Slag Pit Smelt - Report ready!

For those interested in Early Iron: This years Thanksgiving weekend smelt was a loosely 'Celtic Iron Age' slag pit furnace. The superstructure was our standard 25 cm ID x 70 cm tall short shaft. This furnace was built over a roughly 40 cm deep by 25 cm dia pit, filled with small branches standing on end. The ore used was an untested rock ore from Bratton's Run in Virginia. This proved the failure point in the experiment. The ore proved to have hardly any iron in it!

But we did get a mother beautiful slag block...

The full photo essay report can be found on the main Wareham Iron Smelting site :

Slag Pit Iron Smelt - October 9, 2011