Historical iron smelting from hematite.

In this video, I show the iron smelting process in the early medieval bloomery furnace. We used 24 kg of the hematite ore and 16 kg of charcoal. The whole process took 6 hours. 1 hour for preheating the furnace, 4 hours for charging, and 1 hour for burning down after the last ore charge. The weight of the iron bloom was 6.2 kg.

[@johnmcallister5736]

well done. beautiful bloom of iron!

[@SheaWiddler]

just rewatched yalls older video! neat to see what stayed the same and what changed. great job!

[@ShrekMeBe]

Amongst the better smelts (and I've watched several), probably due to the use of bricks and good bellows. Good slag drain allowed them to compact the bloom in situ, plus to hammer it longer due to embedded charcoal still burning.

[@Max-ek4dn]

God i love iron blooms so much. Thx for postin

[@IrishBloomeryIron]

Nice bloom and great yield!

[@trisceleforge3982]

Looks like lovely iron

[@raff83]

Wspaniale tak się cofnąć w czasie, chociaż na chwilę.

[@AndrzejGieraltCreative]

So cool. Are those wooden stumps and wooden mallets?? I assumed you'd need some kind of metal anvil and hammer to beat the bloom :O

[@officinaferraria]

The very first bloom compaction is perform using wooden tools.

[@jsmythib]

Aside from all the amazingly cool parts of this process, I was just wondering if instead of a bucket of water to cool it off, use a small bathtub full of water. Because after a hard day of that, youll need a bath! Cheers :)

[@officinaferraria]

Tea, i prepared water to make a tea:-)

[@cristianbene-y8r]

Are you gonna start making video regulary again ? I really like your work.

[@officinaferraria]

This is a plan...But now I have much less time becouse of baby:-).

[@thierrycombot7110]

It seems that all these videos were made during public expositions. Is it possible to go to see you (or similar other) perform such historical mettalurgy in Poland?

[@officinaferraria]

Sure, there is several events i participate every year. For details pls send me e-mail.

[@qsikbk1]

Do you have an Etsy store or a website where you sell your beautiful creations?

[@officinaferraria]

No, sorry

[@TheRealCommanderPug]

Cool stuff. What do you do with all that iron?

[@officinaferraria]

Look at my videos in bloomery iron playlist.

[@TheRealCommanderPug]

@@officinaferraria ok 👍 thanks

[@barbarismoeuropeo1086]

excellent work. where to get the ore?

[@officinaferraria]

You can collect it yourself. Were fo u live?

[@barbarismoeuropeo1086]

@@officinaferraria im live Spain

[@deniskhafizov6827]

shouldn't this thing stand on a raft?

[@abdulnasir7637]

We have slage contain 55% Fe and 26% SiO2...we are looming for buyer

[@Rush9924]

Is no one gonna talk about that it’s still on fire

[@ShrekMeBe]

Compacting it while on site has added pieces of charcoal that continued burning and maintaining the bloom hot for longer. Also, good draining of slag and just the right intensity of air with those 2 bellows.