iron smelting

Iron ore is relatively abundant in our area, and it has been used for at least 2500 years! Even on our site itself are a few ancient quarries… for this reason we want to demonstrate the early medieval technique of iron smelting in a bloomery furnace.

Until after several hours of smelting, the „bloom“ can be extracted from the furnace, many people have to work hard: collecting the ore, wash it, sort it, roast it in the fire to make it brittle, pound/grind it, and then feed it into the furnace while blowing with bellows for at least six hours… when everything works out, a bloom of 4-8 kilograms can be extracted and forged into a bar. The furnace often needs to be completely rebuilt after the process… in all, a very labor-intensive process to aquire a few pounds of iron. But it was worth it! Iron was one of the foundations of civilization, innovation and decided upon the fate of nations in battle.

If we succeed, we will forge bars to use them in our smithy for knives and tools.

We are happy to have help and advice from some of the best experts on iron smelting: the group „eisenzeit“ consisting of Romain Bohr, Gerlianne Paulus and Dr. Oliver Metz is dedicated to both practical and analytical aspects of iron smelting, from the geology and chemistry of ores through the smelting itself, until the analysis of slags and the production of tools from the bloom.