Making a wood ash-insulated furnace for smelting iron

[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…