That's extremely impressive even given the very rough result.
Seems like a really inefficient iron source though. Painstaking to collect and apparently 3% yields.
The method needs a lot of refinement which means trial and error, I bet he could get a really basic crucible steel, or at least a workable iron with the right setup but that would take ages if it takes a month to collect enough raw ore for one tiny run like this. Dude needs a tribe so he can send the dumb ones off to up scoop goop while he does the complicated stuff.
there just arent any good sources, really, besides scrap, which is outside of the rules for his project. even real iron mining is the same, they just process literally millions and millions of pounds of rock a day.
He already "cheated" with the blower - iron age workers would have used leather bellows to heat the coals. He is also solo, early iron age bog iron sites were usually worked by small settlements and villages, and would do large amounts of the rusty water, over time. Viking's main source of iron early on was this method, and they'd dig up bogs to get to it, to scale up production, he's just scooping from a surface source.
He would get better results if he worked the result with heat, and hammers. But he'd have to make an anvil and a hammer, first.
He could scale up and refine the process. Maybe he will. But he proved he could do it, which is a win for him and his project. He could set up multiples of the clay barrels he's using to produce the iorn bearing sludge, if there's enough sources there to do it. Imagine if he had 20 barrels.
I know nothing about metal.
Will there be an actual way for him to get an appreciable amount of bog iron, and what kind of implements could he actually make with it?
I have heated mild steel with a propane torch red hot and still couldnt hammer it into a different shape, so this bog iron must be a lot shittier right?
If you check Wikipedia, you might get your answer.
Want to know what pig iron is used for? For turning it into something that isn't pig iron, that is its only purpose. Its only practical use for pig iron is to make it cease to exist.
Bog iron isn't steel. It's brittle iron. You can make all kinds of things out of it, like the Vikings did, but it's still just a more brittle form of iron. Do you not know the difference between iron and steel?
The one thing he couldn't do, because of his self-implemented rules, is work the bog iron with heat and hammers, to make it less brittle, and to work it, to get better use out of it. The vikings only source of iron was bog iron, and they sailed the world with it, using it for nails, tools, and weapons. But they'd learned to work it properly.
are you sure it was mild steel? Mild steel should deform pretty easily at red heat.
Anyway, cast iron is way harder than mild steel because of the way higher carbon content. Mild steel is like 0.25% and cast iron is often as high as 3%, though it's impossible to tell what he made without getting some actual testing done.
You can kind of anneal cast iron, and it actually could be done in a campfire, you only need like 900c to reach the transformation range. It's done regularly in industry to make it easier to machine cast iron parts and remove internal stresses from structural castings. I'm not sure but I bet it's way less forgiving than steel though, if you're not careful enough and don't bring the temperature up smoothly and evenly enough you'd probably crack it.
I see this, and read about other people attempting similar things - And I can't help but wonder why they don't simply grind and re-smelt the slag.
Seriously. It's already enriched in iron. You could do several iterations of smelting the slag and it would be way easier than picking through the slag for the bits of iron.
Breaking the slag open and picking out the chunks of iron is one of the less labour intensive parts of the process ultimately. He does apparently add the bits that have iron deposits that are too small to form prills back to the next batch so it's not wasted, but doing multiple runs just to make the prills bigger isn't worth it. You lose some of your material each melt too, and when you're working with amounts this small that's significant.
Am i blind or where does he say it took a month to collect the ore? There is a shit ton of this bacteria where i live is there any possibility of making money? when i say shit ton i mean like its literally everywhere in every stream an river an bog and swamp and puddle for hundreds of miles in each direction
There may be a niche for selling bog iron "ore" to hobbyists messing around, but it's readily available for harvest everywhere and that's part of the fun when making your own iron I would guess.
Maybe maybe your own iron and sell trinkets to women on etsy or at ren fairs.
next logical step is tamahagane - steel / iron from black volcanic sand. He has done almost everything else required for that. Traditional japanese method. May require a second person to tend the smelter in shifts
He doesn't have the consistent heat to make steel. His brittle cast iron is the best he can do without some serious upgrades to his smelting process. He's not getting steel done with a bloomery, he needs a blast furnace for that.
I see this, and read about other people attempting similar things - And I can't help but wonder why they don't simply grind and re-smelt the slag.
Seriously. It's already enriched in iron. You could do several iterations of smelting the slag and it would be way easier than picking through the slag for the bits of iron.
If he can get more iron and refine it further. Then he could possibly magnetize it by percussion. Making several weak mangets and stacking them up. He can make a stronger magnet by rubbing the stacked magents over a bar. Then use this magnet to get black iron oxide from sand.
gay
Creating bacteria entirely out of knives then?
Nice
I wonder where he goes from here, because that clearly took a TON of time, and it sets a precedent too.
Not sure his fans will be happy if he starts going back making more shitty huts.
With iron age unlocked he will need more villagers to rush wonder
That's extremely impressive even given the very rough result.
Seems like a really inefficient iron source though. Painstaking to collect and apparently 3% yields.
The method needs a lot of refinement which means trial and error, I bet he could get a really basic crucible steel, or at least a workable iron with the right setup but that would take ages if it takes a month to collect enough raw ore for one tiny run like this. Dude needs a tribe so he can send the dumb ones off to up scoop goop while he does the complicated stuff.
I feel like there's enough excess heat energy that he could automate the impeller with steam
there just arent any good sources, really, besides scrap, which is outside of the rules for his project. even real iron mining is the same, they just process literally millions and millions of pounds of rock a day.
He already "cheated" with the blower - iron age workers would have used leather bellows to heat the coals. He is also solo, early iron age bog iron sites were usually worked by small settlements and villages, and would do large amounts of the rusty water, over time. Viking's main source of iron early on was this method, and they'd dig up bogs to get to it, to scale up production, he's just scooping from a surface source.
He would get better results if he worked the result with heat, and hammers. But he'd have to make an anvil and a hammer, first.
He could scale up and refine the process. Maybe he will. But he proved he could do it, which is a win for him and his project. He could set up multiples of the clay barrels he's using to produce the iorn bearing sludge, if there's enough sources there to do it. Imagine if he had 20 barrels.
>But he'd have to make an anvil and a hammer, first.
A flat and a round boulder
you can work blooms with a wooden hammer.
you just need a lot of wooden hammers
Jesus frick 10 hours of sharpening
Definitely appreciate having a steel knife when PrepHole now
He could have annealed it, sharpened, and hardened again. He was probably sharpening case-hardened steel on not very gritty stones.
You're a fricking idiot with a dunning Krueger level metallurgy.
Are you mad someone made a joke fr no cap?
>pretending to be moronic
Haven’t seen that one in a while
How to explain to a fricking moron that bog iron isn't steel...and that you can't anneal iron in a campfire...
I know nothing about metal.
Will there be an actual way for him to get an appreciable amount of bog iron, and what kind of implements could he actually make with it?
I have heated mild steel with a propane torch red hot and still couldnt hammer it into a different shape, so this bog iron must be a lot shittier right?
If you check Wikipedia, you might get your answer.
Want to know what pig iron is used for? For turning it into something that isn't pig iron, that is its only purpose. Its only practical use for pig iron is to make it cease to exist.
>If you check Wikipedia, you might get your answer.
Thats one way to say "i dont know"
What the frick does pig iron have to do with this thread? Or are you just spastically pounding out useless trivia because autism?
homie fried his brain on too much Dwarf Fortress
Bog iron isn't steel. It's brittle iron. You can make all kinds of things out of it, like the Vikings did, but it's still just a more brittle form of iron. Do you not know the difference between iron and steel?
The one thing he couldn't do, because of his self-implemented rules, is work the bog iron with heat and hammers, to make it less brittle, and to work it, to get better use out of it. The vikings only source of iron was bog iron, and they sailed the world with it, using it for nails, tools, and weapons. But they'd learned to work it properly.
are you sure it was mild steel? Mild steel should deform pretty easily at red heat.
Anyway, cast iron is way harder than mild steel because of the way higher carbon content. Mild steel is like 0.25% and cast iron is often as high as 3%, though it's impossible to tell what he made without getting some actual testing done.
You can kind of anneal cast iron, and it actually could be done in a campfire, you only need like 900c to reach the transformation range. It's done regularly in industry to make it easier to machine cast iron parts and remove internal stresses from structural castings. I'm not sure but I bet it's way less forgiving than steel though, if you're not careful enough and don't bring the temperature up smoothly and evenly enough you'd probably crack it.
Breaking the slag open and picking out the chunks of iron is one of the less labour intensive parts of the process ultimately. He does apparently add the bits that have iron deposits that are too small to form prills back to the next batch so it's not wasted, but doing multiple runs just to make the prills bigger isn't worth it. You lose some of your material each melt too, and when you're working with amounts this small that's significant.
>campfire
how to explain that if you can melt something you can also anneal at a cooler temp
Collecting the iron oxide from water took a month, the smelting took 4 hours. Obvious bottleneck, gotta find something else.
>in 2 years has steam engine pumping groundwater
>irrigation, indoor plumbing and fire-suppression
>spaceflight begins in 2027
Bog Iron was used in lots of parts of the world as the main source of iron, up til the middle ages.
Am i blind or where does he say it took a month to collect the ore? There is a shit ton of this bacteria where i live is there any possibility of making money? when i say shit ton i mean like its literally everywhere in every stream an river an bog and swamp and puddle for hundreds of miles in each direction
There may be a niche for selling bog iron "ore" to hobbyists messing around, but it's readily available for harvest everywhere and that's part of the fun when making your own iron I would guess.
Maybe maybe your own iron and sell trinkets to women on etsy or at ren fairs.
next logical step is tamahagane - steel / iron from black volcanic sand. He has done almost everything else required for that. Traditional japanese method. May require a second person to tend the smelter in shifts
He doesn't have the consistent heat to make steel. His brittle cast iron is the best he can do without some serious upgrades to his smelting process. He's not getting steel done with a bloomery, he needs a blast furnace for that.
I see this, and read about other people attempting similar things - And I can't help but wonder why they don't simply grind and re-smelt the slag.
Seriously. It's already enriched in iron. You could do several iterations of smelting the slag and it would be way easier than picking through the slag for the bits of iron.
If he can get more iron and refine it further. Then he could possibly magnetize it by percussion. Making several weak mangets and stacking them up. He can make a stronger magnet by rubbing the stacked magents over a bar. Then use this magnet to get black iron oxide from sand.
uranium when