Thread: 7th Annual North Central Texas Razor Meet at Charlie Lewis Straight Razor Workshop

Originally Posted by ScottGoodman

My question is where would we do it?

Right. It's a pretty major investment in time also. Build the kiln, then fire it all night to end up with a bloom, then fire it for another day for the wootz.

The all nighters could be fun, but someone would have to stay sober. I doubt that we could get very far in four days without all of the equipment being pre built.

I'll bet that that video of Al Pendray was three or four days and everything was sitting there and proven.

Thats why I posed the question. I would love to be a part of a smelt, but the location and time would really be a factor. Volcanoes are cool though...

im sure you can do it at the Twilite, they seem to be a lax place, and sometimes they have entertainment, ask the guys who were there a few years back!

I was thinking of a foundry furnace and making crucible steel, as opposed to making a Bloomberg furnace and refining ore. At some point, when I get to it, I intend to try to make crucible steel from black iron sand. I exchanged a few emails with Mike Blue, at some point I want to spen a few weeks at his place helping him and learning about his process.

Long story short but I have worked in an old iron mine in southern Mn.

There is iron in many places to get if it is sand or not.

Originally Posted by RezDog

I was thinking of a foundry furnace and making crucible steel, as opposed to making a Bloomberg furnace and refining ore. At some point, when I get to it, I intend to try to make crucible steel from black iron sand. I exchanged a few emails with Mike Blue, at some point I want to spen a few weeks at his place helping him and learning about his process.

I think you still have to refine a bloom first before making the crucible if you are starting with sand.

I think it depends on how much slag there will be from impurities in the ore.

I still like the idea of combining many old blades into making a new one.

More of a skill and learning experience.

I am certainly on the learning end of things but think there will be enough skill and experience to pull this off.

Crucible steel and bloom steel are made by different methods.
The crucible steel is far easier.
I have see mike blue make some tamahagane at Spring Valley Minnesota blacksmith meet
And also saw Rick Furrer make crucible steel at the same place.
You do not need to take the bloom steel abd then put it in a crucible.

Today was a rather busy day. I stabilized a bunch of chrysocolla rock for future use. For this batch we used waterglass (sodium silicate) because it does not cost much, about $20/gallon and it works very nicely.
The rocks not on the grate are what we did today.