Now that the layout table is not needed for the assembly of the hydraulic press (being modified specifically for this project), it was time to empty the milk crates full of blooms:
Yesterday's work in the shop consisted of sorting all the pieces into historical order. Each piece was then photographed and weighed. There are over 60 individual pieces, ranging from full sized blooms (the largest at over 7 KG), down to small fragments. With luck even the small pieces can be welded as part of stacks towards creating layered steel billets.
I also spent a good hour attempting to work out some kind of useful method of measuring the volumes via water displacement. This in aid of determining the density of each bloom. This may not be critical towards artistic use of the individual blooms. However, keeping my archaeological slant in mind, once compaction and forging into working bars starts, the original density information will be lost. Better to record seemingly useless information - than work past it had find out later the data was significant.
Although I really have made a serious attempt to keep each bloom labelled, what I found was that the process of shifting around sharp edged metallic blooms had shredded bags and obscured labels. There are a number of pieces that obviously have been mis-labelled, a few (some of the largest!) with no labels at all. At least one distinctive bloom is missing from the pile.
I am attempting to keep notes relating the specific process used to create an individual bloom / bloom fragment to the compaction to bar process. Most specifically as it relates to individual carbon content and general ease of forging.
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