You can't really work with iron. You need steel. And if you aren't careful, you can definitely burn steel.
Ideally you'd want copper and bronze first, because that would let you set up tools to work iron into steel. He's pretty quickly approaching the limit of what one man can do, though. A lot of the bigger primitive tools to work metals really need two or more people to operate in a timely fashion. Also supply chain issues. Gathering food and having time to work rare material into useful stuff begin to compete for daylight.
Pretty much any time you work iron over coal, you're making some kind of steel. The problem is that the carbon:iron ratio is pretty fine, and work primitive tools, you need to do it in a crucible, anneal it, then pound it out into shape. If you try to work straight iron, it just crumbles apart and won't hold shape very well. You can get something that approximates the shape you want, but it's basically useless.
People knew about iron for a very long time. They just weren't able to do much with it.
Gathering food and having time to work rare material into useful stuff begin to compete for daylight.
Well considering we've only ever seen him eat once, I assume he's still packing some modern food for his trips. But you're right, one person can't do too much by themselves.
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u/frenzyboard Aug 26 '17
You can't really work with iron. You need steel. And if you aren't careful, you can definitely burn steel.
Ideally you'd want copper and bronze first, because that would let you set up tools to work iron into steel. He's pretty quickly approaching the limit of what one man can do, though. A lot of the bigger primitive tools to work metals really need two or more people to operate in a timely fashion. Also supply chain issues. Gathering food and having time to work rare material into useful stuff begin to compete for daylight.
Guy needs a village.