SMELTFEST 08 - Experiment Notes

The rough layout used for the three main smelts I was involved in at SMELTFEST 08 is seen below:

There was some variation on the placement of the bellows plate and the set up of the tuyere on each of the three smelts.

The experimental data for each of the three smelts has been formatted up and posted to the Wareham Forge iron smelting series:

www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/smeltfest08/March1508.html

www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/smeltfest08/March1608.html

www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/smeltfest08/March1708.html

I will be writing up a description of each of these smelts, with some images attached over the next week or so.

(sorry about the use of remote links - but Blogger just does not publish tables correctly)

Air Volumes - Smeltfest 08

For the three smelts undertaken over March 15 / 16 / 17, the furnaces were set up to use the 'bellows plate' system which Skip Williams and Jake Keen had first worked with at the Eindhoven event last spring.

The system uses a thin ceramic plate that covers the part of the furnace around the tuyere that is subjected to the highest temperatures. The thin plate is intended to radiate off heat and thus resist melting. There is no actual tuyere, instead the air is applied through a tube that sits some distance away from, yet aimed at, the blow hole in the plate. In effect the rapidly moving air blast creates a venturi effect which draws in considerably more air than is provided via the air pump itself.
This effect was quite noticeable. It should be considered when looking at the raw numbers below, as these are a measure of the air inside the tube itself. There would have been considerably more air available on the inside of the furnace.

(I have removed the table I posted up here previously - as I realized this morning I had made a major error on how I interpreted the data, and thus crunched the numbers. Expect a corrected version with comments the first week in April.)

what the forecast says:

Tonight..Snow at times heavy ending early this evening then cloudy
with 60 percent chance of flurries. Clearing overnight. Amount 2 cm.
Wind southwest 50 km/h gusting to 70 diminishing to 30 this evening.
Low minus 5.

what is REALLY happening...

This is the view out the tarp cover from the workshop entrance at about 4:30 PM. Visibility is ranging from about 300 metres - down to white out conditions. The snow started about 11 this morning, about 5 cm down here so far...

Overview - SMELTFEST 08

...a fast overview of the 10 days:

THREE smelts undertaken, using the 'blast plate' method.

ONE test of the DARC Dirt 1 bog ore analog (in one of the furnaces above)

THREE additional smelts observed. These were the 'monster bloom' sequence by Sauder and McCarthy - resulting in a 175 pound bloom mass.

ONE smelt observed using all Colonial Era methods, at Colonial Williamsburg by Browder and Mankowski.

a DOZEN uses of the 'Aristotle Furnace' developed by Williams.

DAY TRIP to the Jamestown Archaeological site to view artifacts related to the first American iron smelting.

DAY TRIP to gather several hundred pounds of the Jamestown/Williamsburg iron ore.

A special participant in SMELTFEST 08 was Jake Keen from England. This years session was especially packed with smelting, and everyone felt they had not only a wonderful time, but learned and achieved a great deal. Thanks again to Elizabeth and Lee Sauder for hosting the workshop.

I have roughly 300 images, plus the detailed smelt data and various related field notes to organize. Exp