Iron

Today I happened to sit through a class on iron by Kettil (Darrell Markewitz).

He talked about sources of iron, the basic processes to extract ore and turn it into iron, softer (easier to work), vs hard (holds an edge but brittle) and how both would be incorporated into things like knives or axes.

He also talked about the quality of iron produced and showed objects to demonstrate how it was used.

The most striking figure for me (Auðr) was the average amount of iron per person in a household: 2 kg. What that meant was you would have a personal knife but not much more. A ship needed around 2000 nails. Your household would likely have an axe, maybe some metal-edged farming implements, a cooking pot, and possibly  a bit more stuff like a cauldron hangar, pan or fork, depending on the size of the household. Things like fry pans and forks may have had wooden handles. A shovel would be wood with just a metal edge on the digging part.

Darrell has literally tons of experience making iron. 

2,500 kg of ore used

Just under 5,000 kg of charcoal

81 blooms totalling over 475 kg of iron

72 furnaces (some of which were reused for more than one smelt)

95 smelts

36 different kinds of ore

20 different kinds of furnaces to explore different styles and techniques based archeological remains

16 different kinds of air sources

He has a book coming out later this year to document his 25 years of historical iron smelting and what we expect to be over 100 smelts by the time of publication. Until then, you might be interested in one of his other books:

 

• Turf to Tools
  
• How Dense Are You?