I think I figured out how to turn the brittle cast iron I've been producing into malleable iron that can be forged flat. When ever I smelt local ores it always produces cast iron prills rather than softer blooms of low carbon iron as one would expect from the bloomery process. I believe this because the prills are very hard, but when struck hard enough they shatter rather than flatten. Cast iron is iron that has a high carbon content (when arranged by carbon content: Cast iron>Steel>iron). Cast iron has a lower melting point and is harder compared to regular iron. But it is more brittle so it's nearly impossible to forge. So I figured out how to decarburize it after some experiments. First I tried making an ingot to work on but it didn't cast properly. Then I tried rusting the iron to oxidize the metal before melting so it would decarburize the cast iron during the melt (similar to the "wet puddling" process in metallurgy). But this gave an incomplete melt also. The method that finally worked was simply melting the cast iron in front of the air blast till the carbon burnt out in the oxygen rich zone of the forge. This caused the cast iron prills to melt together in a single blob that I then was able to hammer flat while yellow hot. This method is similar to the "stir fried steel/ 炒钢" process in ancient China or the "Osmond process" in Europe. It's done where ever cast iron needs to be converted to a lower carbon to be forged. I've seen videos about carburizing iron on youtube but none about decarburizing cast iron.
Have you tried using higher furnace, like the 'smokers' or dymarki that were used in central Europe around 9-10th century? It produces less slag, and something more akin to usable ingots. Truth be told - you'll need a large load of ore to make it worthwhile.
Don't you find it crazy how hard it is to make good quality iron? Just thinking about the people who had to come up with this technology before the advances of chemistry is mind blowing
Yup, the chemistry took hundreds of years to be understood, and the craft itself thousands of years, as the bases with smelting copper and making bronze still remained
Hi, hobbyist blacksmith of about 7 years here. I know it goes against your ethos, but please consider wearing safety glasses while forging. Little flecks of iron can embed in your eyes without you knowing, destroying your eyes when you get an MRI Other than that, this is so cool to see! It’s amazing how much progress you’ve made and it’s fascinating to see what’s possible
Not only that, but larger flecks can seriously mess you up, I've got a 3inch scar on my arm from a little fleck smaller than a dime that grazed me when I was wearing improper clothing while forging. Turns out the thing hot enough to glow vibrantly can mess you up
I was wearing safety glasses AND face shield and been hit in the eye by a piece from a grinder. It can happen. Lost a contact lense that day instead of my eye.
"This technique is an important step towards forged iron tools" I can't describe just how much this one little phrase excites me. You are simply the best. Watching you strike at the ingot had me worried for your safety though. You are a treasure and no one wants to see you hurt.
I really like that fact that you showed some of your failed attempts, it can be easy for us as viewers to just assume you figure everything out the first time and don't make mistakes but mistakes are all part of the process of learning and improving.
His failures take just as much time (probably more) than his successes, so if he only showed the successes, it would take twice as long to release videos (or his videos would be the current length). Even just from a business perspective, it makes sense to show the failures
@@sharpasacueball Or the ones that take a pile of molten mess and hammer on it twice with a rock and in the next take it's a pristine steel billet with no cracks.
This is why these experiments are so valuable as a historical resource. It's hard for us to imagine nowadays why it took tens of thousands of years to figure out how to make iron tools, given that we have mindblowing new developments every decade or so. Your videos really put things into perspective and helps people to understand how incredibly hard and complicated these processes where to even come up with. You have modern science at your disposal as a reference. I could not imagine coming up with something like this if I didn't even know that iron was a thing, let alone that forging it is possible.
Fun fact! It took longer for humanity to go from the bronze sword to the iron sword than it did for us to go from the iron sword to the nuclear war head.
Iron didn't pop up out of nowhere. Tin, gold, silver, copper, bronze all preceded it. There was entire legacy of metal mining, purifying, and working with metal.
Paleolithic humans were not trying techniques until they "figured that out". That's a ridiculous statement. Sedentary, neolithic humans figured that out because the world had changed massively, and they were actively seeking it.
@@christinegallo4983 Thanks, that's a great tip! One of the reasons I enjoy these videos so much is I like the calmness of the sound and visuals. I also find it interesting how engaging it is to simply watch someone do something you could do if you had the resources locally. This is who we are, and why we've progressed so much over history. Show us progress, progress we can follow, and people can't look away. Show us someone designing a microchip and it's so impressive, but I don't think it triggers the same basic response.
When he first proved the theory of getting iron from the bacteria in the river it opened up the possibility that he would be progressing out of the stone age. Seeing MALLEABLE iron is a HUGE step towards that. Absolutely incredible.
Maybe so, however getting scraps of iron after years of work is one thing, being able to ensure you can mass-produce iron and improve methods to ensure a larger volume that makes it possible to not require months of work is another thing entirely. Most other innovations would probably require more smelting than prior.
@@ADHDisYippeeeeeeeeee Here's the cool part. Knowing the techniques frees one person to do the smelting and prep work in a society, while others prospect and collect and maybe even find deposits of iron in the ground. He's doing this all by himself, but in a real post apocalypse scenario you'd have a small group of people together helping out.
Wow, he really took all the suggestions from his last video comments and implemented them. Learning together with others might arguably be the most important primitive skill.
Yeah, this is what one person alone can do. Then imagine a group of people focusing on individual skills to perfect them. They don't have to worry about the other parts of the process and can focus just on their specialized role.
@@johnnywalkertexas1213 Yep, the single most important thing humans invented was language. It gave us not only a way to interact with others more than screaming cause a predator is nearby, but also to communicate ideas and accumulate that knowledge over generations.
@@primitivetechnology9550 You'll probably want to make a hammer next, or using the Whitworth method make a flat reference surface from stone for forging on. This definitely depends on the ability to scale what you've already accomplished.
@@primitivetechnology9550 Did you ever consider creating a venturi tunnel. It was used by some to increase airflow to forges. Don't recall if you have bamboo (easiest), but the longer you can make an air feed tube to the fire and the reduce to tube to increase airflow, the longer and hotter the fire and no more air paddles. With the forge self-feeding a lot of air, you can focus on the metal.
This is honestly the only channel that I trust when it comes to primitive builds, all the other ones are most likely faked or staged. Kudos to this man for making it authentic.
You are right, they are fake. It's been prooved. There's a french video talking about it ("PRIMITIVE BUILD : Le Fake Aux 10M d'Abonnés" from The Sciencoder) but I assume you're not a french talking person. I've seen there's a video in english talking about that ("How Primitive Building Videos Are Staged" from SunnyV2), but since I haven't seen it, I'm not sure about what he's talking during all of the video. But without having to get informations about those channels, you can see it clearly they are fake just by watching them. That's why I love Primitive Technology, he's very authentic, and true in what he's doing.
I trust some of the ones that build things. Not digging out entire swimming pools but the house builders. They def don't compare to making iron from scratch though.
I still remember when people joked that one day we would see you get to the iron age, and here you are. Amazing video as always, keep up the excellent work! Also if anybody hasn't got his book yet it's highly recommended!
Yeah even in the mid-late medieval, smelting, working and treating metals for use was an absolute time sink of a job. With blast furnaces and armies of generationally trained smiths a set of armour for a knight could be $500k+ in today's money. In the days of primordial man... Let's just say, if you knew how to smith, your life and knowledge was invaluable.
@@AMorphicTool That's why I find modern society's fascination with swords so irritating. Swords were expensive status symbols. Useful for self defense, but on a battlefield almost always relegated to sidearm status. Most fantasy novels that feature a medieval theme border on unreadable for me because of how dumb the descriptions of the battles are, and how ridiculous the armor everyone is wearing is (boiled leather abounds). I wish fantasy authors would do more rigorous research. More than that though, I wish they'd _finish their damn series before they die._
당신이 구독자 수 10만이었을 당시부터 즐겨봤던 한국의 열렬한 팬입니다. 당신의 유튜브가 이렇게 성장했음에 감사와 축하를 보내고 진실된 영상을 올리시는 것에도 존경과 감사를 표현합니다. I am a big fan of Korea that you have enjoyed since you had 100,000 subscribers. I also express my respect and appreciation for your TH-cam growth and posting sincere videos.
I appreciated seeing your earlier attempts. The difficulty you encountered replicating this technology highlights what an achievement it was to develop it in the first place.
@@Data-Expungeded it can be. If you start off by buying a proper forge and anvil then it can be quite pricy, but you can also DIY yourself a forge and anvil at a fraction of the cost.
Same here, it's amazing how different it was for those first learning about Iron and how to use it while we just pick a peice from the scrap pile and start hammering
Welp, you’ve officially advanced to the Iron Age. I am genuinely impressed. Not to mention how all of your subscribers have been watching the cradle and growth of civilization and technology from the comfort of our couches and toilets. You are truly one of the best the internet has.
This video not only proves that forging iron in primitive conditions is hard, time and resource consuming, but also how many other "primitive" channels are faking it. Thank you, for your great work and true content
Watching your progress from basically the stone age to the iron age has been so exciting! I can't wait for more! Also a reminder to watch with captions on so you can get explanations for what he's doing! :D
A blacksmiths take on it: If you remelt that 'bloom' as it could roughly considered, you'll add more carbon to it because you're using charcoal. If you want to get the impurities out without much carbon addition, you should stick to about a strong orange color or cooler. If your bloom is yellow, you're entering the caution zone, and it you start seeing white, you're too hot. Keep it highere in the fire for reheating, I think the issue you were initially running into was being too close to the tuyere, causing the melt to bounce between oxidation and burning, to carbonizing as you pumped air in and out. Try lowering your RPM so to speak as you get closer to the melting temperature on the next run and see how that goes.
There's a couple interesting things about smelting that you might want to look at for future working. One thing is that you're not aiming to melt the iron, but rather to melt the NOT-iron, and for that limestone flux would be VERY useful. (maybe use the shells?) The other is that you want to start with VERY dry ore, so baking the ore powder even more might be worth while. It also seems that, from what I can tell, you actually want less charcoal than ore- I think a lot of why you're getting cast iron is because you're basically smelting in a high carbon environment inside the charcoal. Maybe making a tiny thin smeltery chimney could help, or just spending the time to collect significantly more ore.
I thought might be he can use water to rotate that thing and pump more air in. Or might be special architecture of furnace, that sucks more air in? Might be using steam for rotating that thingy, although it could be dangerous
Sticking with this channel over the years has paid off. Even though the wait is long, it is absolutely worth it every time. Reading the research you put into it is great as well. Thank you for your hard work.
Watching this fellow expand his tech tree has been one of the most intriguing things I've had the privilege of seeing. He's literally speedrunning human technological evolution and it's glorious to behold!
This is why the Iron age took so long to come about! So cool to see the real and sometimes less predictable difficulties with primative metallurgy. I'm excited to see how far you can get this process. Not gonna lie, I'm hoping to see fully forged iron tools someday on this channel!
Iron forging needs more heat than copper and therefore iron metallurgy came much later. But the problem with making this heat prevented our ancestors from producing cast iron which is not suited for weapons and tools.
As I sit here, reflecting on the monotonous routine of life, I find solace in the unchanging nature of your content. Your unwavering dedication to the craft, despite the ever-changing tides of popularity and fads, is a testament to the depth of your character and the truth of your artistic expression. Your consistency is not just a comfort in the midst of the unpredictable world, but also a reminder of the purposeful path one can forge when they stay true to themselves. In a world that often encourages us to adapt to the expectations of others, it is a privilege to witness someone who remains steadfast in their authenticity. Your content is not just entertainment, but a reminder to all of us that we too can carve our own way in this world. Thank you for staying true to yourself, and providing us with the gift of timelessness in a world that values temporality
As a professional bladesmith and blacksmith this video was really awesome! Great job man! You gotta think at one point in history the iron age started exactly like this. And what's even more fascinating is thinking that the guy who first smelted iron had absolutely no idea exactly what it would eventually lead to. Just imagine going back in time and showing them our refinement of what they started. Keep up the great work and I look forward to the next video!
@@karlheinz9432 bronze and iron are two different things. Sure they had a rudimentary understanding of metals by the time the iron age began but it was a whole other thing entirely. Requiring a different method of refinement. And there's no guarantee that the first person who figured out how to refine iron even had or used bronze tools. It's very possible but not guaranteed.
God, I love this channel. Incredible how I can be so fully relaxed and yet 100% engaged and learning while watching. You may be having a bit of a rough time with iron, but you struck gold when you made this channel, brother.
Okay so a few things: 1) I think it could help to cover the sides of the open heart forge a bit. It would force the flames to go into the iron and not out the sides 2) To make the process less work intensive you can first heat up the iron in a ceramic dish, in a cross-draft furnace. It would get it up the first few hundred degrees and only the rest would have to be done by hand-pumping the air into the forge. 3) you absolutely need a roughly flat, stable and level working space. It can be a large rock, stabilised to the floor with clay 4) to fuse multiple pieces of iron into a larger chunk, hammer each piece into as flat a shap as you can, heat them up, lay one on another and... Bang! 5) a good tool for then working with the iron is a wedge-shaped stone. So far you have a stone hammer, so you can bend the flat iron over an edge. Once you do that, you're gonna need a wedge to hold the 90° bent piece in place. For this you need a wedge with an internal angle of about 70° to 50°. This will let you bend it further amd then close the bent piece on itself, thus making the iron plate more uniform.
It's really incredible how much progression you continuously do. Especially considering the lack of any proper tools. I really love how you show all the work you do until you finally get a result you accept. But i wouldn't mind if you show a longer version to really appreciate the hard work you put into the journey.
Yeah I'd watch an hour long video of this. He went through the early stages really quickly in the video, presumably because he's demonstrated and explained that multiple times, but I'd really just sit here and watch that in full again and again, fantasizing about doing it myself because I don't own land and can't make this stuff on my rental property.
@@gregoryeverson741 coke and charcoal accomplish much the same thing due to essentialy being the same thing, carbon. If hes going to add something else it would be, like...lime.
@@fractalgem pig iron (which is the iron+lime thing you are suggesting) is just poor quality iron. But this kind of iron may be what he needs to produce better tools for better iron quality productions.
Its so batshit insane to me that we, in 2023, can watch a man enter the iron age step-by-step. Im so happy you are making videos again! How do you even research this stuff? This video was very different-it looked like a lot of trial and error which was absolutely fascinating to see.
One of the last great channels on TH-cam. Every video is a home run. Been watching for many years. Thank you for all your hard work and time that goes into these
If you want to try to get a more consistent smelt, consider firing your crucibles _before_ adding the prills. _Also_ consider pre-heating the crucibles to a glowing hot temperature before adding the prills in and putting them into the furnace. It'll keep water out of the equation, and it'll make sure the temperature in the crucible is high, and _stays_ that way due to the insulating properties of ceramic. As for impurities? You have a source of lime, so try adding that as flux. Another option--if somewhat in the vein of brute force--is to make a bloomery furnace. It'll _suck_ to get the amount of iron bacteria and charcoal you'll need to get a full smelt, but theoretically you should still be able to get a proper bloom out of even the _worst_ sources of iron as long as there's enough of it.
@@sithlordzach8418 I think you are right, but once the pieces are fused in the crucible under the flux maybe the resulting ingot can be heated in the air blast to reduce carbon.
Ive been following your channel for the last 6 years since you did your first blower furnance and have been waiting for this moment. You have come such a long way to produce your own semi-forgeable iron. Keep on the good work
The current saga of iron forging and tools is incredible to learn about. From the iron bacteria to the fact you have to decarbonize to make it malleable. Our ancient ancestors are incredible for developing these techniques for over thousands of years through experimentation. Thanks for showing them to us!
This is actually hugely exciting! Being able to forge iron tools is such a massive leap from pottery and brickwork, what an incredible leap this can turn into! I wish you luck on this endeavor man!
The first two failed attempts were most likely in my guess due to too low temperature. Clay crucibles are incredible at isolating and shielding against heat, and can keep items within less than half the temperature of the forge/pit.
Perhaps for the pit forge, a large ceramic bowl liner could be used to line the bottom, so that impurities from the ground doesn't make it into the melted iron? That would also likely help insulate against the cold ground, forcing more heat upwards into the stack of coal and iron. Similar to a blending of a Catalan furnace and one of these pit forges. You could also potentially build the liner with air inlets, similar to how he has the tuyere functioning right now. Maybe build it so it can be attached to the tuyere.
@@garryiglesias4074 I get that heat rises, but without a cover wouldn't the heat dissipate too fast to melt it? I'm talking out of my ass here, I'm no scientist, just asking.
@@joshp8535 Yes it should be covered, BUT not at the bottom... It should be "somewhere" in the middle, yet close to the oxygen intake to increase heat.
@@joshp8535 early wrought iron furnaces had a cover to reflect the radiant heat back into the metal for this reason. I believe they were called reverberatory furnaces or a finery forge, but my terminology is a mess from not having looked this up in a while
Dude, I'm super stoked to see him start making iron tools. I've watched every one of this channels videos. The content is so awesome especially once you realise you are talking to us in CC.
He already has a small iron knife! It's too low-quality to hold a proper edge, but it's still better than stone knives. You can see him use it when he makes clean cuts in cane and such, it's just a triangle of lumpy iron a little smaller than his palm. Still, I'm excited to see him make something more refined!
Dear Mr. John Plant, I have thoroughly enjoyed every single video that you have produced here on your channel. I think I remember watching your second video pop up in my feed when it was brand new. From the first appearance of the iron prills, it ignited a spark in my imagination. With the forging success you had on your fourth try shown here, I literally did a fist pump from how excited and giddy I was. My imagination has been stoked from this amazing milestone that you have achieved. I am very proud of you. Please won't you keep at it and continue to give us a good show and education. Godspeed. -AnAfricanOrphan
Glad to see you expanding on the metallurgical studies. It's always a mind-expanding venture to see what kind of things people had to go through completely blind in the past.
When I saw in the subtitles: "This technique is an important step towards forged iron tools" I literally screamed with joy, as if a significant event had happened for all mankind. Keep it up, buddy, we all believe and hope on you.
Happy to see the trial and error stage while trying to figure out why the ore is not producing the wanted product, really puts in perspective why it took so long for humans to master smelting, truly a gem of TH-cam this Chanel is..
It is truly amazing to see you advance further and further with each video. I cannot believe you are now at the point of metallurgy. I also really appreciate seeing more of the experiments, making stuff by hand is hard and it is nice to see mistakes be made and how you learn from them
This is getting awesome. Maybe 4--6 years ago everyone was waiting for this. At the time, myself, being just a teenager, I didn't know the purpose of this channel and when I found out that its only testing of various primitive techniques I was a bit let down. But this is starting to become the series that I always wanted to see. Thank You for your efforts and the great content you bring to us.
Considering how much effort and patiance it would require, I'm amazed in the distant past someone had luxury of both (& the materials) to figure it out..
This feels like the conclusion of a chapter in a massive saga. I'm so overjoyed that you are reaching this iron age. I know you did stuff with metal in the past. But actual forging now, this is a huge deal. I hope you make basic tools one day.
I remember asking years ago if you ever planned on advancing to forging metals and you told me you did! awesome to finally see it happen, keep up the great videos!
The first 40 seconds used to be a whole length video! This was really condensed. Knowing previous videos, it was def a lot of work and time in this one. Major Kudos.
I'm stunned. I've never even read about this in the historical context and yet it appears to be such a monumental challenge that even with all the knowledge of today you can't just make it happen.
I just thought you should know that your videos are one of the highlights of each month (which is saying something, my life is pretty great)! It's such a privilege to get to follow you on your quest, and I learn a ton from every post. I hope you got a big hit of satisfaction watching that first nugget flatten, because man have you worked for it! Your channel is a great gift to all of us, thanks for making it :)
I started watching this guy back in the Stone Age and he's already at the Iron Age. Congrats! One of my favorite channels of all time, and certainly the most underrated.
Hey man, glad to see you're making progress. In Scandinavia, we've been making iron from "myrmalm" (marsh ore) for centuries. Here's a good video explaining the steps, hope it helps (it's got english subtitles) /watch?v=80omf7bM3Ek
That's cool! Historically, early iron processing apparently focussed on meteorite iron. So the source of iron really seems important for how easy it is to process with primitive tools.
Merci Monsieur, Je viens de visionner pratiquement toutes vos vidéos depuis 5 ans. C'est le résumé de plusieurs millénaires d'innovations techniques et scientifiques, en les regardant avec mes yeux de chimiste, j'ai constaté à quel point nos ancêtres étaient opiniâtres et méthodiques pour arriver à maîtriser ces inventions, avec aussi peu d'outils, grâce à vous qui avez suivi leurs traces, avec la même patience et la même détermination, vous avez mis à l'honneur ces ingénieurs du passé. L'autre prise de conscience de votre travail, révèle la quantité de bois, de terre et d'eau, qu'il a fallu pour produire ces matériaux, ce qui a certainement grandement modifié son environnement. Un grand bravo, et un grand merci, pour votre oeuvre.
This content is amazing! I know it is very time-consuming to make these videos so I appreciate every single one that you make and look forward to seeing more!
One way to adjust the carbon content in the iron is to raise the height of the air tube. This keeps the iron bloom at a lower temp and prevents any new carbon from the charcoal from getting added in while allowing for more to eventually collect at the bottom. If anyone has anything further to add to this let me know as I’m going off of memory from iron smithing demonstrations, im sure im wrong somewhere!
I'm eagerly watching you progress through the Iron Age, please keep posting videos, out of all the things I watch on TH-cam new Primitive Technology videos are top priority!! Love your content and thank you!
It's amazing how much time and effort it takes to turn naturally occurring iron into something useful without any modern conveniences. Impressive as always!
Frankly I'm surprised it takes so little starting from pretty much nothing, as much effort as it still takes. It demonstrates how powerful knowledge of the world andnits mechanics is. One man in his efforts, among many others, has gathered enough iron to make a basic iron tool. Something humanity hasn't exactly had an simple time with over tens of thousands of years. It demonstrates that given the knowledge, rebuilding the world from scratch can be relatively easy. How important and powerful it is.
This is such an amazing achievement. Going into the forest with literally nothing and coming out with decarburized iron is astonishing. It will be very cool when you have iron tools to see how many doors that will open for you.
@@Boris-Vasiliev A stone hammer and anvil would do the job just fine. Hell, even up until the industrial revolution homestead smithing work was more often done with a wooden mallet cause it was an abundant material and it did the job. And from a primitive man point of view, a knife was one of the most important tools someone could own.
@@fanofmetal1 I know, but iron is brittle without forging. And iron age started after bronze age, so whoever worked with iron already had other metal tools.
Really cool. I can't imagine it's a ton of fun to make and sustain those fires in that little room with a manual blower, especially when the end result doesn't come out the way you want it. But you're clearly making progress.
This is my first time watching your work, and this is some legit hard work that you put into these videos, and I think anyone would agree that you deserve the viewership and the subs. Liked and Subscribed. Keep it up!
I know the iron is really small but I'm really looking forward to seeing if you can make sizeable tools made out of iron! Probably not feasible but I'm a widdle excited at the prospect nonetheless. In any case, watching these processes has only made me more in awe of how people in the past had to develop this technology!
I'd been waiting for this for so long, it's really nice to finally see some progress. I look forward to seeing your first iron tool. Also, Is there a future plan for further improving your bellow/blower design?
Very impressive, I commented on your Iron from bacteria video about about getting workable Iron and wondered how you would do it and how long it would take. I don't think the average viewer will appreciate how big of step it is to produce lower carbon content Iron that can be forged, but it cannot be understated how important and impressive a step this is.
Excellent as always. I feel like you have mostly perfected metallurgy. I'd love to see you work on tanning leather (so you won't have to craft iron tools with your bare hands), or since you're about done with the Iron Age, move into paper making and other ancient history inventions.
I wouldn't say he's perfected it yet. He hasn't really tried anything large-scale in terms of toolmaking and forging, all just proof of concept until now.
I think I figured out how to turn the brittle cast iron I've been producing into malleable iron that can be forged flat. When ever I smelt local ores it always produces cast iron prills rather than softer blooms of low carbon iron as one would expect from the bloomery process. I believe this because the prills are very hard, but when struck hard enough they shatter rather than flatten.
Cast iron is iron that has a high carbon content (when arranged by carbon content: Cast iron>Steel>iron). Cast iron has a lower melting point and is harder compared to regular iron. But it is more brittle so it's nearly impossible to forge. So I figured out how to decarburize it after some experiments.
First I tried making an ingot to work on but it didn't cast properly. Then I tried rusting the iron to oxidize the metal before melting so it would decarburize the cast iron during the melt (similar to the "wet puddling" process in metallurgy). But this gave an incomplete melt also.
The method that finally worked was simply melting the cast iron in front of the air blast till the carbon burnt out in the oxygen rich zone of the forge. This caused the cast iron prills to melt together in a single blob that I then was able to hammer flat while yellow hot.
This method is similar to the "stir fried steel/ 炒钢" process in ancient China or the "Osmond process" in Europe. It's done where ever cast iron needs to be converted to a lower carbon to be forged. I've seen videos about carburizing iron on youtube but none about decarburizing cast iron.
What's fascinating is that thousands of years ago, somehow all of these processes were discovered by accident...in multiple locations around the world
Have you tried using higher furnace, like the 'smokers' or dymarki that were used in central Europe around 9-10th century? It produces less slag, and something more akin to usable ingots. Truth be told - you'll need a large load of ore to make it worthwhile.
It's very interesting!
@@corbinschuster2664 - Yup
by the time im sixty he'll be making a hand gun out of the metal and polymers taken from the land
Don't you find it crazy how hard it is to make good quality iron? Just thinking about the people who had to come up with this technology before the advances of chemistry is mind blowing
@I'll say when it's time stfu
Yup, the chemistry took hundreds of years to be understood, and the craft itself thousands of years, as the bases with smelting copper and making bronze still remained
They just found ways to make hotter fires, as John did. Better air flow techniques and stuff. It's not very mind-blowing.
@@jeanladoire4141 and still humanity didn't fully master chemistry
People can’t even make coffee at home these days.
Hi, hobbyist blacksmith of about 7 years here. I know it goes against your ethos, but please consider wearing safety glasses while forging. Little flecks of iron can embed in your eyes without you knowing, destroying your eyes when you get an MRI
Other than that, this is so cool to see! It’s amazing how much progress you’ve made and it’s fascinating to see what’s possible
Not only that, but larger flecks can seriously mess you up, I've got a 3inch scar on my arm from a little fleck smaller than a dime that grazed me when I was wearing improper clothing while forging. Turns out the thing hot enough to glow vibrantly can mess you up
I was wearing safety glasses AND face shield and been hit in the eye by a piece from a grinder. It can happen. Lost a contact lense that day instead of my eye.
He has to create stone-age safety glasses with his bare hands and random rocks first.
he is, in a few months he will be making glass and forging the frame. Caveman safety glasses 🤓
Blindness is very primitive and in period though.
Years of pure quality content, 10 millions subscribers, not a single word spoken... A legend
Not a single annoying short posted.
If you turn on CC, he adds a helpful narration as text.
And an awesome book published.
Zero ads also. These videos will go down to our history.
Early videos were narrated.
"This technique is an important step towards forged iron tools"
I can't describe just how much this one little phrase excites me. You are simply the best. Watching you strike at the ingot had me worried for your safety though. You are a treasure and no one wants to see you hurt.
Nice
No need to worry, he definitely struck with safety in mind.
those bare footsies, yowch!
Imagine how much he will accomplish once he unlocks the iron age to the fullest
can not wait to see him make an iron knife
I really like that fact that you showed some of your failed attempts, it can be easy for us as viewers to just assume you figure everything out the first time and don't make mistakes but mistakes are all part of the process of learning and improving.
His failures take just as much time (probably more) than his successes, so if he only showed the successes, it would take twice as long to release videos (or his videos would be the current length).
Even just from a business perspective, it makes sense to show the failures
It makes it pretty clear that the other channels are fakes though.
Yes I agree-and it made the success so much more satisfying and exciting to watch!!!!
@@mrkiky Those "swimming pools in the jungle" videos make me laugh. Yeah two guys with sticks totally did that
@@sharpasacueball Or the ones that take a pile of molten mess and hammer on it twice with a rock and in the next take it's a pristine steel billet with no cracks.
This is why these experiments are so valuable as a historical resource. It's hard for us to imagine nowadays why it took tens of thousands of years to figure out how to make iron tools, given that we have mindblowing new developments every decade or so. Your videos really put things into perspective and helps people to understand how incredibly hard and complicated these processes where to even come up with.
You have modern science at your disposal as a reference. I could not imagine coming up with something like this if I didn't even know that iron was a thing, let alone that forging it is possible.
Fun fact! It took longer for humanity to go from the bronze sword to the iron sword than it did for us to go from the iron sword to the nuclear war head.
Only certain ethnic groups discovered iron. And the wheel.
Iron didn't pop up out of nowhere. Tin, gold, silver, copper, bronze all preceded it. There was entire legacy of metal mining, purifying, and working with metal.
cette chaine devrait etre rendue d utilite publique ; trop fort ce mec: respect
Paleolithic humans were not trying techniques until they "figured that out". That's a ridiculous statement.
Sedentary, neolithic humans figured that out because the world had changed massively, and they were actively seeking it.
This man absolutely captivates the internet every time he drops a video.
Many imitate, few emulate, there is only one Primitive Technology
Yeah, I just watched a man pour pebbles from one cup to another, burn them and repeat. I understood nothing and was 100% enraptured.
@@mrpsycop3518 turn on captions he explains what he’s doing there
@@christinegallo4983 Thanks, that's a great tip! One of the reasons I enjoy these videos so much is I like the calmness of the sound and visuals. I also find it interesting how engaging it is to simply watch someone do something you could do if you had the resources locally. This is who we are, and why we've progressed so much over history. Show us progress, progress we can follow, and people can't look away.
Show us someone designing a microchip and it's so impressive, but I don't think it triggers the same basic response.
When he first proved the theory of getting iron from the bacteria in the river it opened up the possibility that he would be progressing out of the stone age. Seeing MALLEABLE iron is a HUGE step towards that. Absolutely incredible.
Maybe so, however getting scraps of iron after years of work is one thing, being able to ensure you can mass-produce iron and improve methods to ensure a larger volume that makes it possible to not require months of work is another thing entirely.
Most other innovations would probably require more smelting than prior.
@@ADHDisYippeeeeeeeeee Here's the cool part. Knowing the techniques frees one person to do the smelting and prep work in a society, while others prospect and collect and maybe even find deposits of iron in the ground. He's doing this all by himself, but in a real post apocalypse scenario you'd have a small group of people together helping out.
he skipped the bronze age altogether
Early Iron age
shit time to go 3000 years in the future to where we are now, back in the stone age just this time we 'taught' stones how to think
Wow, he really took all the suggestions from his last video comments and implemented them.
Learning together with others might arguably be the most important primitive skill.
True that!
The true primitive technology is the friends we made along the way
Which makes you really understand the importance of communication and the development of languages.
Yeah, this is what one person alone can do. Then imagine a group of people focusing on individual skills to perfect them. They don't have to worry about the other parts of the process and can focus just on their specialized role.
@@johnnywalkertexas1213 Yep, the single most important thing humans invented was language. It gave us not only a way to interact with others more than screaming cause a predator is nearby, but also to communicate ideas and accumulate that knowledge over generations.
This is great. Always excited to see your progress.
Thanks, I'll keep them coming.
Can’t wait till he makes swords
@@primitivetechnology9550 You'll probably want to make a hammer next, or using the Whitworth method make a flat reference surface from stone for forging on. This definitely depends on the ability to scale what you've already accomplished.
@@primitivetechnology9550 Did you ever consider creating a venturi tunnel. It was used by some to increase airflow to forges. Don't recall if you have bamboo (easiest), but the longer you can make an air feed tube to the fire and the reduce to tube to increase airflow, the longer and hotter the fire and no more air paddles. With the forge self-feeding a lot of air, you can focus on the metal.
Ditto.
This is honestly the only channel that I trust when it comes to primitive builds, all the other ones are most likely faked or staged. Kudos to this man for making it authentic.
You are right, they are fake. It's been prooved. There's a french video talking about it ("PRIMITIVE BUILD : Le Fake Aux 10M d'Abonnés" from The Sciencoder) but I assume you're not a french talking person. I've seen there's a video in english talking about that ("How Primitive Building Videos Are Staged" from SunnyV2), but since I haven't seen it, I'm not sure about what he's talking during all of the video.
But without having to get informations about those channels, you can see it clearly they are fake just by watching them. That's why I love Primitive Technology, he's very authentic, and true in what he's doing.
This Chanel IS the OG
The other channels use machinery to dig swimming pools and what not. Then they show a guy digging with a stick.......
I trust some of the ones that build things. Not digging out entire swimming pools but the house builders. They def don't compare to making iron from scratch though.
I still remember when people joked that one day we would see you get to the iron age, and here you are. Amazing video as always, keep up the excellent work! Also if anybody hasn't got his book yet it's highly recommended!
What's the name?
And all the things needed to get there… is quite the doubling of things below.
@@MrDontask007 "Primitive Technology" by John Plant
I love that you're teaching how painstaking it actually is to produce iron. Actually helpful and educational, you're truly great at what you do.
Yeah even in the mid-late medieval, smelting, working and treating metals for use was an absolute time sink of a job. With blast furnaces and armies of generationally trained smiths a set of armour for a knight could be $500k+ in today's money. In the days of primordial man... Let's just say, if you knew how to smith, your life and knowledge was invaluable.
@@AMorphicTool That's why I find modern society's fascination with swords so irritating. Swords were expensive status symbols. Useful for self defense, but on a battlefield almost always relegated to sidearm status. Most fantasy novels that feature a medieval theme border on unreadable for me because of how dumb the descriptions of the battles are, and how ridiculous the armor everyone is wearing is (boiled leather abounds). I wish fantasy authors would do more rigorous research. More than that though, I wish they'd _finish their damn series before they die._
당신이 구독자 수 10만이었을 당시부터 즐겨봤던 한국의 열렬한 팬입니다. 당신의 유튜브가 이렇게 성장했음에 감사와 축하를 보내고 진실된 영상을 올리시는 것에도 존경과 감사를 표현합니다.
I am a big fan of Korea that you have enjoyed since you had 100,000 subscribers. I also express my respect and appreciation for your TH-cam growth and posting sincere videos.
I appreciated seeing your earlier attempts. The difficulty you encountered replicating this technology highlights what an achievement it was to develop it in the first place.
I blacksmith as a hobby, and I love what you are doing. It’s so cool to see how to do these things without the tools that we rely on today.
is it an expensive hobby?
@@Data-Expungeded it can be. If you start off by buying a proper forge and anvil then it can be quite pricy, but you can also DIY yourself a forge and anvil at a fraction of the cost.
Please go ahead and make a Video about your hobby!
@@GusCraft460 for small things you could even turn an old soup can into a forge
Same here, it's amazing how different it was for those first learning about Iron and how to use it while we just pick a peice from the scrap pile and start hammering
You always make interesting videos. Much appreciated, my friend.
Thanks for the visit, Much apreciated!
Welp, you’ve officially advanced to the Iron Age. I am genuinely impressed. Not to mention how all of your subscribers have been watching the cradle and growth of civilization and technology from the comfort of our couches and toilets. You are truly one of the best the internet has.
@Spots Corner newspaper
This video not only proves that forging iron in primitive conditions is hard, time and resource consuming, but also how many other "primitive" channels are faking it. Thank you, for your great work and true content
Watching your progress from basically the stone age to the iron age has been so exciting! I can't wait for more!
Also a reminder to watch with captions on so you can get explanations for what he's doing! :D
I feel sorry for the people who watch these without the captions
He is only videos away from achieving *singularity.*
Hey thanks for that caption tip. I had no idea.
A blacksmiths take on it:
If you remelt that 'bloom' as it could roughly considered, you'll add more carbon to it because you're using charcoal. If you want to get the impurities out without much carbon addition, you should stick to about a strong orange color or cooler.
If your bloom is yellow, you're entering the caution zone, and it you start seeing white, you're too hot. Keep it highere in the fire for reheating,
I think the issue you were initially running into was being too close to the tuyere, causing the melt to bounce between oxidation and burning, to carbonizing as you pumped air in and out. Try lowering your RPM so to speak as you get closer to the melting temperature on the next run and see how that goes.
I will never use this knowledge but thank you
@@DildoSchwaggin Hahaha
@@DildoSchwaggin The Last of Us guitar lick plays…
cool
What kind of blades do you make? I'm a cook and a knife enthusiast. Lots of knives
There's a couple interesting things about smelting that you might want to look at for future working. One thing is that you're not aiming to melt the iron, but rather to melt the NOT-iron, and for that limestone flux would be VERY useful. (maybe use the shells?) The other is that you want to start with VERY dry ore, so baking the ore powder even more might be worth while. It also seems that, from what I can tell, you actually want less charcoal than ore- I think a lot of why you're getting cast iron is because you're basically smelting in a high carbon environment inside the charcoal. Maybe making a tiny thin smeltery chimney could help, or just spending the time to collect significantly more ore.
yeah, he needs more air and less fuel
I thought might be he can use water to rotate that thing and pump more air in.
Or might be special architecture of furnace, that sucks more air in?
Might be using steam for rotating that thingy, although it could be dangerous
This.
@@mattaku9430 steam powered turbine to fan air in would be dope.
@@thomasdick6797 yeah, although idk if clay bucket can handle the temperature for that to work.
Sticking with this channel over the years has paid off. Even though the wait is long, it is absolutely worth it every time. Reading the research you put into it is great as well. Thank you for your hard work.
Best channel
Watching this fellow expand his tech tree has been one of the most intriguing things I've had the privilege of seeing. He's literally speedrunning human technological evolution and it's glorious to behold!
This is why the Iron age took so long to come about! So cool to see the real and sometimes less predictable difficulties with primative metallurgy. I'm excited to see how far you can get this process. Not gonna lie, I'm hoping to see fully forged iron tools someday on this channel!
And he already knows what he needs to aim for - our pre-Iron Age ancestors had to figure everything out from zero!
Iron forging needs more heat than copper and therefore iron metallurgy came much later. But the problem with making this heat prevented our ancestors from producing cast iron which is not suited for weapons and tools.
As I sit here, reflecting on the monotonous routine of life, I find solace in the unchanging nature of your content. Your unwavering dedication to the craft, despite the ever-changing tides of popularity and fads, is a testament to the depth of your character and the truth of your artistic expression. Your consistency is not just a comfort in the midst of the unpredictable world, but also a reminder of the purposeful path one can forge when they stay true to themselves. In a world that often encourages us to adapt to the expectations of others, it is a privilege to witness someone who remains steadfast in their authenticity. Your content is not just entertainment, but a reminder to all of us that we too can carve our own way in this world. Thank you for staying true to yourself, and providing us with the gift of timelessness in a world that values temporality
What eloquent prose. I was entertained :)
As a professional bladesmith and blacksmith this video was really awesome! Great job man! You gotta think at one point in history the iron age started exactly like this. And what's even more fascinating is thinking that the guy who first smelted iron had absolutely no idea exactly what it would eventually lead to. Just imagine going back in time and showing them our refinement of what they started. Keep up the great work and I look forward to the next video!
"You gotta think at one point in history the iron age started exactly like this"
nope - he skipped Bronze Age.
@@karlheinz9432 not always, sub saharan africa skipped the bronze age entirely if i remember reading correctly
@@karlheinz9432 bronze and iron are two different things. Sure they had a rudimentary understanding of metals by the time the iron age began but it was a whole other thing entirely. Requiring a different method of refinement. And there's no guarantee that the first person who figured out how to refine iron even had or used bronze tools. It's very possible but not guaranteed.
@@elgostine Yep, sub-Saharan Africa didn't have access to tin so they went straight from stone to iron.
@@prophez23 Having proper bronze tools will definitely make working with iron easier. Proper bronze tongs, bronze anvil, bronze hammer etc.
God, I love this channel. Incredible how I can be so fully relaxed and yet 100% engaged and learning while watching. You may be having a bit of a rough time with iron, but you struck gold when you made this channel, brother.
Okay so a few things:
1) I think it could help to cover the sides of the open heart forge a bit. It would force the flames to go into the iron and not out the sides
2) To make the process less work intensive you can first heat up the iron in a ceramic dish, in a cross-draft furnace. It would get it up the first few hundred degrees and only the rest would have to be done by hand-pumping the air into the forge.
3) you absolutely need a roughly flat, stable and level working space.
It can be a large rock, stabilised to the floor with clay
4) to fuse multiple pieces of iron into a larger chunk, hammer each piece into as flat a shap as you can, heat them up, lay one on another and... Bang!
5) a good tool for then working with the iron is a wedge-shaped stone. So far you have a stone hammer, so you can bend the flat iron over an edge. Once you do that, you're gonna need a wedge to hold the 90° bent piece in place. For this you need a wedge with an internal angle of about 70° to 50°. This will let you bend it further amd then close the bent piece on itself, thus making the iron plate more uniform.
It's really incredible how much progression you continuously do. Especially considering the lack of any proper tools. I really love how you show all the work you do until you finally get a result you accept. But i wouldn't mind if you show a longer version to really appreciate the hard work you put into the journey.
Its one guy. He does enough. Watch his early vids. This. According to title at the time, was experimental.
Yeah I'd watch an hour long video of this. He went through the early stages really quickly in the video, presumably because he's demonstrated and explained that multiple times, but I'd really just sit here and watch that in full again and again, fantasizing about doing it myself because I don't own land and can't make this stuff on my rental property.
Thank you for showing the failed process as well! It is so much fun to follow along with your attempts. Never stop, you bring such joy.
as a blacksmith, this makes me feel like i've accomplished nothing. very impressive, as always
I think he needs to add coke.
@@gregoryeverson741 coke and charcoal accomplish much the same thing due to essentialy being the same thing, carbon. If hes going to add something else it would be, like...lime.
@@fractalgem pig iron (which is the iron+lime thing you are suggesting) is just poor quality iron. But this kind of iron may be what he needs to produce better tools for better iron quality productions.
@@fractalgem yo, you have good taste man, primitive tech and 5D chess, just how many comment sections will i fiñd you in i wonder.
@@enderdrane
interestinggly, we've since learned the specific source he's using, iron bacteria mud, works baaaadlyy with adding lime!
@T S
heheee
Its so batshit insane to me that we, in 2023, can watch a man enter the iron age step-by-step. Im so happy you are making videos again! How do you even research this stuff? This video was very different-it looked like a lot of trial and error which was absolutely fascinating to see.
One of the last great channels on TH-cam. Every video is a home run. Been watching for many years. Thank you for all your hard work and time that goes into these
agree with everything but "one of the last" there are constantly more and more fantastic creators on youtube. doubtlessly he is one of the best.
Grinned from ear to ear when I saw that first ingot flatten. You should be so proud of what you've achieved here
If you want to try to get a more consistent smelt, consider firing your crucibles _before_ adding the prills. _Also_ consider pre-heating the crucibles to a glowing hot temperature before adding the prills in and putting them into the furnace. It'll keep water out of the equation, and it'll make sure the temperature in the crucible is high, and _stays_ that way due to the insulating properties of ceramic. As for impurities? You have a source of lime, so try adding that as flux.
Another option--if somewhat in the vein of brute force--is to make a bloomery furnace. It'll _suck_ to get the amount of iron bacteria and charcoal you'll need to get a full smelt, but theoretically you should still be able to get a proper bloom out of even the _worst_ sources of iron as long as there's enough of it.
I guess what he built was already kind of a small bloomery, but yeah it might better to build a bigger one
crucibles blocked the oxygen which is needed for de-carburization, that's why he failed multiple times.
@@gorkemvids4839 I think lime can help fix that particular issue, though _how_ one would do it is beyond my area of expertise.
@@anthonylamonica8301 Flux is basically just an insulator from oxygen, no? It allows two pieces to marry cleanly without rust or other impurities.
@@sithlordzach8418 I think you are right, but once the pieces are fused in the crucible under the flux maybe the resulting ingot can be heated in the air blast to reduce carbon.
Ive been following your channel for the last 6 years since you did your first blower furnance and have been waiting for this moment. You have come such a long way to produce your own semi-forgeable iron. Keep on the good work
Still one of the best and most interesting channels on TH-cam. So glad you are back at it!
The current saga of iron forging and tools is incredible to learn about. From the iron bacteria to the fact you have to decarbonize to make it malleable.
Our ancient ancestors are incredible for developing these techniques for over thousands of years through experimentation. Thanks for showing them to us!
The effort and passion you put in those experiments is just amazing!
This is actually hugely exciting! Being able to forge iron tools is such a massive leap from pottery and brickwork, what an incredible leap this can turn into!
I wish you luck on this endeavor man!
th-cam.com/video/vw97TiVzhzs/w-d-xo.html
The first two failed attempts were most likely in my guess due to too low temperature. Clay crucibles are incredible at isolating and shielding against heat, and can keep items within less than half the temperature of the forge/pit.
And it was below.
Perhaps for the pit forge, a large ceramic bowl liner could be used to line the bottom, so that impurities from the ground doesn't make it into the melted iron?
That would also likely help insulate against the cold ground, forcing more heat upwards into the stack of coal and iron.
Similar to a blending of a Catalan furnace and one of these pit forges.
You could also potentially build the liner with air inlets, similar to how he has the tuyere functioning right now. Maybe build it so it can be attached to the tuyere.
@@garryiglesias4074 I get that heat rises, but without a cover wouldn't the heat dissipate too fast to melt it? I'm talking out of my ass here, I'm no scientist, just asking.
@@joshp8535 Yes it should be covered, BUT not at the bottom... It should be "somewhere" in the middle, yet close to the oxygen intake to increase heat.
@@joshp8535 early wrought iron furnaces had a cover to reflect the radiant heat back into the metal for this reason. I believe they were called reverberatory furnaces or a finery forge, but my terminology is a mess from not having looked this up in a while
Dude, I'm super stoked to see him start making iron tools. I've watched every one of this channels videos. The content is so awesome especially once you realise you are talking to us in CC.
Try it sometime without captions, a very cool experience also
What the!!!! I never knew this!!!
I can't fathom the fact that we will see him go to an iron tool somewhere in the (near) future. Truly remarkable!
He already has a small iron knife! It's too low-quality to hold a proper edge, but it's still better than stone knives. You can see him use it when he makes clean cuts in cane and such, it's just a triangle of lumpy iron a little smaller than his palm. Still, I'm excited to see him make something more refined!
Dear Mr. John Plant,
I have thoroughly enjoyed every single video that you have produced here on your channel. I think I remember watching your second video pop up in my feed when it was brand new. From the first appearance of the iron prills, it ignited a spark in my imagination. With the forging success you had on your fourth try shown here, I literally did a fist pump from how excited and giddy I was. My imagination has been stoked from this amazing milestone that you have achieved.
I am very proud of you.
Please won't you keep at it and continue to give us a good show and education. Godspeed.
-AnAfricanOrphan
One of the best channels on youtube. It takes a lot of effort, hardwork and time to create such videos. Hats off to you. 👏 👏 👏
Ah. The number one and the original/authentic Primitive video which I still adore to this day! Keep up the great work!
Glad to see you expanding on the metallurgical studies. It's always a mind-expanding venture to see what kind of things people had to go through completely blind in the past.
When I saw in the subtitles: "This technique is an important step towards forged iron tools" I literally screamed with joy, as if a significant event had happened for all mankind. Keep it up, buddy, we all believe and hope on you.
Happy to see the trial and error stage while trying to figure out why the ore is not producing the wanted product, really puts in perspective why it took so long for humans to master smelting, truly a gem of TH-cam this Chanel is..
It is truly amazing to see you advance further and further with each video. I cannot believe you are now at the point of metallurgy. I also really appreciate seeing more of the experiments, making stuff by hand is hard and it is nice to see mistakes be made and how you learn from them
This man's advance through technology truly shows that the most difficult part of human technological evolution was acquiring the knowledge.
This is getting awesome. Maybe 4--6 years ago everyone was waiting for this. At the time, myself, being just a teenager, I didn't know the purpose of this channel and when I found out that its only testing of various primitive techniques I was a bit let down. But this is starting to become the series that I always wanted to see. Thank You for your efforts and the great content you bring to us.
I can't imagine how much effort and patience it would've taken to figure all of this out the first time. Technology really is amazing
Considering how much effort and patiance it would require, I'm amazed in the distant past someone had luxury of both (& the materials) to figure it out..
It’s amazing, so much work to get some “weird” looking rocks. How did people envisioned it could have any utility?
This feels like the conclusion of a chapter in a massive saga. I'm so overjoyed that you are reaching this iron age. I know you did stuff with metal in the past. But actual forging now, this is a huge deal. I hope you make basic tools one day.
I can't express how much i love this. You just keep progressing and improving your methods, i really look forward to what may come after this!
I remember asking years ago if you ever planned on advancing to forging metals and you told me you did! awesome to finally see it happen, keep up the great videos!
The first 40 seconds used to be a whole length video! This was really condensed. Knowing previous videos, it was def a lot of work and time in this one. Major Kudos.
I'm stunned. I've never even read about this in the historical context and yet it appears to be such a monumental challenge that even with all the knowledge of today you can't just make it happen.
You're still probably my no. 1 favorite YT channel. Please keep going. Love what you're doing. ✌
This man never disappoints when he uploads!
W
W
I just thought you should know that your videos are one of the highlights of each month (which is saying something, my life is pretty great)! It's such a privilege to get to follow you on your quest, and I learn a ton from every post. I hope you got a big hit of satisfaction watching that first nugget flatten, because man have you worked for it! Your channel is a great gift to all of us, thanks for making it :)
I started watching this guy back in the Stone Age and he's already at the Iron Age. Congrats! One of my favorite channels of all time, and certainly the most underrated.
While I typically enjoy more "complete" projects, I find that following this enormous quest for iron success has been very fascinating.
Hey man, glad to see you're making progress. In Scandinavia, we've been making iron from "myrmalm" (marsh ore) for centuries. Here's a good video explaining the steps, hope it helps (it's got english subtitles) /watch?v=80omf7bM3Ek
Bookmarked it, thanks.
Bog iron?
That's cool!
Historically, early iron processing apparently focussed on meteorite iron. So the source of iron really seems important for how easy it is to process with primitive tools.
Link: th-cam.com/video/80omf7bM3Ek/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/80omf7bM3Ek/w-d-xo.html
Merci Monsieur,
Je viens de visionner pratiquement toutes vos vidéos depuis 5 ans. C'est le résumé de plusieurs millénaires d'innovations techniques et scientifiques, en les regardant avec mes yeux de chimiste, j'ai constaté à quel point nos ancêtres étaient opiniâtres et méthodiques pour arriver à maîtriser ces inventions, avec aussi peu d'outils, grâce à vous qui avez suivi leurs traces, avec la même patience et la même détermination, vous avez mis à l'honneur ces ingénieurs du passé. L'autre prise de conscience de votre travail, révèle la quantité de bois, de terre et d'eau, qu'il a fallu pour produire ces matériaux, ce qui a certainement grandement modifié son environnement. Un grand bravo, et un grand merci, pour votre oeuvre.
Your videos are practically therapy, bud. Thanks for these!
mesmerizing, enthralling, fascinating, jaw dropping quality
pissing, shitting, farting
Bro this was 4 minutes ago, i understand we love his videos but dam!
@Skyy hey friend, SHUT THE HELL UP, thanks :)
You've edited the message 20 times already
This content is amazing! I know it is very time-consuming to make these videos so I appreciate every single one that you make and look forward to seeing more!
yesssss fantastic job as always, I literally checked your channel today to see when you last posted
I always drop whatever I'm doing when there's a new upload.
Good to see you making substantial progress, rooting for an iron axe this year
The videos with smelting, decarbonizing and forging iron are my favorite ones you make.
One way to adjust the carbon content in the iron is to raise the height of the air tube. This keeps the iron bloom at a lower temp and prevents any new carbon from the charcoal from getting added in while allowing for more to eventually collect at the bottom. If anyone has anything further to add to this let me know as I’m going off of memory from iron smithing demonstrations, im sure im wrong somewhere!
I'm eagerly watching you progress through the Iron Age, please keep posting videos, out of all the things I watch on TH-cam new Primitive Technology videos are top priority!! Love your content and thank you!
This is the most important channel on TH-cam by a large margin
It's amazing how much time and effort it takes to turn naturally occurring iron into something useful without any modern conveniences. Impressive as always!
Frankly I'm surprised it takes so little starting from pretty much nothing, as much effort as it still takes. It demonstrates how powerful knowledge of the world andnits mechanics is. One man in his efforts, among many others, has gathered enough iron to make a basic iron tool. Something humanity hasn't exactly had an simple time with over tens of thousands of years.
It demonstrates that given the knowledge, rebuilding the world from scratch can be relatively easy. How important and powerful it is.
Bog iron is pretty easily available and you could get it in worthwhile quantities without to much work.
Literally the only channel that I have notifications on. Worth it every time.
This is such an amazing achievement. Going into the forest with literally nothing and coming out with decarburized iron is astonishing.
It will be very cool when you have iron tools to see how many doors that will open for you.
Really interesting to see the process step by step with trial and error. We can literally see how hard the work for a small piece of iron is.
After watching this, I am so curious as to what the Iron is going to be used for! Great video as always!
First tool is always a knife.. then a hammer/axe head..
Then a bigger knife.. 😂
@@GenoLoma I think hammer and anvil should be the first tools. Making a knife doesnt help with forging everything else.
@@Boris-Vasiliev an anvil would take forever to gather enough iron for.
@@Boris-Vasiliev A stone hammer and anvil would do the job just fine. Hell, even up until the industrial revolution homestead smithing work was more often done with a wooden mallet cause it was an abundant material and it did the job. And from a primitive man point of view, a knife was one of the most important tools someone could own.
@@fanofmetal1 I know, but iron is brittle without forging. And iron age started after bronze age, so whoever worked with iron already had other metal tools.
I love the way you show success but also failure... Better than sciences article that skip mostly the failure part nowadays
I can't wait till the day you come out of nowhere with a video named "Primitive Technology: Gunpowder & Armaments"
Дякую за контент!)❤
Honestly, bravo. The work that went into those 7 minutes is unbelievable.
I find it very cool to see iron collected and used in nature like this!
There's a link spammer
@@lenadams854 report the spammers. It's the best way to help youtube drop the banhammer on them.
@Scarlett Witch 🅥 lol (as in wow, that's a pretty funny response from a bot - well played, spammer)
@Farb S best to keep the algorithm on its toes
Really cool. I can't imagine it's a ton of fun to make and sustain those fires in that little room with a manual blower, especially when the end result doesn't come out the way you want it. But you're clearly making progress.
This was so exciting! I started celebrating with vocal shouts when the iron started to flatten. How satisfying! Well done!
This is my first time watching your work, and this is some legit hard work that you put into these videos, and I think anyone would agree that you deserve the viewership and the subs. Liked and Subscribed. Keep it up!
Make sure you turn on closed captions man
This series on iron has been awesome, we are counting down the days until we see you forge a sword and a full suit of armor ☺
Good on ya mate, it warms my heart to see an intellectual person try to help others by engaging in different hobbies. This is interesting, for sure.
I look forward to future episodes and the results of your tool forging.
I know the iron is really small but I'm really looking forward to seeing if you can make sizeable tools made out of iron! Probably not feasible but I'm a widdle excited at the prospect nonetheless. In any case, watching these processes has only made me more in awe of how people in the past had to develop this technology!
I'd settle for a simple knife.
Many trees died to bring us this information
@@diggles27 many trees were already dead!
Born at the same time as Primitive Technology, what a huge win!
Got the notification and my energy immediately shot through the roof. So excited to see what he's going to do.
I'd been waiting for this for so long, it's really nice to finally see some progress.
I look forward to seeing your first iron tool.
Also, Is there a future plan for further improving your bellow/blower design?
Imagine pedals with a good blower attached to it.
Very impressive, I commented on your Iron from bacteria video about about getting workable Iron and wondered how you would do it and how long it would take. I don't think the average viewer will appreciate how big of step it is to produce lower carbon content Iron that can be forged, but it cannot be understated how important and impressive a step this is.
I know it's an astoundingly long process, but do you foresee you moving on to iron made tools in the future, or plan to stay mostly Neolithic?
Excellent as always. I feel like you have mostly perfected metallurgy. I'd love to see you work on tanning leather (so you won't have to craft iron tools with your bare hands), or since you're about done with the Iron Age, move into paper making and other ancient history inventions.
I wouldn't say he's perfected it yet. He hasn't really tried anything large-scale in terms of toolmaking and forging, all just proof of concept until now.
Superb. That moment when he can finally flatten it out -- it just cries out to be overdubbed with "Also Spake Zarathustra"
Love this stuff. Learning alot from your channel for many years now. Thanks.