DARC at CanIRON 8 - Iron Smelting Demo

Join a team from DARC on Thursday July 28 for a public demonstration of bloomery furnace iron smelting!
This is a FREE attendance part of the larger CanIRON 8, the Canadian national blacksmith's conference.


The event takes place at the Wellington County Sportsplex, 550 Belsyde Ave, Fergus Ontario.
How to get there

Demonstration starts at roughly 9 AM, with the construction of an 'Econo Norse' style furnace. This furnace type is quick and easy to build out of commonly available materials.


Preheat is expected to start about 10 - 10:30, with full smelting sequence starting about 11 - 12 noon.
The smelt will proceed over the afternoon, with final extraction of the bloom planned for about 5 pm.

The DARC smelt team will consist of:
Neil Peterson - Smelt Master
Richard Schweitzer - Lead Hand
Dave Cox - Loader

Come Join Us!

DARC at CanIRON 8 - Preparation Smelt REPORT

- is now available on the main Wareham Forge Iron smelting web site :

http://www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/June-11/report11-11.html

DARC at CanIRON 8 - Preparation Smelt

- June 11 at Wareham
Smeltmaster - Neil Peterson
Lead Hand - Richard Schweitzer
Loader - Sam Falzone

Furnace - Econo Norse (standard set up)
Ore - untested rock ore from Bratton's Run, near Lexington Virginia
Amount - estimated at roughly 23 kg
Bloom - 2.65 nice soft iron

Slag tap 2/3 through sequence

Neil peeks while Richard loads

Compacted and sliced bloom

Full smelt report with images is now available on the main Wareham Forge Iron Smelting Documentation:
June 11 / 11 Report

Rocks melt good!

Saturday was our last practice smelt before the CanIron presentation on July 28.

A nice simple smelt using the econo-norse-in-a-can design, that was extremely well behaved giving us no grief at all until the very end when we went to pull the bloom.

We need to finish up the notes and add this (and other) smelts to the website but around 26 Kg of Virginia rock ore were melted down into a bloom that consolidated down to around 5.5 lbs.

Hopefully we can get a photo or two posted onto the blog soon.

Neil

Demonstration IRON SMELT : June 11

- The Dark Ages Re-creation Company will be mounting a demonstration IRON SMELT at the upcoming CanIRON 8 (Fergus, Thursday July 28)

http://www.ontarioblacksmiths.ca/CANIRON8/demonstrator/darc.html

The preparation / test smelt for this will take place on our normal
spring smelt weekend :

Saturday June 11
Wareham Ontario
Demonstration start time: 9 AM
Expected extraction time : 5 PM

Neil Peterson will be smelt master, demonstration team is Dave Cox, Sam Falezone and Richard Schweitzer.

Those interested in attending the June session can undertake the role of the general
public. This may mean that there may also be roles available as part of a
'hands on' aspect to the demonstration.

The smelter to be constructed is the Econo Norse type (firebrick with
sand packing). This is a modern system using easily available parts in its construction.
http://www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/EconoNorse/index.html


In addition there will be some general grunt work to be undertaken, required to prepare materials for the two smelts. Smashing charcoal being one task. Breaking rock ore would be very
helpful.

Following the CanIRON pattern, this June 11 demonstration intended to be a ONE DAY
sequence.

How to get to Wareham?
http://www.warehamforge.ca/directions

Travel to Bristol RI

Hija!
Snorri here.

As many know, I am by far the most travelled member of DARC. My most recent adventure was accompanying Darrell (Ketill) to Bristol Rhode Island. The purpose was to run an iron smelting workshop with archaeology and material sciences students from Brown University. The activities took place at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, with DARC's good friend Kevin Smith.

The trip down was uneventful, despite rainy weather. Here I am at the Duty Free at Fort Erie, grabbing a last Tim Horton's coffee before negotiating US Customs :


Now the purpose of the entire trip was to guide the students through building and firing a typical Norse styled Short Shaft bloomery iron furnace. Here I am helping to start the pre-heat / drying fire at the end of build day. The students were off smashing ore at this point, leaving me to manage the fire :


The next day (Saturday) was the smelt itself. This turned out to be a saga of pushed in tuyeres and massive slag tapping - a tale better told by Darrell. It pissed down rain that whole day, and generally was pretty miserable. Not having a direct role in the smelt activities, I wisely 'kept out of the rain'...

Sunday started warm and sunny, at least while I supervised Darrell packing up. Of course we Norsemen completely disregarded the *day* which turned out to be some high holiday for the Christians! By the time we finished packing, it was the middle of the afternoon, and we found almost everything was closed up tight. I was dearly wanting to go look at the Newport Tower, but Darrell had yet to have more than coffee that day, and whined about the 45 minute drive over to Newport and back again. So we just set off to return to Wareham.

Well the further we travelled from Bristol, the worse the weather got. Fatigued from his week of teaching, Darrell was more than ready to stop by the time we made Springfield Mass.

You know how tight Ketill is with his silver, right?
Not to 'waste' money on a major motel (which might have had a relaxing hot pool or something), he picked a small, kind of run down, place, well off the main highway. Asking for a non-smoking room, he ended up with what you are going to see below :


And yes, that is a Mirror on the Ceiling.
And yes, that is a round bed on a raised platform.

And NO we did NOT sleep in the same bed.
I hid out in the bathroom - with the door locked. (no ERGAY!)

'The head rests best in its own hall.'

Bead Weekend

May 7 and 8 we will be building new bead furnaces for the summer, and spending some torch time practicing bead making skills on modern torches.

Gathering is up at Darrell's place. Please email for details

Neil