.
This man really left us for years, only to return and fully circle back on his arc into the iron age! LEGEND
He finally did it, i'm crying :')
The sheer brute force patience of this man, I really am impressed.
Ever since his first video talking about how to get iron from bacteria I've been waiting for him to make an iron tool and now he has. It's been an amazing ride!
exactly this.
Makes you wonder if it took him multiple tries that took a long time
@@evanflagg8386 I mean, definitely. You can see in previous videos him basically building his technological base to make this possible, like all the different experiments with his impeller system, optimizing the coal production process, improving his furnace designs. It was all to get to this point.
Really interesting to see how much more robust the iron knife is than a stone one. Really makes you appreciate what a step forward the iron age was.
yep... and if he put that lil bad boy on the end of a length of wood... he'd have a formidable primitive weapon... an iron tipped spear.
It's interesting because he fully skipped any copper or bronze age, just with the knowledge that there's iron in that orange sludge. History would have been very different if people realized that way back then.
Some humans never even discovered metal, until Europeans and Asians brought it to them.
@@jerotoro2021 People were making iron this way long before the iron age. The small yields just made it unsuitable for weapons. Also most of it would have rusted away so there's little archaeological record.
@@flux2624 How would they have known? He was able to do it because he knew to expect iron in that bacteria.
Wow, incredible. I didn't think the process of refining your own iron and creating your own tools could be as simple as this. Of course, the results are crude, but with a bit of practice and further refinement it seems very promising!
First of all: glad to see you active again.
Second: Congratulations of reaching the Iron Age!
You, in these series of videos, illustrate very well how each invention needed for the next - and why was so incredibly slow the progress.
@doire aintu thanks!!
It was slow because people like to break things down.
@@N911GT2 It was slow because people needed to figure things out... he already has most of the knowledge and just needs to apply it
I can't wait for 20 years to pass when this guy's making CPU's from his hut in the woods
its also interesting how each new step cuts time from the next step. literally documenting how technology compounds to create exponential growth
I believe this method of iron gathering was used even quite far into the renaissance. To my knowledge the majority of iron for the peasantry was bog iron usually forming under wet grassland by the same or very similar bacteria. Tooling got a bit more sophisticated of course, but mined ore was not particularly affordable for the poorer strata
Because transportation wasn't easy I think you are right, most iron making didn't involve ore. If you look at places like East Anglia and West of London there isn't any ore of note (though there may have been local mines)
"Prior to the industrial revolution, most iron was obtained from widely available goethite or bog ore, for example during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Prehistoric societies used laterite as a source of iron ore. Historically, much of the iron ore utilized by industrialized societies has been mined from predominantly hematite deposits with grades of around 70% Fe. These deposits are commonly referred to as "direct shipping ores" or "natural ores". Increasing iron ore demand, coupled with the depletion of high-grade hematite ores in the United States, led after World War II to development of lower-grade iron ore sources, principally the utilization of magnetite and taconite. "
You can actualy search information in internet... no need to write comments about your "believe"...
@@Bialy_1 I do appreciate double checking my "belief" though the words I used seems to have been incorrect. Bog ore is what I referred to. Hematite was mined, and while a very good iron ore, is also not that common to be found everywhere, making transportation for the poorer strata extremely rare. You will not see peasants fixing their plows with them, unless there was a larger city nearby they could travel to (before train it usually meant 12-ish kms, as that was the distance you could make on foot and back in a day).
Laterite is a soil type, most common in the tropics and near the equator, so it's not exactly useable to to peasants outside of those regions. It's that red soil you see in australia for example.
Goethite was first described in 1806, but I'm not sure how widespread its usage was beforehand, it's been a while since I had my minearology classes, you might be absolutely correct about this one being used.
However I would like to point out that my original comment was about the peasantry, the people who coulnd't afford the mined ore, those who had to till the land from sunup to sundown. Those people had to make do with what they had nearby and bog iron (or bog ore if you will) was the most convenient.
For the nobles, and the nation itself, sure mined ore was absolutely more important and convenient, if for nothing else the pure difference in scale that mining can achieve.
@@Bialy_1 No, when you use the term "To my knowledge" or "Believe" you are actually putting yourself as the source of the information you are talking about. When a random internet comment writes matter of factly about any information on the internet it is important to mention the source so false information can be tracked and corrected before it becomes public misconception. By saying he is the source you can naturally assume it not to be 100% accurate and do what you did, research it further.
Evolution is a joke! All men who landed from the Ark of Noah ware inteligeble
I really like how this thinks about the problem of ironmaking from the start rather than copying historical sources: even the early bloomeries were big enough that you'd need an organized community to operate one. This shows that it can be done on a *much* smaller scale, reducing the work to something one person can handle, and it uses a very common but small-quantity source that's not commercially viable.
Looks like your next step is to make a grinding wheel!
This is more interesting and involved archeological work than what goes into many a PhD nowadays, I imagine. There are similar projects, like smelting iron-laden sands and such, but this one-man amateur jobbie produced the most viable results yet.
Should be pretty simple to do, except for creating the hole in the wheel. I honestly have no idea how that could be done
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 With a harder stone than the wheel is made of, and a fair bit of time and energy, I'd assume?
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 I believe it can be done using wood spindles and depositing hard grit in the hole as you grind.
@@Celebmacil Hard rock on a stick and an apparatus to make it easy to spin. Or the good old 'human wrist' as you said.
Better yet find a rock that already had a starting dent and go from there.
The work of this man may become a milestone reminder of the most essential knowledge of human civilization carved inside a digital world. For three years, the contents have always been surprising. I have great respect for him and wish him all the best.👏
This was nothing less than absolutely remarkable. The amount of effort put into such a small, but essential piece of metal really solidifies how much we really do take for granted all the small hand tools that have led us to this point in our technological advancement. Thank you for the massive amount of effort you put into making this, and THEN making a whole edited video about it. As I said before, truly fucking remarkable.🤙🏼🖤
i like to kiss dudes but mommy doesnt know
John is an absolute legend.
@@dragnar0512 WHAT DA FU-
@@farahnumber8832 can i use you to relieve myself? 👉👈😳
Never seen an ape with metal blade, only humans.
i love how you're literally evolving as this series goes on, from using your bare hands to making iron tools, soon you'll have full diamond armor!
In two years he’ll be in the nether making netherite armor
He should kill zombies for faster iron
@@humanperson9443 yes!
everyone laughs until this guy got to medieval times and starts going to towns and enslaving them
Can't wait for him to go to the End beat the ender dragon and unlock the Elytras
Congratulations. This is what everyone was hoping and waiting for. Now I'm sure that whoever first discovered that they could produce iron, immediately wanted MORE. The same applies here! I'm very curious to see how you will streamline and expand your iron making and discover primitive metalworking techniques.
He's gonna make a futuristic utopia from zero in the wild.
@@Feanux I'm pretty sure the invention of war predates upright walking in our ancestors, let alone metal technology.
@@olavl8827 I'm pretty sure that first iron for tools was taken out of meteorites as the oldest iron tools are made from steel that is full of nickel...
Also your comment kinda ignores how hard/expensive is production of a charcoal and how crapy this tool is if you compare it with good quality stone tool.
I saw a flint tool that was less than 1m under a constantly plowed field for who knows how many years and it was razor sharp 12-13 cm long 2cm wide blade with perfect flat triangle shape(3 to 4 mm tall triangle) all over its lenght.
"Enlarged 10,000 times under an electron microscope, the edge of a steel scalpel blade 'looks like the Rocky Mountains,' said J. Jeffrey Flenniken of Washington State University.
On the other hand, stone blades have keen edges because they are fashioned 'naturally.' He said they can be broken to the last molecule."
You do not need an electron miscroscope to tell that this blade is not as sharp as a good quality stone tool...
@@Bialy_1 sharpness is important, yes. but in the days of old, time had to be spent carefully to ensure survival in harsh environments. for that reason, a stone tool is less useful due to a more common need for replacements or repairs. yes, stones such as flint and obsidian may sharpen well, but against harder surfaces, they are likely to crack. for sharp tools, iron and steel are hard to beat for durability and longevity.
@@Bialy_1 Flint is brittle though, steel is a lot more reliable if you maintain it, it will last you a lifetime. Charcoal isnt expensive to produce at all in forested areas.
You're also comparing 'good quality stone tools' with a man's first attempt at creating an iron tool, he didn't even forge it.
Lots of fake videos out there but this gentlemen is the real deal. His dedication, patience and skills are beautiful to watch. Thank you sir.
He did it! He made an iron tool!
Now the next on the list is to form a proper government
Now we just need to find some diamonds and netherite and he'll be ready to fight the ender dragon
It is re-upload from years ago
He's now surpassed the inventions of subsaharan Africa
@@SherifBender I'm fairly certain it isn't, back then he used a different method and he never cast anything. You can also see the impeller he made in a video fairly recently
I have watched this channel for awhile, and to see an iron tool made is nothing short of incredible. Congrats on the achievement, looking forward to future vids.
If you'd have told me before discovering this channel that I'd be cheering for some guy making a dull knife in what's effectively his back garden I'd have said you were crazy, but I'm seriously impressed by your progress. Really makes you appreciate something as simple as a knife that you might use every day.
Thank you for doing these videos. My two young boys are loving it! We homeschool and it's such a great way to teach them how things are made in such a fundamental way.
I can't help but wonder how many collective human lifetimes' worth of discovery, experimentation, and innovation we just saw encapsulated in the process of divining an iron tool from bacteria.
Congratulations, John!
this has to be at least 50 generations....considering how much fucking about each generation would need to do to even get to the point of "hey these rocks melt when fire gets hot" the first person to actually figure the whole thing out....person probably ended up the base of some early religion I'd bet
Seriously, that had to be a ridiculously long period of trial and error
Iron ore deposits made by those bacteria in soils are sometimes known as "Bog Iron" and historically have been some of the easier and earliest exploited deposits in certain areas of the world. Its pretty cool tbh.
SO MANY 'recipes' handed down for dozens of generations just to reach the next level. So many mistakes and happy accidents and right-place-right-times. To think it could have all started with just a hominid looking at a weird gloopy clump of lead next to a fire one day and realized they could shape it like they do stone.
@@Dullahan00 That's awesome! I started getting into pre-history recently and have always loved anthro. Knowing that society spread for reasons like trade has always been basic stuff, but to start to learn that Britain had Tin and Cyrpus was named for it's copper, how much this all changed everything. Easy to nerd out!
i really like that the subtitles are now even explanatory and educational, and not just descriptive. Awesome change!
Been watching him for years and never once did I know that he had subtitles explaining what he's doing 🤯
@@terrydrew7002 I think a great many people had that revelation at one point or another!
@@terrydrew7002 well now you get to rewatch everything 😂
TIL this too, spread the good word!
I love how if you just watch the video, everything looks super simple and straightforward... Then you turn on the captions and start reading things like "collecting the dilute iron oxide precipitate" and realize this guy REALLY knows his stuff.
Captions make the videos!!XooX
No kidding! Though... "dilute iron oxide precipitate" is just verbose nerd talk for "rusty water" 🤓
@@Jay_in_Japan Oh yeah, but it's a heck of a lot more technically specific than "rusty water," and the science talk lends a serious amount of cred to the channel that many people may not be expecting! Ya love to see it.
In a previous video he specifically mentioned calcining as a step when he was making mortar from ashes. He's definitely studied the chemistry behind what he's doing, and it shows.
Love this guy, doesn’t fake anything, and makes great content! At 9:13 tho, he lights a fire literally right next to his wood storage. You sure thats a good idea?
@teamYBS gay
i mean probably not but he seems to be an expert and made it through the video fine
Outstanding effort, awesome result, congratulations mate :)
When click spring appreciates yer doin great. Primitive rose engine is next haha
You best watch out Clickspring. This is only the beginning, he'll have a lathe in no time!
Hey, no! You get back to your corner of RUclips.
the insane amount of work he put into this
So, I watched John make the iron this morning and was inspired to spend some time in my workshop.
While I was working on filing out a hole, I said out loud "G'day Chris here, and welcome back to Clickspring".
Very impressive, but a little advise, avoid inhalating the gases that come out from the smokestack because its really heavy on PM10 and PM2.5 particles that will damage your lungs over the time. Always try to make sure to do the foundry in a nicely ventilated environment. Take care, great content.
Yeah, we don’t want our John hospitalised 👍
Noice chem
hes outside thats like the most ventilated you can get
Next episode: Primitive Medicine
"Primitive Technology: Lung Transplant"
I knew this day would come! Watching your technology improve over the years has been fascinating, but this is certainly a massive milestone. The new blower seems a very big step towards achieving the temps you need for iron smelting, and great to see that the iron yield is improving over previous attempts.
Keep it up with the quality uploads...they're only getting better at the moment, and your detailed breakdown in the description greatly appreciated.
Fun fact: turn on subtitles for detailed live commentary
Turns out this was all fake and they have machinery
@@SpartansAndHeroes What makes you say that?
@@metformin3154 i think its a joke coming from this video ruclips.net/video/Hvk63LADbFc/видео.html that sunnyv2 did about fake primitive building channels
@@SpartansAndHeroes did you even watch the fucking video sunny made? Hes shows Primitive Technology is legit the copy cats are not.
I cant think of any primitive channel more legitimate that this. Thank you for sharing us your hard work. Thru your channel we are having an insight about the evolution of human engineering.
This is a monumentally important tool for many things. I'm glad you were able to produce it with what little ore was there.
Well, not really. Iron knife at his 'level of civilization' is not much better than stone ones which are far easier to make and replace. Chisel would be far more useful for any possible stone work (can't really do any with just stone tools). But since it's cast iron, the usefulness is very limited either way. Making it into better form would be good next step.
@@lazyman7505 Yeah, a chisel might be stronger in certain cases. I'm thinking he could probably hybridize that head and partially convert it into a multitool of sorts. I don't think he has any flint blades, but I don't entirely remember all of this videos, so he might have something that cuts.
The patience of this guy is amazing and now he made iron tool literally from scratch. Mind blowing.
It's even more mind blowing to realise that 99% of the humans don't realise how hard it is to make even the simplest metal tool that they use every day. This is really sad.
@@ScienceDiscoverer 75 IQ thinking you’re a genius lmao
@@ScienceDiscoverer I do not agree that this is sad. It is only amazing. We have to remember someone built this life just so we could forget what it was really like. Should we ever forget? No. We should only be grateful.
@@ScienceDiscoverer To be fair making iron tools nowaday is far less hard. But it is amazing to see that the method he used here is basically the same one that is used still today just on a much smaller scale.
Literally; for dirt water and mud. I can wait for him sicovering and using oter materials as Copper or Bronze
Glad to see the the one and only true
Primitive technology advancing to the iron age! Ive watched other channels and they not only use machine's but the so called raw materials they seemingly produce with no effort are a total tip off that they are just fakes.
if anyone's tried to do some of these projects they know the amount of time it really takes to complete them.
This Channel is pure gold. great seeing each and every video.
You Sir are truly an original.
I seriously think you people make these comments just to be acknowledged yourself.
Primitive technology is the og king
@@jacquestube well I'd call and tell him myself but that's not his style. But thanks for indulging me 🤣
iirc alec steele made some videos showing how hard it is to extract barely decent lump of iron, even with modern tools he still did some trial and errors to extract said iron, primitive technology shows us what can be extracted with ancient iron extraction techniques, a small barely shaped iron plate for a knife
meanwhile the other "primitive channels" made large amount of iron ingots from digging out some dirts and stones they found along the way in just one try, it's kinda funny how they thought that people would stay believing them when it's really obvious by now
I'm trying to figure out how you could create a forging process using a dead fall of sorts but lack experience and knowledge. Of course without the proper alloying elements it probably wouldn't work anyway... Great job, I admire your creativity and hard work.
You clearly did not read the description of the video!
Dude he have 10 million subscribers and have millions of views on all his videos do you still think he don't have proper knowledge and experience i think he have a proper team and the do proper homework and research for all his videos
@@MyJamesleo I think the commenter was referring to the original people who lacked the theoretic knowledge and were working from trial and error
Insane boredom + fire = this
To improve sharpening time I'd recommend finding 2 pieces of quartzite and grinding them against each other to form a flat surface. Then using the flattened quartzite to sharpen with. Works wonders for the tools I've got.
Better even yet, 3 stones so you know their surfaces are flat and not just matched. Though that is probably more than necessary since you wouldn't be trying to achieve machined precision.
But wouldnt your real issue be material removal? I would think roughness would be more important than hardness for just making an edge. A broken, flat piece of granite for instance
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 flat surface is just for even material removal and ease of creating an edge.
Jumped right over the bronze age! Congrats on a big milestone, John. Its been amazing to see the development over the years. Even more amazing is trying to imagine all of the labor, research, time- all the off camera work that you've put into your project!
it's iron though, not bronze
cuz peoplo think the order is bronze to iron but iron vastly more comun , the places that reaky lacked copper jumped right over to iron
African cultures like Nok also skipped bronze age, actually, I think in Africa only Egypt and its surroundings used bronze other than ornaments, the rest of Africa went straight to iron age, either for Roman/Carthaginian influence, or for own merits
@@tiagomrns my dude
He JUMPED over the Bronze Age
As in, SKIPPED IT, as in IN THE IRON AGE
@@Aaronrose575 not in subsaharan Africa. They stayed stone age til evil Europeans came lmao
This is such an unbelievable Achievement!
I don't even dare to imagine how many Days and hours you spent, to reach this point!
The shaking of your Hands, as you relieve the precious piece of your work from it's mold speaks more than words!
I love your work, your videos and your style!
My deepest respect for this - and.. have fun with your knife!
15 minutes
@@RollingxBigshot actually?
@@nauseoustracks6430 It was roughly 15 minutes to smelt the iron he retrieved, but it took longer to create the buckets, collect the water, evaporate it, build the furnace, etc
Achievement get: Acquire Hardware
You know it's fake? 😂
I have been waiting a long time before for you to reach Iron age tool, now you've reached it. literally the best survival channel I have seen so far since before until now.
The best smelting video ever. Thankyou so much for all of your great films. I was terribly impressed by the quick charcoal, the leaf fan, and the water oxide! The efficiency of it all. I feel as though you have shown us real history. Earlier this year I made a turquoise necklace with stone age technology. Fifty beads. It was slow going, just takes time, but well worth it for the artifact and the knowledge. Your videos make me want to try smelting.
This man went from making tools out of stone and wood to build his first waddle and daub hut to making an iron blade from some creek water in a brick house.
The word "legend" is often thrown around on the internet, but this channel honestly deserves it. He created his own genre on RUclips. While Bushcraft RUclips sold out, becoming peddlers of expensive gear, this man went the other way, and made something from nothing.
I was here when this channel had 4 videos and was just a curiosity with 20k-ish subscribers. To make it to the iron age from that really is a massive accomplishment
I really hope the iron experiments continue, better blades, more refinements of the process, get yourself a whole set of iron tools
All these videos help us to understand the level of advancement humans have achieved over thousands of years and how immensely we must appreciate the technology we currently have... Imagine what great effort it took only to craft this small iron tip...
Imagine being there at the tail end of the stone age and some dude pulls up with a shiny rock thats even better than normal rocks. That would literally shake my understanding of life. Its absolutely crazy how many innovations mankind has gone through to reach our status today
I really enjoy your videos. You are the most patient person in history. Stay safe.
10 hrs sharpening
I see that the knife started rusting even when you were sharpening it.
Here's a trick I learned about making iron items rust resistant:
When the iron item is covered in a thin coat of red rust, boil it in water. This converts the red rust, which is Fe2O3, into Fe3O4, which is black oxide. (The transformation is something like this: If you set the two formulae to have equal numbers of iron, they become Fe6O9 and Fe6O8. Boiling red rust in iron causes one of the oxygen atoms that are wedged into the lattice in a stressed position to migrate into an unstressed position, spreading it out into more of the iron crystal lattice.) Black oxide is not expanded relative to the lattice of iron, so it doesn't flake off and doesn't expose more iron under it to corrosion. Red rust is expanded relative to iron because of that one oxygen atom in a stressed position, which is why red rust will creep into iron and corrode it further, whereas black oxide protects the iron from further rust.
This is called "rust bluing" and is what was used in old guns to make gun metal rust resistant, back before alloying with nickel and chromium was discovered. After rust bluing the iron, you can further make it rust resistant by heating it up until it is hot enough to make oil smoke, and quenching it in oil. This effectively "seasons" the iron, almost like how one would season a cast iron pan, but when used in combination with rust bluing, this affords pretty good rust resistance.
Okay... But how can he produce oil with PRIMITIVE TECHNOLOGY? :)
@@kondziu1992 its easier than making iron tools, a lot of fruits, seeds , plants, woods have natural oils that are not that hard to extract with simple tools
@@kondziu1992 how to make everything made oil from olives pretty much with just a press made out of wood and ropes
@@kondziu1992 he can render the fat from a hunted animal, or he can grow or harvest an oil seed, grind it, and press it for oil.
@@kondziu1992pig roast.
Nice work. If I may suggest something, during smelting process you can add fern to iron ore and ( this is important) enclose it. That way your iron tool will be less brittle and more durable ( you gonna get layers of nitrogen on its surface which will protect it from oxidation and it will make iron-carbon bonds more regular).
Hope he will see your comment
Like, how much? And just mix it in? And enclose it how?
@@DanKaschel literally several leafs will do - you simply put them on top of ore. As for enclosing ,pretty much just close form with clay to prevent air from interactions with iron.
Been waiting for iron tools since the first prill video. So glad to finally see it
Bro going to find diamonds in the next vid.
glad people remember his old videos
And IIRC in that video he only had a few ingots (like a couple of milligrams). Using the porous container to filter the iron from the water seems to have done the trick of getting lots of material quicker. I think in the first video he was just kind of scooping it out of the river and immediately cooking it? I'll have to go back and watch.
I’ve been watching John for years and decided to watch this one again.
The iron from the "iron oxide precipitate" is the orange colour in the water. The much higher density iron is in the sand so this method yields tiny amounts of iron.
What you need to do is dam and divert the creek and dig up the riverbed and process the resultant ore via the methods we’re all familiar with.
the amount of iron prills you got is much more than before! it's so pleasing to see the progress, keep up the good work!
Congratulations sir! As a blacksmith I have been watching for years waiting to have something in my area of expertise to be able to comment on. Your smelting looks awesome but I would highly suggest not trying to consolidate the iron through casting. Casting iron will make it very brittle and in such small batches will result in lots of imperfections. The issue is the high carbon content that is introduced when casting which you note. I recommend watching Ilya from That Works - a blacksmithing youtube channel. You can use a stone hammer and anvil, and even wooden tongs, but you want consolidate your bloom through forge welding to get rid of impurities and to make a billet with a homogeneous carbon content. Then you can forge it into whatever shape you want.
Alternatively I would say consolidate your ore in a crucible with a lid so you can control the carbon content. Check out forging of a famous viking sword ulfbert on youtube here as well for this method. Cheers!
I apologize if this is a dumb question, how do you control how much carbon content you want in your iron (I know you suggested a lid) and how do you measure that?
In addition, forging the knife to shape is WAY easier that grinding it to shape by rubbing it on a rock, and wastes less of the hard earned iron.
@@codyhartman3358 with modern tools he can add powdered substances (containing known quantities of carbon) measured amounts to control that. Back then, part of the craft was knowing what to add and how much-- knowledge most blacksmiths learned from a master or tutor.
Metallurgical NERDS
@@codyhartman3358 the carbon comes from the charcoal. So you can control it by wrapping your ore in clay or something, to prevent the charcoal from touching it.
These videos are genuinely so helpful for fictional world-building (not to mention fun to watch!). It's one thing to read about how to make clay or iron or tools etc from scratch, but it's different to actually watch someone do it. Plus the insight in the subtitles provides details that aren't mentioned in written sources. It provides an entirely new perspective that makes more basic world-building a lot more interesting to think about. Honestly inspiring, and I think it's helped get me out of a writing block, so thank you!
Fr I get what you mean 100%. Simply reading about something can get you hung up on details that either aren’t there or you don’t fully understand. Actually *watching* something happen is a different story entirely because you get the scope of how everything is done. I’m also using these for world building lol.
Man, I've been watching these videos wrong. I didn't realize there were subtitles
@@dylanpalmer5151 I prefere to read description after watching video, and never use subs. This leads to more immersion!
This was a very cool video to watch. I just read the comments section and read about turning on the captions for more information about what you are doing. I am both excited and daunted to go back and re-watch the 40-50 videos I've already seen, but you make some very good videos. 👍
Ive waited years for this moment. Congratulations! This is incredible!! Keep doing what ur doing, u clearly have a devoted audience now. This information on a singular level for each individual, and practice of skills would help all of us in my opinion. Everything from starting fires to smelting!
Check out his book! John Plant "Primitive Technology: A Survivalist's Guide to Building Tools, Shelters, and More in the Wild"
the iron tool is amazing, but i am more impressed at how he got most of the procedures involved simplified yet efficient, from the harvesting of iron bacteria, making charcoal etc
I actually feel like this is doable. I could maybe go out in the forest, and week later have metal. I could (in theory) DO this!
This has been my favourite youtube channel for years, and I honestly cant even describe how happy I am now to see you have finally made a tool from Iron after your previous video making the prills so many years ago. It's such an achievement and I am looking forward to more metallurgical videos, and how your new iron tools improve the rest of your activities.
Imagine if he makes a waterfall powered blower for his next creation
The fact that Primitive Technology channel has 10.8M subscribers gives me hope for the future of the human species.
Thanks for the captions. They truly add context and much-appreciated timeframes to your work.
This is so incredibly mind-blowing, absolutely in love with what you are able to accomplish.
It's also crazy impressive to think that humans way back actually invented those things. Like smelting bog iron absolutely was thing, but how in the hell does anyone go from "Huh that water looks especially dirty" to "Yeah, I'm gonna make a knoif outta that dirty water" it really boggles the mind.
Their Gods helped guide them.
humans used to use ore
@@zzZ-hp9je Not really. Bog Iron requires less technology to smelt, since it is very pure.
Ancient humans were smarter. More spiritual and connected with nature. Some would say that the old shamans could talk to plants
@@josephcorsale573 you mean mushrooms right?
I am amazed at just how much use he's gotten out of clay on this channel. Incredible amounts of utility.
the fun thing is, the knife has tiny little parts of steel in it because of all that charcoal use used, thats how the romans were able to make such great tools, they melted their iron with it in the "crucible" and it just happened to make better iron which we now call steel
@@zes4033 spammers / scammers - this is very common on Reddit
@@vanillaicecream2385 it is said the vikings had a similar thing happened to them - they'd use bones and stuff in the process in the hope to "transfer the spirits of the dead" into the blades, inadvertently making somehing closer to steel thanks to the carbon in them !
Omg, he made a knife from scratch, masterpiece.
my thoughts exactly!
First, huge respect for the time you put in to these videos, absolutely love them.
Second, have you seen the possibility of making glassware? It might seem simple to some, but I've actually never seen someone do it with primitive tools.
Billy Berger on 'naked and afraid' actually made a glass spear tip, while surviving on the show. Making an Iron knife, is MUCH cooler.
@@WILDFL I don't mean recycling a bottle to make something else.
He only sources materials obtained from his plot of land and he would need access to sand.
@@ApathyBM I’m SURE there’s sand mixed in with his dirt. I’m not sure if there enough to make glass though
Afaik, melting glass requires a hotter kiln than his current technology can achieve
It's truly amazing how much you've improved the processes so far. What once took weeks now can be done ten fold in a few hours (minus iron water prep)
Guess that's the stage where you need to built some kind of rotary grind stone setup.
Also:
Excellent work with the captions! Nice to see that the detail level still keeps improving!
I second this, it'd be very nice to see and can improve sharpening efficiency 10 fold
Depending on the availability of rocks he could also get a lot further by doing some basic forge work, economizing on the amount of grinding. I suspect he initially wanted to make a spear head and got tired of grinding.
If he can make iron, he can make iron oxide, the main component in most grinding wheels today for industry. You could bond the iron oxide with a hardened blend of charcoal, clay, tiny stones, and tree sap. You can form a mold by working the iron with a stone hammer tool on a flat stone surface, forming the metal around a hardened clay wheel already formed. Need simple wooden tongs to move hot iron while forming. Then you can make wheels accurately enough to do fine sharpening and even polishing, depending on wheel grit count and porousness. With this softer iron you can use as hard a wheel as you desire. Then with vines and such natural lubricants, you can build a wheel station to turn with feet as you sharpen. Realistically, I would start by profiling out as perfect a flat surface as possible. This can be done with simple optical comparetors and strings at tension. That why you have an accurate surface for producing many other things. SO go big, large quantities, etc. ... that why you can build an anvil asap.
@@muddyfalcon, When it comes to generating a flat surface, the oldest and most reliable technique is simply rubbing three surfaces against each other, switching off so that each surface rubs against each other surface. When you rub two surfaces together, one becomes convex and the other concave. When you rub the convex with another surface, that one becomes concave. When you rub the two concave surfaces together, they correct each other until they're both more flat and eventually one is convex and the other concave. Lather rinse repeat until all are smooth. This is how the first precision measurement devices were made.
I love the no words…no tiresome introduction or commentary. ❤
This is remarkable, honestly I always imagined it would get here, but the fact that we've been able to see you go from sticks and stones to the literal iron age I'm totally astounded
Unmatched effort, detail, quality and craftsmanship; as always. Thank you!
One of the most amazing Yooutube creator vids!
I sit here with my head in my hands thinking that I really don't appreciate the world around me and all the energy it took to make it. Videos like this really puts things into perspective.
This is without question the most interesting, exciting and compelling channel I found in the last year here on youtube.
Keep evolving your technology because that's really interesting. Maybe a sharpening wheel for the blade?
small spinner on a foot pedal!
Next project should really be some sort of grindstone, will help improve of not only his iron tools, but the stone tools aswell and to help shape wood for joints etc.
@@TheSergeantWaffle I wouldn't wish stone carving on man without any metal tools. Maybe if gets enough material to make a chisel head, but I think thats too far up the tech tree, so to speak.
@@OurayTheOwl yeah he needs to build a university already
Carving might not be needed, depending on what stone he's got available. An acidic broth is 100% doable to set up, and while it would be very slow, he's obviously no stranger to long term projects. The viability would vary widely depending on the local stone though. There's slow, as in a month or so, and then there's slow as in a year or two.
This is amazing, every bit of what I expected years ago, this channel has far exceeded all of my hopes and expectations, by far one of my favorite channels. I can't wait to see where we go from here, because you've nailed the process of making Iron from nothing, and have managed to get 80g's of good cast iron in a few hours of work, with a few days work, I can easily see hammers and axes being made. I know you won't stop at cast Iron though, it's far too brittle and difficult to work with, I can't wait to see your purification process, it'll be so ridiculously cool when you forge a sword in the middle of the jungle using literally nothing but your two hands and the materials around you.
Watching your videos really makes me fully appreciate just how advanced humanity is compared to literally every other species on the planet. I may never find myself at the point where humanity has collapsed to the point of not even having metal around, but should I ever somehow get stranded in the middle of the Amazon with no way out, I'm confident in the knowledge that you've taught me legitimate techniques to build my way out of there.
@ancient people 🅥 finally your mom is here at my doorstep
An axe would be infinitely more useful than a sword
Man its cool to see you finally make an iron tool after all these years. Its surprising to see just how much more iron you got from this compared to previous attempts. I guess the extra heat from the better blower really made a difference. Would making the impellor bigger move more air? Or could you find a way to run two blowers at the same time? Interesting to think of how you could make it even better.
Also the charcoal production method you used was interesting. I would of thought that leaving it open like that would of let too much oxygen in, but I imagine that the heat and/or the gases coming off shield it from the air somewhat. Is a normal charcoal mound more efficient or does it make higher quality charcoal compared to this method?
According to Cody'slab at least, the method shown here (the cone method) is more efficient at converting wood into charcoal compared to the tort method (where wood is heated in a closed container, using more wood outside to heat it). This is at the expense of a softer and more crumbly charcoal, which is bad in some cases but apparently ok here
I was surprised more wood wasn't added as the charcoal burn progressed.
But yeah, the bottom of the pit burn is a very low oxygen environment, leading to low combustion and higher pyrolysis.
He is… evolving.
I’m slightly scared but looking forward to his first interstellar space flight video.
Should only be another 5 years from now.
@@cleanmoneyovernight7334 Stop spamming you absolute BOT.
Would have*
11 million subscribers is no easy task, but this guy does it gracefully, I enjoy watching because I long for meaningful work I think we all do, bless him and his channel 😮