Bloomery Furnace

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This is pretty much what came out of the furnace. Did I not let it burn down all the way maybe?

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this is basically what we pounded down from the 50 lbs of magnetite, and the rest was strewn around in the carnage of the cement blocks when I went through it with a magnet to find anything magnetic.

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I'm just posting fire porn now, my friend insisted on using his new $2000 DSLR lens on this. I'm surprised he held that thing over the top on a rickety ladder to get this shot.

>>1136784
I have absolutely no advice to give, but shit looks dope. Nice work. Shame it didn't function properly.

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>>1136813
yeah it is a shame, but last time it was more of a this looks cool lets do it and spent $180 bucks between 4 people. This time we are gonna do a proper clay brick with fire mortar or hand formed fire clay furnace and it'll end up costing us about $400 or more this time. might also get a crucible and just chuck it in there near the end so we can do some casting. I've been reading up on it as well and looking into the chemistry side how to get the most yield.
>pic is why we are going to use bricks or clay

>>1136784

sorry for off-topic, but your bamboo looks awesome and dense as fuck. I'm in the process of starting mine.

did you trench in the plastic bamboo barrier around it or just cut / mow it?

any other facts that you can share about it or the layout / upkeep?

I'm zone 6, so I'm hoping mine makes it over 20 feet tall and doesn't spread out of my woods (think I'm going to do the barrier)

>>1136890
That bamboo is older than me, an old Chinese lady planted it and it took over about an acre of land. All we do is clean the edge to make it stop before the lawn. I'll tell you it's been useful tho. It's almost all one plant that has roots that spread so you gotta take a shovel and dig out the spreaders

>>1136918
how has it been useful? Just for privacy, or do you make stuff out of it?

>>1136924
Ball game net poles, practice weapons for martial arts, supports beams for diy stuff, levers, walking sticks, things you'd think bamboos is good for. Plan on making a chair and a couple of mugs out of it in the future. It's green all year though and the fucking deer herd ( 40 deer) live in my yard cause easy food. My species grows at least 3 ft tall in a week from a sprout

>>1136808
I'd wanna take pictures of fire too if I had just spent $2,000 on a lense

Are there really no anons that have done this successfully before? I'd think a few of you who blacksmith would be interested in this?

>>1137074
I'm interested and do blacksmithing, but its a different enough skill set to foundry work for it to be a little out of what I know.
About my only real advice would be to-
>Look at smaller project to experiment = cheaper
>Refac cement and heat bricks to tolerate 1800C + temperatures

Once you've got a smaller unit to work, try upscaling the whole lot to a larger one

>>1137084
One of the issues is that I did it too cheap and it contributed to ruining the bloom as the cement melted and Incorporated itself in the metal

>>1137099
If the cement melted into the bloom I don't see why you would have a lack of Slag. Surely there is enough silica in the cement

>>1137693
It doesn't have the right chemical composition or flow to be slag, it just sits on the outside gumming everything up

>>1136937
I wonder if bamboo would make good charcoal... I'm seriously wondering if your coal for charcoal substitution caused you issues. If you're doing all that work and are that willing to do it all yourself, go on and make some charcoal too.

>>1137770
I put some lime in to neutralize the sulfur that's in the coal, but outside of the sulfur anthracite is essentially pure carbon, which is the same a charcoal. That's why I thought it would be okay. I don't have the time or the want to purchase enough wood to make 300 lbs of charcoal when I can get 300 lbs of coal for $45. Bamboo could prob be turned into charcoal but I don't think the quality would be good.

>>1136784
>We also used 200lbs of anthracite coal instead of charcoal to keep price down and I'm not sure if that was an okay move.

you'd have just added a shit-tonne of phosphorus and sulphur into your iron, along with carbon. Charcoal works are is very pure carbon, whereas coal

What would probably make a "short" wrought iron, which means it crumbles easily, instead of staying together.

It also looks like you didnt let it burn down entirely.

>>1137824
I used Kimmel nut coal from tractor supply and that's from Pennsylvania mines. No where have I ever seen there being high quantities if any Phosphorus in anthricite and even then the sulfur content is maybe 1% max in anthricite. Unless I'm really highly underestimating the amount of sulfur and the amount of lime I used to offset the sulfur content was insufficient to convert the free sulfur inti sulfur dioxide and leaves with the CO and CO2.

Also we rushed towards the end as hurricane Matthew was on the east coast and faked us out. Damn hurricane blue balled us

>>1136784
Bump for interest op. I wanna learn more about this myself.