Day four
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| Opening the charcoal pit. |
During the night the storm had passed
leaving a chill in its wake. The day
crept in cold and the feeble sun was not able to banish thoughts of
winter. It was an ominous start to a day
that promised to be a memorable one.
Kim,
upon his arrival, was impressed with our efforts. That furnace, if it would last today would
last four or five smelts. The length of
the smelt would be determined by how much charcoal we had produced. The step to determining this was to break
open the charcoal pile. Just like two
days previously, the families and museum visitors gathered around. This time I held an old broken paddle in my
hand to push the dirt away. There is a
chance, Kim smiled, that the fire hasn’t gone out and it may flare up when it
gets access to air.
Timidly, I began
pushing away the dirt. Under the layers of
soil there is something solid. The sod had
baked solid, forming a solid dome. The sod brick is hot to the touch. If I’m to be burned, this is the moment. Instead of engulfing flames there were
blackened rocks and beneath these blackened wood. The ore and charcoal were still hot to the
touch, but everyone touched them anyway and passed them around. From all sides of the charcoal pile hands
reached out to pull the dirt shell away.
Many of the pieces of charcoal were still smoldering. These were quickly extinguished or placed
into the stack of the furnace. The wood
looked the same as when we had packed it in the day before except now it was
shiny black. Rings could still be
counted on some of the pieces. Almost
all of the pieces of wood had been transformed; those that had not were taken
to the communal fire for fuel. We
produced enough charcoal for our smelt and maybe for the blacksmith shop as well.
Among the dirt
and between the charcoal was the iron ore.
It was dark but iridescent; all signs were that the rust in the ore had
been transformed into FeO4, a very good form of iron. The ore was friable and considering we had to
crush it again, that was convenient. The
ore needed to be crushed to be about the size of peas or hazelnuts, depending
on whom one asked. The crushed ore was
placed into a small basket for transportation down the slope to the
furnace. Four of us set to work with
blacksmith hammers on one of the rubber sledges. As some of us set to work crushing the ore
others put the charcoal into a separate basket.
A third group began the smelt.
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| We produced charcoal! In my right hand is a piece of charcoal and in my left is a piece of ore. |
On the first day
we set to work, Kim had built a tuyere of white clay. It had spent the last few days drying in the
protection of the forge. Now it was
inserted through the clay door made to fit within the portal at the base of the
furnace trough. The tuyere directs the
air flow from the bellows into the heart of the fire. The bellows were two hand powered bellows
that pushed and pulled the air through the tuyere. It was possible that this motion preheated
the blast and increased the overall temperature of the fire. Unfortunately, we did not have the technology
to test this theory. The top of the
tuyere broke off half way through the smelt.
We were not pleased when the tuyere broke, but it mimicked tuyeres found
in archaeological deposits, and this was a pleasant surprise.
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| Setting the bellows into the side of the furnace. |
The smelt
started by setting a fire in the furnace.
The fire burned for about an hour and a half until the smoke dissipated
and was replaced by flame. Then the work
began. The furnace was charged with
seven handfuls of charcoal and five handfuls of ore. This was done every fifteen minutes for about
four hours. The bellows were pumped from
this point until the end of the smelt.
For the first hour or so, the fire within the furnace would go out and
need to be relit with a spark at the top of the furnace. When a cloud cast its shadow, we could see
the flames around the top of the furnace stack. In the bright light of day the flames were
invisible.
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| As the smelt came to an end, the innards of the furnace were spilled out to find the iron. |
When the slag
was tapped off a flaw in the furnace was revealed. The bottom of the furnace was still damp and
robbed the fire of heat. The slag did
not flow beneath the tuyere and at one point solidified in the tuyere. Most of the slag solidified at the bottom of
the furnace further cooling the fire.
The cooler temperature slowed the formation of iron. It was decided to end the smelt early. The visitors to the museums and the Iron Age
families were gathered to see the iron bloom emerge. Using a metal rod, Kim pounded the clay,
breaking down the door, shattering the tuyere, and letting out the slag. The slag flowed down the broken tuyere like a
red black river. Someone remarked it
looked like lava as the slag, burning charcoal, and pockets of iron poured out
of the furnace down the trough. The
radiant heat certainly felt like a volcano as I leaned over the top of the
stack with an iron rod to break pockets of iron away from the furnace walls. Once the material was loosened from the side
and filled the trough, the delicate work of picking out the iron began. Danish and English shouts rang from each
side.
“Try that one”
“There’s one”
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| The two large rocks are unproccessed iron ore with a piece of slag on top and a piece of iron at the base. |
As midwife to the
furnace, it was my responsibility to lean over the trough of red-hot afterbirth
to draw out the iron. A suspected piece
would be picked up and squeezed in the grip of the iron tongs. If the pressure of the tongs would give with
a frighteningly loud crunch, then it was slag and not precious iron. The cooler temperatures had kept the iron
from forming one solid bloom; instead there were many small pieces of
iron. A small pile of iron pieces grew
until there was about a kilo of iron.
There was one step left in the process: consolidating the bloom and
expelling the rest of the slag from the iron. In some smelts this is done by
breaking down the wall of the furnace and using it as a forge. Kim wanted to keep the furnace we had constructed
intact for future use. Thus, we moved
into the blacksmith’s forge. The hour
was late when we started. Kim showed me
what to do before he had to depart for home.
When consolidating a bloom, the smith had to maintain the fire at
white-hot, also known as welding heat. At
this stage the iron becomes sticky and attaches to other pieces of iron. We attempted to consolidate the bloom but
with little processed after an hour, it was determined that the bloom should be
taken back to the United States and consolidated there. There were people who wanted to work in the
forge who had not had a chance over the last few days. We were to leave early the next morning and
it did not seem fair to ‘hog the forge’ when many people had projects they
wanted to complete.
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| Our first piece of iron. |
In small groups,
or alone, our Iron Age family made our way up to the Mulithouse to wash and
change out of our Iron Age clothes. Our
train was to leave at 7 the next morning and there was no time then to return
our borrowed wardrobe. Dressed in
‘civilian clothes’, as we joked, we made our way back to spend one last night
in the little village and the long house.
We exchanged parting gifts with the families with whom we had shared the
past few days. Together we all laughed,
ate, and watched the sun set. Everyone
seemed hesitant to go to sleep as though going to bed would signle the end of
this wonderful adventure in “Never-Neverland”.
It was the smell of the straw from our bunk that I remember best from
that night. In the morning I slipped
down to the sacrificial bog to leave one last offering before the skull of a
horse, a piece of iron we smelted. If
this had all been a dream, at least some day if an archaeologist ever excavated
the bog they would know what we did. Too
soon the morning had come. Too soon we
were at the train station boarding on the line that would take us to the
airport. In those quiet moments as the
train glided along its rails, each of us said a silent farewell to Denmark and
the Iron Age life we briefly lived.
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| The bog. |
