Preparation for CanIRON 8 Demo (11-06-10 Smelt)

The DARC team, under Neil Peterson, will be conducting an open public demonstration of iron smelting as part of CanIRON 8, the Canadian National Blacksmiths Conference. In preparation for this demo, the next several smelts will be used to bring the working team up to full speed on our Econo Norse test bed furnace.

The first of these working production style smelts was held on Saturday November 6. Neil was the smelt master, Richard Schwietzer was the assistant. (I kept to the background and tried just to make suggestions and make notes on equipment.)

The smelt used 24 kg of ganular hematite, resulting in a very compact 8.5 kg bloom. This was spark tested and looks to be a high carbon metal.

A short photo essay on the building of the furnace is available on the main Wareham Forge iron smelting documentation.

Very nice work by Neil and Richard!