Primitive Technology: making iron from creek sand

[garethb2]

Originally published at: Primitive Technology: making iron from creek sand | Boing Boing

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[MikeR]

Back home in Cornwall where I grew up, the river sand contains cassiterite (tin oxide) which can easily be purified by sluicing and panning. All the big placer deposits were mined out in the 19th Century, but if you know where to look, there’s enough to have some fun smelting a small amount of pure tin.

Though not all the black heavy stuff is tin - some of it is uranium

[JohnEightThirty]

I forget who said it, but I agree: this wonderful Youtube channel shows that you could completely rebuild civilization starting with nothing but a pair of cargo shorts.

[politeruin]

Nah. I’m going to quote @VeronicaConnor so they don’t have to repeat themselves.

Building a trebuchet with Primitive Technology

I probably say this is every thread about this, but I think people are mad because they thought there was a larger narrative at work wherein he was working his way up an imagined tech tree. That was never the case though, and you can’t go much farther than he has by yourself. I guess it speaks to the quality of history education that people don’t understand it takes a village and specialization to make things better than a mud hut. Or maybe doomsday prepper culture has infected everything and pe…

[Bunbain]

I thought this comment was also well made in the same regard:

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…