On October 6th and 7th, a group of a handful intrepid experimental archaeologists took 200# of charcoal, 50# of iron ore, a shop-vac and some hardware and successfully smelted iron.
The bloom we obtained looks remarkably pure and almost cast (although we didn’t likely reach those sort of temperatures), but is magnetic and therefore is iron.
Please come in and explore. There will be more pictures added soon and for those interested in the larger project of the transfer of technologies from the old to the new worlds, see this link.
We hope to replicate the success here at the 2007 Penn State Medieval Fair in May.
