Making a wood ash-insulated furnace for smelting iron

[garethb2]

Originally published at: Making a wood ash-insulated furnace for smelting iron | Boing Boing

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[MadLibrarian]

Several times he used a scoop instead of pouring directly from a container, or hands instead of a scoop. I don’t know what makes the difference.

[mick129]

Turn on the subtitles for his commentary on each part. It says he used the scoop because that batch of ash hadn’t cooled down enough yet.

[MadLibrarian]

TY; I was having subtitle problems.

[politeruin]

@garethb2

continues his advance into the iron age

Paging @VeronicaConnor

[CraigLandrum]

Long-time fans of his fully expect that he will one day manage to construct a complete 747 jet and fly out of the woods. The guy is amazing and his videos are a work of art.

[MarkDow]

For comparison to the 34 grams yield, global iron ore consumption was about 2.05 billion metric tons in 2020, which works out to about 262 kg/person per year. That’s about 720 grams per day.

[VeronicaConnor]

@politeruin

@garethb2

continues his advance into the iron age

Paging @VeronicaConnor

Haha, I almost commented, but I’ve written enough about that particular topic here over the years.

Edit: Geez, even more than I thought. A quick search revealed the same rant three times. I need to get out more.

After two years of silence, Primitive Technology returns to build a new thatched workshop

His channel is neat, but I think a lot of people watch for a greater narrative arc that isn’t there. People kept waiting for him to go Bronze Age or Iron Age but if you watch long enough, you find him redoing the same kinds of projects over and over. That’s when I lost interest. He does experiment with different kinds of furnaces and such over the years and he did attempt to work with bacterial iron deposits he found in a creek, but he quickly realized the limits of a mud furnace in the attempt …

Creating a knife using iron bacteria

People have been harping on the poor guy to move up the tech tree for years. What they don’t understand though is that he’s gone about as high as you can before you start to need a civilization. The copper, bronze, and iron ages were based on regional trade and specialization. One person cannot mine ore, smelt it, forge it, sharpen it, and hone it for a reasonable amount of effort, even if you are lucky enough to have viable deposits on your land which could be mined. Each step in that process f…

Catching up with the Primitive Technology channel

And therein is the crux of our entire way of life. Civilization arose once we developed methods of food production that were efficient enough that some people in the group didn’t have to spend all their time acquiring food. That opened the door to ever increasing task specialization, which in turn leads to even more efficiencies. That’s still the path we’re on to day. I used to love PT, but actually stopped for the reasons another commenter mentioned. I always assumed he was in a forward trajec…

[fuzzyfungus]

For extra fun it’s mostly consumed in the form of relatively fiddly alloys, which does the difficulty no good at all.

Iron has the virtue of being very abundant compared to copper and tin(especially tin; the bronze age Mediterranean wasn’t sourcing the stuff from Cornwall because bronze age Atlantic sailing was safe and fun); but it’s not much to write home about as a pure metal and it’s properties are all over the place with even comparatively subtle changes in impurities or processes; lots of versatility if you’ve got reasonably advanced metallurgy; lots of unpredictability and product variation if you don’t.

[politeruin]

I, for one, always enjoyed reading that particular rant.

[robertmckenna]

Yeah, but putting them together like that, reminds us that you are profoundly right.

In a way which doesn’t preclude enjoying his videos by the way.

[hecep]

Or use the iron to make a knife and then use it to hijack a 747.

[knoxblox]

It really puts into perspective how prized good metalworkers must have been back in the day.