Hammered Out Bits: Recent Workings : Documenting Smelt # 90

Wind & Weathering :

air delivery & long term
erosion

Darrell Markewitz, with contributions by Neil
Peterson

Experimental Iron Smelt : October 30, 2021


Introduction : The SMELT
For the last bloomery iron smelt of the 2021 season, a standard
pattern furnace was constructed, then fired using a typical
sequence. There were two primary goals to this experiment :

WIND – The recent acquisition of a high quality air flow
meter allowed for precise and frequent measurements of the actual
‘in line’ delivery of air into the working furnace. A by-pass
system allowed for the shifting to human powered bellows at a
number of points, also with accurate recording of volumes
produced.

WEATHERING – A new furnace was constructed on a clean sand
pad, set to one side of the main smelting area. Photographic and
video recordings were made of the extraction sequence. The remains
of the furnace and the resulting debris field will be exposed to
weather, and the aging documented as the features erode. The
intent is to continue these observations over the next ten years. 

Those who have been following my research into early bloomery iron smelting methods have seen a progressive shift into a more academic style of documentation over the years. Wind and Weathering is a total of over 6500 words, illustrated with over 50 images, a dozen tables and graphs, plus 14 minutes of video. Work started on this report in later December, and through to mid January, between research, writing, image preparation, data sorting to graph creation, then finally formatting and coding for publishing on to the web site.