Wood fired smelter - Mark I

[mrcharly]

I had a go at forging in the garden once. Dug a pit about the size and shape of a 20l drum in a mound of soil, with a hole at the bottom, dug in from the side of the mound and shoved a bit of old vacuum cleaner pipe in it. Got a fire going, then filled it with wood, covered the top with a dustbin lid and soil.

Next day I took lid off, pit about 1/3rd full of charcoal.

Lit a fire in that, then tried to heat the steel. Couldn't get it past dull red heat, so put a hair drier on the end of the vacuum cleaner pipe.

Well that was a bit hotter . . . the steel I had (a strip cut out of old circular saw blade, about 3mm thick) melted.

 

[ged]

Last summer I took a break from traditional blacksmithing, and I spent a couple days forging copper. ... I did pick up some raw copper nuggets to take it to the next level - work with the copper in it's original dug/found condition, and see how that works. These next pieces I better deeply mark - they would be too easy for someone to pass them off as originals.

Don't worry about it. Ever since the first few nuclear weapons were tested it's been very easy to tell the difference between something made before 1945 and something made later than that. People in the business of making low-level measurements of radioactivity are always on the lookout for brass and other metals taken from sunken WW1 battleships.