Kaðlín has finished warping up the loom and begun weaving. She's got 4 inches and counting now...
On Monday we repeated the bead melt. The furnace had no problems with the second heat. In our first attempt last week, the wind caused the beads to cool too fast and break before we could anneal them.
Today there was no wind! Today we managed to make all but two of the beads survive. Several visitors and staff had the chance to try and make a bead (many of them decorated). For Hrobjartr and Ragnarr it was very much a successful experiment. More pictures will follow.
"It was this big", or maybe "Bless this bloom" - Ketill caught during one of the explanations he gave on saturday as the smelt progressed. It was a wonderful thing to be able to run a smelt on the same ground where the vikings did it a thousand years ago - using tools and techniques that we reasonably believe the Norse used. And we wound up with a workable bloom of iron.
Thorgeir working with the spring pole lathe to turn a bowl while Jorunn makes use of the carving bench to work some wood.
Grimbold explaining to the visitors how a spring pole lathe works and the products that can be produced on one.
Cousin IT or perhaps Grettir Blackhands working on breaking charcoal to the correct size for the smelt that was held on Saturday. More on that later but it was indeed a big success.
Two more days remain!
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