- Joined
- Jun 3, 2017
- Messages
- 8
NOTE: All pictures are at the bottom in a link.
Well as I had posted in a previous thread, I love smelting. I had a previous attempt using a small European style furnace where I used forge scale as the ore. This worked out pretty well so, undaunted and thinking it would be easy (it wasn't), I went on and wanted to try smelting tamahagane style material.
So let's start with the furnace. I made a 2ft by 1.5 ft Japanese style tatara made from clay bricks and a clay, sand mixture for mortar. Here are some pictures from the building process.
I made sure to make angled walls on the bottom of the furnace like the traditional one.
After 2 weeks waiting for the iron powder to arrive I can finally start.
I used 20lbs of iron powder and mixed in 4 pounds of silica sand to give it authenticity(probably first mistake).
After 4 charges of the furnace I realized the iron powder was just sitting at the top? It hadn't began to sink down like the last time I tried, even after I charged the furnace with charcoal. Here are some pictures from the smelt.
One of the pictures is the grain structure of the material I pulled from the furnace after it was over. All garbage. I couldn't find a single usable piece of steel in the entire furnace.
Here are some of the mistakes I think I made
1. To little time for smelting (1 hour 20 minutes)
2. Not a high enough temperature
3. Furnace was not deep enough?
4. Added sand to iron powder
So now I don't know what I did wrong and I need advice. Help meeeee!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B10atYryAAxwVFpyQ0hGYmFUSEk
Well as I had posted in a previous thread, I love smelting. I had a previous attempt using a small European style furnace where I used forge scale as the ore. This worked out pretty well so, undaunted and thinking it would be easy (it wasn't), I went on and wanted to try smelting tamahagane style material.
So let's start with the furnace. I made a 2ft by 1.5 ft Japanese style tatara made from clay bricks and a clay, sand mixture for mortar. Here are some pictures from the building process.
I made sure to make angled walls on the bottom of the furnace like the traditional one.
After 2 weeks waiting for the iron powder to arrive I can finally start.
I used 20lbs of iron powder and mixed in 4 pounds of silica sand to give it authenticity(probably first mistake).
After 4 charges of the furnace I realized the iron powder was just sitting at the top? It hadn't began to sink down like the last time I tried, even after I charged the furnace with charcoal. Here are some pictures from the smelt.
One of the pictures is the grain structure of the material I pulled from the furnace after it was over. All garbage. I couldn't find a single usable piece of steel in the entire furnace.
Here are some of the mistakes I think I made
1. To little time for smelting (1 hour 20 minutes)
2. Not a high enough temperature
3. Furnace was not deep enough?
4. Added sand to iron powder
So now I don't know what I did wrong and I need advice. Help meeeee!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B10atYryAAxwVFpyQ0hGYmFUSEk
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