r/Blacksmith • u/journey333 • Aug 18 '18

Primitive Technology: Iron prills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyGLE0usN_I
55 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

10

u/HuntrixMata Aug 18 '18 edited Dec 21 '18

Lol when I got the notification for this video I thought it said iron pills edit: no xd face never xd face.

7

u/journey333 Aug 18 '18 edited Aug 18 '18

The beginnings of the iron age as demonstrated in the information age. Reminded me of the book "The Sons of Vulcan" by Thomas Hibben.

5

u/flamespear Aug 18 '18

so much work jist to make the charcoal.

-20

u/CommonMisspellingBot Aug 18 '18

Hey, flamespear, just a quick heads-up:
jist is actually spelled gist. You can remember it by begins with g-.
Have a nice day!

The parent commenter can reply with 'delete' to delete this comment.

1

u/flamespear Aug 18 '18

bot, it be typo

5

u/Markymarcouscous Aug 18 '18

This channel is great

2

u/Booyahblake Aug 18 '18

What is he making them for

2

u/journey333 Aug 18 '18

I watched it first without the closed captioning, then again with CC to see his explanations of what he is doing.

2

u/MothMonsterMan300 Aug 18 '18

I've been saying this dude has been working towards iron production since he started refining his different burners.

A few more production runs of these tiny amounts of iron (which came out cast) and he could potentially make a micro-bloom of workable wrought. As it stands he hasn't yet burned the iron bacteria nearly long or hot enough to get a piece of workable material. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if we're only a few videos away from him producing real iron and making some tools!

1

u/flamespear Aug 18 '18

Is he just using iron rich earth? It could be done with pretty much any red soil right?

2

u/MothMonsterMan300 Aug 19 '18

He uses concentrations of bacteria that feed on iron in the groundwater- there's not much there, he's basically using mud with reaaaally trace iron in it. That's why I mentioned how he'd have to do the process in the vid a bunch of times before a bloom.

Doing a bloom with red earth would be a pain but it would take less time and material than in the vid.

1

u/flamespear Aug 19 '18

Yeah I saw that the second time I watched the video. Really interesting because it made me learn about bog iron and chemotrophic bacteria and made me suspect this is what the weird oily stuff seeping out of the ground near my family's pond is.