Mike Blue, Randall Graham, Ric Furrer, making steel at Larry Harley's in May 2006. Lecture and Demonstration. Filmed by Christopher Price of The Tidewater Forge. 9 minutes.
I was born and raised in a steel town (Youngstown), lived but 2 miles from the mills until age 8, my father and all his friends all worked in the mills through high school and college. My grandfather was a boiler engineer his entire life for one of the mills. From all that, did I know anything about how steel was made? No. In this video alone, I've learned more about how steel is actually made. Thank you!
Just discovered this video, I think I have found my new love. Thanks for making this. So awesome to watch how this is done. I will be looking for a class and group that does this kind of thing in my area.
This country needs more people like this. There's reading about something (most college) and then there's trying something (the rest of college) and then there's craftsmen/women and artisans that perfect processes through repetition, and are confident enough to share their knowledge with others.
I'm not interested in producing steel for my foundry but it's really nice to get an understanding of the process . I'd loved to hang out with these cool guys to do this tho! Nice video!!!
I greatly enjoy videos such as this that give a detailed description in everyday lingo. They really come in handy as light, but educational material for friends with a bit of interest in the subject.
One addition I'd like to see is how to find Iron Ore. i.e. where to find it, what does it look like and any visible signs that would help identify the Iron Ore. Outside of that, Great video on how to make steel from Iron Ore.. Thanks for the upload!! :)
I'm a metallurgist..they built a primative furnace. They put in iron ore (FeO, etc) and charcoal (C) and let it combust. Air entered through the tuyeres (tubes at the bottom that they were seem cleaning out) that then reacted with the charcoal to form CO and CO2, which heated up the iron ore and allowed FeO, etc to break up into cast iron/steel (depending on exact carbon content) and slag (SiO2, MnO, etc). For more into check out NOVA s35e05 "Making of a Samuri Sword"
Roasting and crushing increases the surface area. As Dr. Blue mentions, it's hot CO gas doing the work, so the more area exposed to that gas, the more efficient reduction of the ore into iron. You could take it as far as powdering it, but somewhere between sand and fine gravel is usually good enough. Roasting in particular creates fractures and liberates any chemically bound water, so you get gas pathways and less H2O in the way, as well.
Yes - 2 reasons. The first is probably human impatience, but the practical reason is that usually, the bloom is worked immediately, beginning that compression and cleaning process, and it's very difficult to get it as hot as it is in that furnace it was born in. Typically we quit feeding ore, give it another foot of charcoal, burn it down a bit, then extract the bloom with the air still running and burning the fire - take the bloom to a stump and start hammering it tighter and smaller.
Looks like a lot of hard, dirty work. But at the end of the process when you finally finish the last bit of grinding and polishing on your totally home-made knife it must be satisfying. Great vid.
Folding and welding is done, but it's just the manual process for getting from a chunky piece of bloom, to a solid clean bar of steel from which to make swords. There is a lot of hype about how a certain number of layers makes a blade stronger, but that's all it is. The patterns of folded steel are incidental to the desire for a clean, homogenous, slag-free blade.
In several countries Iron Oxide lays in abundance in riverbeds or beaches. It resembles a black sand or dirt. The largest source of this material is New Zealand. In Japan they used this in place of ore dug from mines for the most part.
That may very well have been one of the most awesome videos I've ever watched on RUclips..... The ingenuity of the human spirit at it's finest. Creating as we were created to do. Thank you Sir.
As Dr. Blue mentioned in the video, it must be hammered flat, folded, and welded, over and over several times to get a homogeneous bar of steel, which one can then choose what to do with. For lack of power tools, strong men and hammers will do the trick - it just takes time.
I have one katana made of Tamahagane and the rest are medium carbon steel blades thank you for posting this video I love it. it has me want to make my own steel and forge my own.
A TURBULENCE as in a "rocket nozzle" : absolutely brilliant! (I speak in addition to the slow vehicle movement, part t. and no hard schedules, The Box club, publishing on waste receptacles and cans with saying such at stores). AGA9N, BRILLIANT.... PTL Almighty for you on this!
Another comment below suggests that 6 years ago, the rate was at or above $100/pound. Possibly more these days, but it's hard to say, because few people smelting are willing to sell their material. Also, with all the processing to consolidate the bloom, folding and welding, and final grinding, it takes at least 10 pounds of raw bloomery steel to end up with a 2 pound sword... much is lost to scaling, and compactness of the original material plays a big part in how much metal you end up with.
He's quite correct. Folding the steel during forging doesn't necessarily make it magically stronger than good quality steel you can buy off the shelf. What it does, is ensures that the steel's composition of impurities (like carbon) are evenly distributed throughout the entire piece, leaving no weak spots. This steel forms the blade of a katana. Steel is forged around the iron piece. This results in a sword that will not break easily/flex (iron), yet can take an incredibly sharp edge (the steel)
Holy hell, your voice is so reminiscent of my late grandfather's voice, the comment on Virginia boys pushed that feeling even farther. I know it wasn't in any way your intention when you made this video but thanks, really gave me a good feeling.
Christopher Price My mistake, thanks for the response. I somehow missed it in my notifications. Probably going to start another binge on your videos. (: Thanks again for the upload.
Hardwood charcoal yes. That's what I use. Briquettes (like the pressed coconut stuff) not. The pressed stuff has a lot of clay to bind everything together and to make it burn slower. Initially it will burn well, but as they pulverize, the clay powder remains and smothers the fire.
I watched the native Bolivians do this with Silver in Potosi in what looked like strawberry pots. Was really cool. The silver ore was placed in it, directly from the mines around Cero Rico. And then silver would ooze out the little lips all over the pot. I loved that simple design but have yet to Make one. Apparently it’s a very old tech dating back to the time of the Spanish and the Potosi Mint where the miners mined the ore, refined it down to silver puddles/streams and it was carted off to the mint, refined again and then alloyed and struck into cob coinage or large 80lb ingots.
@Rhandahl That's kinda what he was saying. He was explaining that the folding process isn't just to make it look better, it actually has a funtional purpose.
In this particular case, steel - but with all the other properties of wrought iron. Using a higher stack than a Roman or Viking stack furnace allows the ore to spend more time at high temperature, which allows more carbon to enter the bloom, providing a hardenable metal at the end instead of softer wrought.
In 1813, Tabitha Babbitt (1784-1854) invented the first circular saw used in a saw mill. Babbitt was working in the spinning house at the Harvard Shaker community in Massachusetts when she decided to invent an improvement to the two-man pit saws that were being used for lumber production. Tabitha Babbitt is also credited with inventing an improved version of cut nails, a new method of making false teeth, and an improved spinning wheel head.
@radiantrey A japanese blade or katana,isn't forged once, but many times. it is constantly forged, folded and reforged. So he could, he just needs to constantly re-forge, fold and add to the initial blade.
I can't comment on Japanese law, but my recollection from back then (it was 7 years ago now... wow.) was that the samples were gifts from Japanese swordsmiths on a well-coordinated visit to a university, and through that professional exchange, a few pieces were offered for reference to compare the emerging American work to. Something like that. You'd have to ask Ric, though, for a better answer.
@inkva I believe you can just get the black sands you need from rivers and streams. look up gold panning. black sands are usually a secondary product of gold panning and may be collected or purchased from prospectors.
This is one of those things I always wanted to get into. Smelting, SCUBA, and flying a helicopter. Well, I may have to be satisfied with just SCUBA but I want you to know I really appreciate this look into smelting the old way. Thanks so much for taking the time.
There are a great many books on the subject of smelting. However, this is a skill that cannot be learned by reading alone, one must get your hands dirty, and work with an experienced furnace master to gain critical knowledge no book can convey. The sound of the furnace, the look of the slag, the nature of the ore you're using - this is all first-hand knowledge you can't just read about.
@radiantrey these steels are obtained after refining dude. this stack is awesome.of course afterwards these awesome guys can decide to make another furnace for further refining and composition re-adjustment
Best thing to do is read the Bladesmith Forum online, there's plenty of ways to skin this cat, and a certain amount of trial and error is usually required before a furnace master gets a repeatable process with a given source of iron ore.
I want to thank the people who got something from this video. I shot it before I fully understood the process, and have tried to add some helpful comments along the way. I've also just adjusted my account to match my proper name and email. Hopefully this will let me respond better to good questions about making steel in one of the traditional fashions.
It's iron smelting. Iron very rarely occurs naturally in its pure form. Usually it's mixed in oxides. What is done here is that carbon from the coal bonds with the oxygen, leaving the iron behind.
There are lots of places to find it, and even a closed iron mine will have enough material in the spoil pile for most hobby-level metal smiths. The trick is knowing whether you can legally pick through it, depending on who owns the land now this can be a problem. If you're stuck purchasing something, red Hematite from pottery stores is a form of ore, any form of iron oxide will do; some need a little more care than others. Good luck!
Ok... it's a ten years old video but it was very interesting thank-you. Now comes the questions; What's "Powder". What's wrapped around the pipe (asbestos)? How pure is the new steel and what's its next process? I believe it was said that a 60lb blob of new steel was made? How often is this done (when materials are available)? The level of knowledge of this process was most interesting to me. Thank-you for the time and keep safe.
"Powder" is the powdered iron ore added with each charge of charcoal. Kaowool is a common insulating material for bladesmiths. The iron/steel produced still needs to be formed into a solid bar, and that process eats away at quite a bit of your material, but the finished process is much like what is seen on some excellent videos of Japanese bladesmithing - the best (highest carbon) pieces would be used for edge steel, and the rest used for the core. There are smiths everywhere doing this far more often than a decade ago, the revival in hand-making steel for swords is encouraging and very educational in understanding the process the ancients applied to their craft.
If you're talking about the main bloom, yes, it was a good chuck of steel. It was processed the next day, and several blades made from it, forged by Don Fogg, Steve Schwartz, Randal Graham, and Ric Furrer who were all in attendance that weekend.
Awesome video! It's enlightening and informative, I really appreciate it. I love learning this kind of stuff. I think it's really important normal people learn how to make things on their own. It's the only real way to have any sort of independence in the world.
the powder is most likely magnetite extracted from our copious reserves of taconite. it's crushed and separated by magnets, so it's easy enough to make good steel easily. that's why alot of people on the iron range and north shore go to train tracks and take the taconite that the tracks are built over : \
I'm not familiar with your part of the country, but old iron mines (that you can get legal access to) are an excellent source for the hobby smith - barring that, there are several commercial vendors in various forms of magnetite or hematite, either will do just fine. Around here you can find Taconite pellets (mostly magnetite powder, bound with a little clay - look like big clay marbles) along railways, and that's what was used in this video.
You guys did a great job. It takes hard work and dedication to do it the old fashion way. Ive been thinking about picking up blacksmithing as a hobby so learning how to forge my own bars will be really helpful. Great video, keep doing what youre doing!
I would add, too, that the title "steel from dirt" is a bit tongue-in-cheek, as the "dirt" is some form of rich iron oxide ore, and not any old dirt. I see there's been some confusion on this, and I'm sorry the joke was missed by some. That ore, once roasted and crushed, is essentially one kind of dirt, which bears iron when treated correctly though, which is still pretty amazing. Thanks for watching.
So how is charcoal made? I'd be interested in knowing how this process can be achieved starting from near scratch. The ancient blacksmiths had to have produced their charcoal somehow, along with the right kind of bricks and what-not for building the furnace.
Charcoal is carbon-containing material (usually wood) that has been heated without oxygen present. Blacksmiths can use charcoal, but it really doesn't crank the BTUs the way coal does. Most effective blacksmithing uses anthracite or bitumen coal. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Smelting likes charcoal because it does not burn efficiently and so some of the carbon from the charcoal is incorporated into the iron being smelted to form steel. Nice oven, nice new project. Cool.
Aiki Xtal Specific to the making of iron from ore, coal carries with it too many impurities. It's not about the heat, this furnace exceeds 2800F at the blast... but rather the chemistry.
the "dirt" is black sand. wich contains iron (and other impurities) and it's that iron (mixed with the carbon from the coal and some of the impurities) that makes steel. so the more sand, the bigger the bloom is going to be.
With a hot enough furnace, and good crucibles, one can reduce iron ore into metal... but not with the character and chemistry old-fashioned solid-state reduction produces. It should be said that there is no good reason to do this, except in the pursuit of material that matches the old stuff. It's not needed for knives and swords, and there are smiths producing fantastic work with modern metal - but there's a charm in this stuff that's hard to replace, and cannot be bought - so we make it.
It's just dirt, all dirt as we call it is organic matter, silica and minerals, this process basically burns the organic, the silica becomes glass, and the left over minerals become a form of steel. The iron blends in with other foreign minerals that have to be beaten off to make the finished sword. The whole folding of blades was started as a way to push other minerals from the steel.
turning wood and dirt into steel amazing isn't it!! this means that if you are trained and patient even on a desert island you could have amazing tools!
If you go back and listen to Dr. Blue, this is very much the way wrought iron is made, but with the taller stack, more time at temperature, carbon can be built into the product, "wrought steel." The amount is dependent on many variables, most bladesmiths aim for 1-1.5% in the bloom, knowing it will come to down to 0.5-0.75 by the time a blade is finished through decarburization. It's not an exact science, but there are some obvious goals.
From what I understood... They pour iron sand in there, and charcoal. The charcoal at that temperature becomes a powder (carbon) and blends with the iron. Steel is essentially iron with a carbon content.
no what he means is you layer the iron ore, which is crushed into a powder, if it isnt already, and then you put charcoal on top of that and then put powder on top of that and so on so forth until you have a bloom of desired size.
Raw Tamahagane is the large lump, the bloom extracted from the bottom of the furnace. The process of folding and welding, the manual cleaning process, is what produces a bar of steel that can be used to forge a blade with. This folding and welding is what produces the patterns typically seen in old japanese swords. Having done this myself several times, I'm not sure what the controversy is, Sadnessroams.
What you should end up with from this process once you have beaten the raw bloom a great deal is a material called ‘wrought iron’ to convert iron into steel (a compound of iron & carbon) is another step.
You know, I have no idea what the starting weight for ore was on this one, but given my experience with others, at least 2-3 times the weight of the bloom, and there was a good 50-60 pounds of metal or metallic fluff down there. I'd guess 150# or more of starting ore for this run, but this was a rather large furnace for a backyard smith. The current trend is smaller, clay-tube furnaces burning 50 pounds of ore to get 20 or so pounds of bloom, enough for 2 swords if everything goes right.
@bobo9345: the Tamahagane that was produced is worth more than $100/lb. (or more)... so they probably made $2,000 (or more) worth of very unique blade steel, that cannot be created in any other way. I have two small chunks auctioned off from this very batch, and one of them cost me $150.
Awesome video. Nice to see Ric Furrer in a more layed back setting like this, and of course the awesome bloom. I'll be making a small scale tatara this winter hopefully, and this has helped a little bit (The sacrificial carbon for the bloom to expand.). Wish I was there.
Primitive Technology already did it, there's nothing to take further with it. The problem is the yield, as PT demonstrated. You would have to just keep doing what he did over and over till you yielded enough pellets to smelt into a solid mass. Would be impossible to go straight from the bacteria to steel without consolidating enough pellets, especially with all the slag that would come with that.
Cryptolocker thought that was iron not steel, has he already done steel? Pretty cool seeing everyone coming from the one channel 🤗 Though honestly if I ever go try the whole primitive thing I’d probably be too busy trying to get food and not starve to death to do any of this blacksmith stuff haha 😅
What would be awesome is a video putting together loads of smelting techniques from different cultures. I think some of the most interesting would be some of the african cultures, especially since most people have no idea how advanced they were. Probably some basic forging, "puddlage" and so on would be cool too.
You're right, and actually, at 1:43, the gentleman who just laid in the iron ore was talking about how the rhythm of the drums was a timing mechanism for older cultures to keep the right pace while feeding their furnaces. This isn't meant to be the complete history of it, just one example filmed almost 7 years ago.
Its easy to find iron pebbles, just look for sand with with small reddish brown pebbles in it and use a neodymium magnet to pick it up. the stonger the pull the more iron content. be careful when melting these because they do pop and snap
Not to the steel directly, other than the cost of re-heating it again from cold is avoided, and you usually have help/spectators when smelting, so an extra set of hands or two are useful as well.
Black sands, rich in iron oxide, and magnetically separated from the quartz sand, would be a reasonable place to start. Yield depends greatly on the mix, though, and how bound up the iron is with impurities.
I've made my own with low-tech materials, mainly silica, cement, and vermiculite. Some of the inner lining will always melt, as the furnace reaches equilibrium, and re-lining a more permanent furnace was not uncommon - but modern research into pre-industrial methods suggests simple clay furnaces tend to produce better steel and more consistent results than some of the more modern-material examples out there. This film shows just one experiment, and is not the end of the story.
dirt from the ground. They put it in layers between that and coal. The goal is to burn the dirt and the iron melts to form steel, and settles to the bottom of the furnace.
Ha Ha I thought the guy smashing up the charcoal was black until the camera zoomed back. Cool video. There is another video similar to this but the guy takes the hot bloom and immediately starts forging it into an ax.
At some point, one has to balance money against time. There are plenty of people making their own charcoal, if they have the time and timber to do it - but sometimes it's easier just to buy it and focus your time on the furnace and steel-making.
I was born and raised in a steel town (Youngstown), lived but 2 miles from the mills until age 8, my father and all his friends all worked in the mills through high school and college. My grandfather was a boiler engineer his entire life for one of the mills. From all that, did I know anything about how steel was made? No. In this video alone, I've learned more about how steel is actually made. Thank you!
Just discovered this video, I think I have found my new love. Thanks for making this. So awesome to watch how this is done. I will be looking for a class and group that does this kind of thing in my area.
This country needs more people like this. There's reading about something (most college) and then there's trying something (the rest of college) and then there's craftsmen/women and artisans that perfect processes through repetition, and are confident enough to share their knowledge with others.
I'm not interested in producing steel for my foundry but it's really nice to get an understanding of the process . I'd loved to hang out with these cool guys to do this tho! Nice video!!!
holy shit! I recognize the guy that made the ULFBERT sword. saw a documentary. that guy is an amazing blacksmith
Ric Furrer. That’s him.
Good eye! I have the documentary of making the sword on dvd but I didn’t know it was the same guy.
In the iron age with that knowledge, this man would have been a rich privileged man.
Granite XD
Apparently the European blacksmith was often regarded as a kind of sorcerer.
Depends, in India they made really good steel, like damascus steel
Granite lol
+Yin Look Damascus steel would have been made from something very much like the bloom resulting from this method shown here.
I greatly enjoy videos such as this that give a detailed description in everyday lingo. They really come in handy as light, but educational material for friends with a bit of interest in the subject.
One addition I'd like to see is how to find Iron Ore. i.e. where to find it, what does it look like and any visible signs that would help identify the Iron Ore. Outside of that, Great video on how to make steel from Iron Ore.. Thanks for the upload!! :)
You can see this does not look like anything like a knife - that guy is funny!
got lost in youtube and bumped into this vid.. thought it was boring but ended finishing the vid// its very interesting thx for the post good sir
I'm a metallurgist..they built a primative furnace. They put in iron ore (FeO, etc) and charcoal (C) and let it combust. Air entered through the tuyeres (tubes at the bottom that they were seem cleaning out) that then reacted with the charcoal to form CO and CO2, which heated up the iron ore and allowed FeO, etc to break up into cast iron/steel (depending on exact carbon content) and slag (SiO2, MnO, etc). For more into check out NOVA s35e05 "Making of a Samuri Sword"
It's nice to see people doing cool old world art. Much respect.
For something I expected to be rediculously boring to watch, this was actually something amazingly interesting to watch.
Roasting and crushing increases the surface area. As Dr. Blue mentions, it's hot CO gas doing the work, so the more area exposed to that gas, the more efficient reduction of the ore into iron. You could take it as far as powdering it, but somewhere between sand and fine gravel is usually good enough. Roasting in particular creates fractures and liberates any chemically bound water, so you get gas pathways and less H2O in the way, as well.
So many beards. So many beer guts. Keep up the good work gentlemen.
"Anyway..."
Flawless intro.
Yes - 2 reasons. The first is probably human impatience, but the practical reason is that usually, the bloom is worked immediately, beginning that compression and cleaning process, and it's very difficult to get it as hot as it is in that furnace it was born in. Typically we quit feeding ore, give it another foot of charcoal, burn it down a bit, then extract the bloom with the air still running and burning the fire - take the bloom to a stump and start hammering it tighter and smaller.
Looks like a lot of hard, dirty work. But at the end of the process when you finally finish the last bit of grinding and polishing on your totally home-made knife it must be satisfying. Great vid.
Folding and welding is done, but it's just the manual process for getting from a chunky piece of bloom, to a solid clean bar of steel from which to make swords. There is a lot of hype about how a certain number of layers makes a blade stronger, but that's all it is. The patterns of folded steel are incidental to the desire for a clean, homogenous, slag-free blade.
In several countries Iron Oxide lays in abundance in riverbeds or beaches. It resembles a black sand or dirt. The largest source of this material is New Zealand. In Japan they used this in place of ore dug from mines for the most part.
Great video! I have always been fascinated with this process, and you make it easy to understand. Thanks!
That may very well have been one of the most awesome videos I've ever watched on RUclips..... The ingenuity of the human spirit at it's finest. Creating as we were created to do. Thank you Sir.
As Dr. Blue mentioned in the video, it must be hammered flat, folded, and welded, over and over several times to get a homogeneous bar of steel, which one can then choose what to do with. For lack of power tools, strong men and hammers will do the trick - it just takes time.
I have one katana made of Tamahagane and the rest are medium carbon steel blades thank you for posting this video I love it. it has me want to make my own steel and forge my own.
A TURBULENCE as in a "rocket nozzle" : absolutely brilliant!
(I speak in addition to the slow vehicle movement, part t. and no hard schedules, The Box club, publishing on waste receptacles and cans with saying such at stores). AGA9N, BRILLIANT.... PTL Almighty for you on this!
Another comment below suggests that 6 years ago, the rate was at or above $100/pound. Possibly more these days, but it's hard to say, because few people smelting are willing to sell their material.
Also, with all the processing to consolidate the bloom, folding and welding, and final grinding, it takes at least 10 pounds of raw bloomery steel to end up with a 2 pound sword... much is lost to scaling, and compactness of the original material plays a big part in how much metal you end up with.
I have no experience with metalworking, but this was fascinating to watch!
He's quite correct. Folding the steel during forging doesn't necessarily make it magically stronger than good quality steel you can buy off the shelf. What it does, is ensures that the steel's composition of impurities (like carbon) are evenly distributed throughout the entire piece, leaving no weak spots. This steel forms the blade of a katana. Steel is forged around the iron piece. This results in a sword that will not break easily/flex (iron), yet can take an incredibly sharp edge (the steel)
Holy hell, your voice is so reminiscent of my late grandfather's voice, the comment on Virginia boys pushed that feeling even farther. I know it wasn't in any way your intention when you made this video but thanks, really gave me a good feeling.
That's Dr. Blue talking. I was the student then, filming and trying to learn a few things. I believe he resides in Montana now.
Miister Cloud l
Christopher Price My mistake, thanks for the response. I somehow missed it in my notifications. Probably going to start another binge on your videos. (: Thanks again for the upload.
Celine Merhen You? :b
Miister Cloud eedeeesdśssś
Hardwood charcoal yes. That's what I use. Briquettes (like the pressed coconut stuff) not. The pressed stuff has a lot of clay to bind everything together and to make it burn slower. Initially it will burn well, but as they pulverize, the clay powder remains and smothers the fire.
Probably the easiest to get is Red Hematite, often used as a glaze, and available from just about any pottery store.
I watched the native Bolivians do this with Silver in Potosi in what looked like strawberry pots. Was really cool. The silver ore was placed in it, directly from the mines around Cero Rico. And then silver would ooze out the little lips all over the pot. I loved that simple design but have yet to Make one. Apparently it’s a very old tech dating back to the time of the Spanish and the Potosi Mint where the miners mined the ore, refined it down to silver puddles/streams and it was carted off to the mint, refined again and then alloyed and struck into cob coinage or large 80lb ingots.
@Rhandahl That's kinda what he was saying. He was explaining that the folding process isn't just to make it look better, it actually has a funtional purpose.
So awesome :)
looks like a gathering of the masters!
would love to tag along some year and just stand back and learn.
Thanks for sharing!
We all have to love these people.
Happy men at work. God bless you guys!
In this particular case, steel - but with all the other properties of wrought iron. Using a higher stack than a Roman or Viking stack furnace allows the ore to spend more time at high temperature, which allows more carbon to enter the bloom, providing a hardenable metal at the end instead of softer wrought.
Fundamental secrets of human technical culture revealed. THANKS for an amazing video!
In 1813, Tabitha Babbitt (1784-1854) invented the first circular saw used in a saw mill. Babbitt was working in the spinning house at the Harvard Shaker community in Massachusetts when she decided to invent an improvement to the two-man pit saws that were being used for lumber production. Tabitha Babbitt is also credited with inventing an improved version of cut nails, a new method of making false teeth, and an improved spinning wheel head.
@radiantrey A japanese blade or katana,isn't forged once, but many times. it is constantly forged, folded and reforged. So he could, he just needs to constantly re-forge, fold and add to the initial blade.
Thank you Christopher!
I can't comment on Japanese law, but my recollection from back then (it was 7 years ago now... wow.) was that the samples were gifts from Japanese swordsmiths on a well-coordinated visit to a university, and through that professional exchange, a few pieces were offered for reference to compare the emerging American work to. Something like that. You'd have to ask Ric, though, for a better answer.
@inkva I believe you can just get the black sands you need from rivers and streams. look up gold panning. black sands are usually a secondary product of gold panning and may be collected or purchased from prospectors.
Nothing brings the men together like a huge lump of red hot steel. Cool video :D
This is one of those things I always wanted to get into. Smelting, SCUBA, and flying a helicopter. Well, I may have to be satisfied with just SCUBA but I want you to know I really appreciate this look into smelting the old way. Thanks so much for taking the time.
There are a great many books on the subject of smelting. However, this is a skill that cannot be learned by reading alone, one must get your hands dirty, and work with an experienced furnace master to gain critical knowledge no book can convey. The sound of the furnace, the look of the slag, the nature of the ore you're using - this is all first-hand knowledge you can't just read about.
@radiantrey these steels are obtained after refining dude. this stack is awesome.of course afterwards these awesome guys can decide to make another furnace for further refining and composition re-adjustment
For those wondering what the "dirt" or powder is, it is eventually Fe3O4 (Black iron oxide).
Best thing to do is read the Bladesmith Forum online, there's plenty of ways to skin this cat, and a certain amount of trial and error is usually required before a furnace master gets a repeatable process with a given source of iron ore.
I want to thank the people who got something from this video. I shot it before I fully understood the process, and have tried to add some helpful comments along the way. I've also just adjusted my account to match my proper name and email. Hopefully this will let me respond better to good questions about making steel in one of the traditional fashions.
Thanks for posting this.
like the Red Ballons, designed to make us feel good. Thank you.
The very same, and one of my several teachers of ancient steel-making.
Aesthetic accident - I like that phrase.
It's iron smelting. Iron very rarely occurs naturally in its pure form. Usually it's mixed in oxides.
What is done here is that carbon from the coal bonds with the oxygen, leaving the iron behind.
So badass. I've always wanted to learn the depths of metalworking, forging in particular. I hope I get to try this out one day.
There are lots of places to find it, and even a closed iron mine will have enough material in the spoil pile for most hobby-level metal smiths. The trick is knowing whether you can legally pick through it, depending on who owns the land now this can be a problem. If you're stuck purchasing something, red Hematite from pottery stores is a form of ore, any form of iron oxide will do; some need a little more care than others. Good luck!
Ok... it's a ten years old video but it was very interesting thank-you. Now comes the questions;
What's "Powder". What's wrapped around the pipe (asbestos)? How pure is the new steel and what's its next process?
I believe it was said that a 60lb blob of new steel was made? How often is this done (when materials are available)?
The level of knowledge of this process was most interesting to me.
Thank-you for the time and keep safe.
"Powder" is the powdered iron ore added with each charge of charcoal. Kaowool is a common insulating material for bladesmiths.
The iron/steel produced still needs to be formed into a solid bar, and that process eats away at quite a bit of your material, but the finished process is much like what is seen on some excellent videos of Japanese bladesmithing - the best (highest carbon) pieces would be used for edge steel, and the rest used for the core.
There are smiths everywhere doing this far more often than a decade ago, the revival in hand-making steel for swords is encouraging and very educational in understanding the process the ancients applied to their craft.
If you're talking about the main bloom, yes, it was a good chuck of steel. It was processed the next day, and several blades made from it, forged by Don Fogg, Steve Schwartz, Randal Graham, and Ric Furrer who were all in attendance that weekend.
Cool video. A big clump of human will and ingenuity.
Awesome video! It's enlightening and informative, I really appreciate it. I love learning this kind of stuff. I think it's really important normal people learn how to make things on their own. It's the only real way to have any sort of independence in the world.
Very interesting and very educative. Thank you
this is awesome. nothing like making something right from the beginning
the powder is most likely magnetite extracted from our copious reserves of taconite. it's crushed and separated by magnets, so it's easy enough to make good steel easily. that's why alot of people on the iron range and north shore go to train tracks and take the taconite that the tracks are built over : \
I'm not familiar with your part of the country, but old iron mines (that you can get legal access to) are an excellent source for the hobby smith - barring that, there are several commercial vendors in various forms of magnetite or hematite, either will do just fine. Around here you can find Taconite pellets (mostly magnetite powder, bound with a little clay - look like big clay marbles) along railways, and that's what was used in this video.
Not that I am aware of, but the community of people doing this has expanded greatly since this video was made.
You guys did a great job. It takes hard work and dedication to do it the old fashion way. Ive been thinking about picking up blacksmithing as a hobby so learning how to forge my own bars will be really helpful. Great video, keep doing what youre doing!
I would add, too, that the title "steel from dirt" is a bit tongue-in-cheek, as the "dirt" is some form of rich iron oxide ore, and not any old dirt. I see there's been some confusion on this, and I'm sorry the joke was missed by some. That ore, once roasted and crushed, is essentially one kind of dirt, which bears iron when treated correctly though, which is still pretty amazing. Thanks for watching.
So how is charcoal made? I'd be interested in knowing how this process can be achieved starting from near scratch. The ancient blacksmiths had to have produced their charcoal somehow, along with the right kind of bricks and what-not for building the furnace.
Charcoal is carbon-containing material (usually wood) that has been heated without oxygen present.
Blacksmiths can use charcoal, but it really doesn't crank the BTUs the way coal does. Most effective blacksmithing uses anthracite or bitumen coal. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
Smelting likes charcoal because it does not burn efficiently and so some of the carbon from the charcoal is incorporated into the iron being smelted to form steel. Nice oven, nice new project. Cool.
Aiki Xtal Specific to the making of iron from ore, coal carries with it too many impurities. It's not about the heat, this furnace exceeds 2800F at the blast... but rather the chemistry.
lol, first video in the right hand column is a making charcoal vid
Look up primitive technology. He's got a video of a basic charcoal make. love that channel
the "dirt" is black sand. wich contains iron (and other impurities) and it's that iron (mixed with the carbon from the coal and some of the impurities) that makes steel. so the more sand, the bigger the bloom is going to be.
With a hot enough furnace, and good crucibles, one can reduce iron ore into metal... but not with the character and chemistry old-fashioned solid-state reduction produces.
It should be said that there is no good reason to do this, except in the pursuit of material that matches the old stuff. It's not needed for knives and swords, and there are smiths producing fantastic work with modern metal - but there's a charm in this stuff that's hard to replace, and cannot be bought - so we make it.
It's just dirt, all dirt as we call it is organic matter, silica and minerals, this process basically burns the organic, the silica becomes glass, and the left over minerals become a form of steel. The iron blends in with other foreign minerals that have to be beaten off to make the finished sword. The whole folding of blades was started as a way to push other minerals from the steel.
turning wood and dirt into steel amazing isn't it!! this means that if you are trained and patient even on a desert island you could have amazing tools!
If you go back and listen to Dr. Blue, this is very much the way wrought iron is made, but with the taller stack, more time at temperature, carbon can be built into the product, "wrought steel." The amount is dependent on many variables, most bladesmiths aim for 1-1.5% in the bloom, knowing it will come to down to 0.5-0.75 by the time a blade is finished through decarburization. It's not an exact science, but there are some obvious goals.
Man that looks awesome, making and doing things like this.
From what I understood... They pour iron sand in there, and charcoal. The charcoal at that temperature becomes a powder (carbon) and blends with the iron. Steel is essentially iron with a carbon content.
no what he means is you layer the iron ore, which is crushed into a powder, if it isnt already, and then you put charcoal on top of that and then put powder on top of that and so on so forth until you have a bloom of desired size.
very cool in a hot fashion, thanks for sharing
Raw Tamahagane is the large lump, the bloom extracted from the bottom of the furnace. The process of folding and welding, the manual cleaning process, is what produces a bar of steel that can be used to forge a blade with. This folding and welding is what produces the patterns typically seen in old japanese swords. Having done this myself several times, I'm not sure what the controversy is, Sadnessroams.
What you should end up with from this process once you have beaten the raw bloom a great deal is a material called ‘wrought iron’ to convert iron into steel (a compound of iron & carbon) is another step.
most beautiful thing i have seen so far involving fire
You know, I have no idea what the starting weight for ore was on this one, but given my experience with others, at least 2-3 times the weight of the bloom, and there was a good 50-60 pounds of metal or metallic fluff down there. I'd guess 150# or more of starting ore for this run, but this was a rather large furnace for a backyard smith. The current trend is smaller, clay-tube furnaces burning 50 pounds of ore to get 20 or so pounds of bloom, enough for 2 swords if everything goes right.
@bobo9345: the Tamahagane that was produced is worth more than $100/lb. (or more)... so they probably made $2,000 (or more) worth of very unique blade steel, that cannot be created in any other way. I have two small chunks auctioned off from this very batch, and one of them cost me $150.
Hey guys, thanks for a great video.
Awesome video. Nice to see Ric Furrer in a more layed back setting like this, and of course the awesome bloom. I'll be making a small scale tatara this winter hopefully, and this has helped a little bit (The sacrificial carbon for the bloom to expand.). Wish I was there.
I came here from Primitive Technology. Please you have to extract metal from iron bacteria too.
Walber Zar
me too!!! ive been trying to understand what iron bacteria is ...
these guys propably using bog iron or ore coming from mines.
I come from Primitive Technology something too! Iron from ore won't do for us. It has to be iron bacteria please!
Primitive Technology already did it, there's nothing to take further with it. The problem is the yield, as PT demonstrated. You would have to just keep doing what he did over and over till you yielded enough pellets to smelt into a solid mass. Would be impossible to go straight from the bacteria to steel without consolidating enough pellets, especially with all the slag that would come with that.
Cryptolocker thought that was iron not steel, has he already done steel? Pretty cool seeing everyone coming from the one channel 🤗
Though honestly if I ever go try the whole primitive thing I’d probably be too busy trying to get food and not starve to death to do any of this blacksmith stuff haha 😅
What would be awesome is a video putting together loads of smelting techniques from different cultures. I think some of the most interesting would be some of the african cultures, especially since most people have no idea how advanced they were.
Probably some basic forging, "puddlage" and so on would be cool too.
@vulkein black powder can be made from 3 relatively easy to find or produce elements.
You're right, and actually, at 1:43, the gentleman who just laid in the iron ore was talking about how the rhythm of the drums was a timing mechanism for older cultures to keep the right pace while feeding their furnaces.
This isn't meant to be the complete history of it, just one example filmed almost 7 years ago.
Its easy to find iron pebbles, just look for sand with with small reddish brown pebbles in it and use a neodymium magnet to pick it up. the stonger the pull the more iron content. be careful when melting these because they do pop and snap
Regular cement will work, but some sand in there will help.
I really enjoy this! thank you for putting this great video up!
Not to the steel directly, other than the cost of re-heating it again from cold is avoided, and you usually have help/spectators when smelting, so an extra set of hands or two are useful as well.
Black sands, rich in iron oxide, and magnetically separated from the quartz sand, would be a reasonable place to start. Yield depends greatly on the mix, though, and how bound up the iron is with impurities.
This is exactly that, but on a little smaller scale. The furnace master uses charcoal, not coke, to prevent impurities from getting into the metal.
I've made my own with low-tech materials, mainly silica, cement, and vermiculite. Some of the inner lining will always melt, as the furnace reaches equilibrium, and re-lining a more permanent furnace was not uncommon - but modern research into pre-industrial methods suggests simple clay furnaces tend to produce better steel and more consistent results than some of the more modern-material examples out there. This film shows just one experiment, and is not the end of the story.
dirt from the ground. They put it in layers between that and coal. The goal is to burn the dirt and the iron melts to form steel, and settles to the bottom of the furnace.
Ha Ha I thought the guy smashing up the charcoal was black until the camera zoomed back. Cool video. There is another video similar to this but the guy takes the hot bloom and immediately starts forging it into an ax.
At some point, one has to balance money against time. There are plenty of people making their own charcoal, if they have the time and timber to do it - but sometimes it's easier just to buy it and focus your time on the furnace and steel-making.
Wonderful video! Thank you for sharing this!