Tamahagane smelt....

Hello all,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/randyda...093416/detail/

This is a link to some pics of a smelt of Tamahagane steel. This was run by one of our guys, Mike Blue, and friends of his, Randall Graham and Mariah Clark. They allowed me to watch and ask questions so I was a happy camper!:)

The smelter was built saturday morning and run the same day until 6PM when we ran out of charcoal. About 6 of the 55 gallon drums of charcoal was consumed and about 70-80 lbs of iron.

Wood charcoal was used as fuel and as a source of carbon. The iron is in the blue pails. It is 96% pure iron that Mike Blue obtained from one of the taconite pellet making companies here in Minnesota. Ask any questions.:)

This is one very dirty process! charcoal and cinders flying around all day!:)

The smelt was done at the Tunnel Mill Blacksmiths annual meeting just south of Rochester, Minnesota.
It was hosted by John and Carol Adams. Really good people.

Looks like fun thats for sure :D

Thanks for the photos. :)

The measured bloom material that we considered magnetic and of sufficient quality to further investigate was 47.8 pounds. Not all will be good steel. Some is iron that didn't have enough time to be refined, some is charcoal and slags. But one of Randy's pix shows the two best pieces lying on the grass. Those are going to be very interesting to work with. I have to hand off some to my helpers at some point.

Thanks for putting up the photos, Randy. He didn't tell you he spent most of Sunday morning breaking up chunks looking for the little bits.

What a great set of photos! Thank you for putting them up.

Cheers
M.

Wow that's pretty cool, thanks for sharing. :)

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

Cheers
Ivo

It looks like a moonshine operation:D

That's pretty cool though, thanks for the pics. I had no idea you could just build your own smelter like that:eek:

I also took some video of the smelt and finally managed to get it on my computer last nite. Using an MPEG2 format it is 150 MB!:( In the original .avi format the size is 3.4 GB!

I am thinking of making some DVD's for anyone who is interested.

But... would someone tell me how to break up the 150 MB file so I can upload it to Youtube? Do I need to put it into another format???????

Thanks guys,

randy - are you using windows? i'm a mac and linux person myself and can probably figure out the tools for these OS, but haven't gotten a clue what's the easiest way to do it on windows.

Thanks for sharing Randy and for keeping the tradition alive Mike. Great pics :tu

Yup, I am using Windows. I have tried 3 different programs so far and the DVD writer seems to be the problem.
Eventually I will get it done.

I've done very little video editing, but one thing you could try is VirtualDub.

You can open a video file in it, then under Video->Compression you can choose a compression like MPEG-4 (which I think most people can play these days), and then File->Save as avi. Perhaps that won't help though, I'm no expert on video compression.

What also might help is resizing the image frame size, the resolution. I don't know what resolution you've filmed at, but if it's bigger than the youtube player size it will get resized by youtube anyway, and doing some resizing yourself might help cut down the file size a bit.

In Virtualdub you first have to check what the resolution is (if you don't already know). When you've opened your file you can see the info under File->File Information. It's the first thing, "Frame Size", that you should note. Then you have to go to Video->Filters. Click "Add", scroll down to "resize", click on it and then on "OK"

There you can fill in new values, only you need to get the ratio right. If the old size is 200x100, then resizing to 100x100 would just squash the image, so you'd need to resize it to 100x50. Only example values here of course, I think most cameras film at a 4x3 ratio by default, but I could be wrong.


Finally, you can also cut the video into several shorter videos. If you want to do that, open the video file, then Edit->Set selection start, then move the little bar on the timeline to (say) half the movie, Edit->Set selection end, then Edit->Delete. Save what's left as a new video. Then repeat the thing, but set the selection start halfway into the movie, and the selection end at the end of the movie.


I don't know how helpful all of that was, but regardless: good luck with the editing.

Thanks !:)

OK, I purchased some video editing software and now have 5 video's up on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReWyKxZmN8M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJcauUbNJY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZJDIs79o-o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z_Gi4PSOTI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZITRU7lfA

I removed the audio on these videos. Next I will learn how to use the audio sound features of the software to dub in some commentary. That will come later.

I will answer any questions you may have.

good stuff, thanks randy - i'm having fun watching the videos :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mike Blue

The measured bloom material that we considered magnetic and of sufficient quality to further investigate was 47.8 pounds.

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i was wondering about the magnetism? is that a signature of quality? i'm not a specialist of magnetism, but the interactions that determine the magnetic order are really weird, mostly mediated through impurities....

not sure if a fccexpert is sufficient here ;)

Thanks for the videos. Very cool to see that thing in action.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by randydance062449

I also took some video of the smelt and finally managed to get it on my computer last nite. Using an MPEG2 format it is 150 MB!:( In the original .avi format the size is 3.4 GB!

I am thinking of making some DVD's for anyone who is interested.

But... would someone tell me how to break up the 150 MB file so I can upload it to Youtube? Do I need to put it into another format???????

Thanks guys,

---

Look for a Freeware called HJSplit...it will split or join video. You select the file and tell the app what size chunks you want. It then splits them, appending a .001, .002. etc. to the end. You can then send small chunks in emails or post them to a website where folks can download the pieces. To reassemble, open the app, tell it where to find the .001 file and it does the rest!

I have used it to split and distribute training videos, presentations, keynote addresses....pretty much anything can be split. Very easy, very clean...minimal drama.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WireBeard

Look for a Freeware called HJSplit...it will split or join video. You select the file and tell the app what size chunks you want. It then splits them, appending a .001, .002. etc. to the end. You can then send small chunks in emails or post them to a website where folks can download the pieces. To reassemble, open the app, tell it where to find the .001 file and it does the rest!

I have used it to split and distribute training videos, presentations, keynote addresses....pretty much anything can be split. Very easy, very clean...minimal drama.

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HJSplit works very nice! Thanks a bunch.:)

Hey guys, I am going to take the video's down. I want to do some work on them and repost them later.

Thanks for all the help guys,:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gugi

i was wondering about the magnetism? is that a signature of quality? i'm not a specialist of magnetism, but the interactions that determine the magnetic order are really weird, mostly mediated through impurities....

not sure if a fccexpert is sufficient here ;)

---

The raw ore is non-magnetic. Probably because the lattice structure of the iron crystals is disrupted due to ore processing. On heating, the iron lattice matrix is able to realign itself due to the changes in the iron crystal (face centered vs. body centered cubic) and becomes magnetic. Since we live inside a huge magnetic field, it'll orient in that relative direction.

I can understand the rest of the technical stuff but my lips get tired. That's the Cliff's notes version.