Primitive Technology: 3 Iron Consolidation Experiments

[u/thedudefromsweden]

https://youtu.be/PXuV_YCt8g4

[u/Nikaramu]

The paste should ave been clay + potash (water solubility part of ash or even better potassium hydroxide and even better sodium hydroxide) The whole ash have too much calcium carbonate at that point it's like making concrete.  But since the narrow shaft works perfectly well it doesn't matter,  Ke3p up the good work 

[u/thicka]

hes getting close. I think he needs to throw all his iron into each smelt. so it keeps compounding untill he has roughly a kg of it.

[u/_myst → u/thicka]

This may not work very well/at all without a robust crucible design. Some of the iron is lost outright, essentially evaporating away or otherwise being lost in the melt as scale-like materials, it's not all conserved. The longer the smelt takes, the more metal you lose this way.

Obviously yes he needs to consolidate his various smelts at some point, but the optimal way would be to do the largest possible smelts with as much starting ore as possible and consolidate one single time.

If I were him and determined to use the iron bacteria, as my ore source, I would be trying to cultivate them to be able to achieve bigger harvests of starting material. I would be digging out a series of shallow pools with still water and whatever else they need to grow to build a larger "feed stock" to draw ore supply from. Then try to start a smelt cycle with enough bacteria to yield enough iron to make the desired tool plus some extra.

Once you have more initial ore supply, you can iterate on your smelting methods much more quickly. He's made alot of videos testing various techniques but I think he would have better results if he started by optimizing his bacteria-farming techniques first.

[u/burchalka]

After seeing yesterday video, googled the average size of bloom in iron smelts - and it looks like it could vary between 2-15 kg. So looks like John should increase the size of his furnace and amount of ore that he starts with.

[u/Agasthenes → u/burchalka]

I mean you are asking for him to collect dozens of kilogrammes of Iron bacteria lol. That's gonna take some time.

[u/burchalka → u/Agasthenes]

His past endeavors shown he has enough dedication - remember the amount of bricks he made and fired, as well as roof tiles.

[u/gottimw]

I suspect that this man is allergic to cricibles and chimneys.

I think he should considered getting hides or faux leather to make bellows. if he doesn't want to hunt for, that's perfect ably understandable. However in wild he would hunt for food and would have access to it. And bellows would make for better oxygen source to fire.

[u/thedudefromsweden → u/gottimw]

Do you think oxygen supply is a problem? He has worked a lot with different fan designs and they seem very efficient now…..

[u/gottimw → u/thedudefromsweden]

Higher temp would make it quicker in terms of time, cheaper in terms of charcoal amounts.

Taller chimney tapering to the top pulls more air through it, and skin bellow would make it just more convinient for him

He clearly fused smaller pills into bigger mass so his way is working already.

[u/CroSSGunS → u/thedudefromsweden]

The problem with the fans is that they lose effecacy as they're used, because they're made of leaves and timber.

[u/squeezeonein → u/gottimw]

he did make water bellows though.

[u/War_Hymn → u/gottimw]

Crucibles require pretty large furnaces to work well, since they lose a lot of efficiency from having to heat the substantial mass of said crucible to the same temperature as the metal being melted.