Pig Iron

[crockett]

I've been reading Foxfire 5. The local library is selling off a lot of books for $.50 a piece and replacing them with stuff like "Spiderman kills Mighty Mouse" or similar junk. Oh well.... In any event this Foxfire 5 is a great book, it starts with iron making and then making muzzle loading rifles. Over 400 gunsmiths operated in North Carolina- I had no idea there were that many.
I have some questions. Iron ore- does anyone know what the stuff is like? I always thought it was pretty much just a rock with rust on it and you melted out streaks of iron- such that maybe 10% of the mass was metal and the rest just slag that got thrown away. I realize that ore probably comes in different degrees but in a general sense, what was iron ore like? How rich (%) was the rock with the actual iron metal?
Pig iron...made from a blast furnace and poured into pigs..was that the same stuff we call cast iron? Used for pot belly stoves and frying pans? How is wrought iron different? I was thinking they were similar but wrought iron must have been very different.

 

[M. De Land]

Good questions I would like to know more about myself. I have heard of folks getting ore from streams beds in the form of black sand, I think it is, and was smelted into rough ingots in an earthen forge.
Wrought iron, if not mistaken, is as the name imply's, hammered out into billets and flat stock which when hot removes slag and closes pores.
Steel is iron that has been alloyed with carbon to various levels. MD

 

[Jim Blair]

Some iron ore came from bogs.Iron production in Early America is a subject worth studying.Google Saugus Ironworks,all kinds of links about early iron production.

 

[LaBonte]

http://www.flintriflesmith.com/WritingandResearch/WebArticles/ironandsteel.htm

here's a good basic overview - cast iron btw came and comes in various types, including the cast used for stoves,etc. and malleable iron used for pipe

while I'm generally careful about Wikipedia this article on iron ore is pretty well done and best explains the amount of iron in the ore (typically 60% or so) and the different types. Several modern knifemakers are making their own steel these days especially those interested in Viking and Migration period stuff.

 

[crockett]

Thanks Chuck. I get a big kick learning how things were made from scratch, probably why I like muzzle loading. There's also a blast furnace in PA along the famous Yellow Breeches trout stream and one in Hendersonville NC- which I go past all the time but didn't even know it was there until reading the book. There were some gunsmiths right across from the Hendersonville blast furnace - Gillespie I think. In any event, pretty incredible when you think about it- dig up the ore, smelt into pig iron, hammer into wrought bars, forge into barrels, and make a gun. make your own black powder. Talk about self sufficient.

 

[naysmyth]

i think i read pig iron refers to the pattern of the ingots of wrought iron are poured in,but i
am not positive

 

[Claude Mathis]

So they say...

Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 3.5”“4.5%, along with silica and other constituents of dross, which makes it very brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications.

The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots was a branching structure formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner. Such a configuration is similar in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and the inclusion of small amounts of sand caused only insignificant problems considering the ease of casting and handling them.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

The original iron ore for millenia was what is today called bog iron. It's very odd stuff, and I ran across a spring with some of it a couple of years ago..., the orange-ish water made me think the spring was polluted. After learning about bog iron I went back, and sure enough, that was what was causing the color. Haven't gotten around to trying to make iron from it though.

Some websites seem to think that iron production up to the Revolution was highly developed..., but as one can see from the link, bog iron is bit of an "iffy" source for iron..., always has been. Mining locations of purer forms of ore in the 19th century changed that.


LD

 

[crockett]

Thanks Claude- that's right out of Foxfire 5. In fact there's also a recipe to make your own black powder in Foxfire 5. really loving that book.
As I understand it- and I have a lot to learn- the ore comes in various qualities and sort of efffects the iron that is produced. I think there may be truth in that because I have read about cutlery in Sheffield and they usually tried to get Swedish Wrought Iron- claiming it made better steel.

 

[crockett]

LD- thanks for the links. I wonder if I've seen iron ore and didn't know it. On what I'm reading right now the blast furnace had to be next to a hill and a platform was build so carts of ore could be added near the top. The original fuel was charcoal so there had to be a lot of trees nearby to make the charcoal. Finally there was a huge bellows to blow in the air and the bellows were opened and closed off of a waterwheel so a creek with a fairly strong current was needed as well.

 

[Old Creek]

i cant remember what i was looking for when i found it but awhile back i watched a youtube video of some guys smelting their own ore in a back yard forge you might like. what ever search term i was using but it had something to do with forging.

creek

 

[MSW]

wow- i thought i was the only one who gave a rip about the Saugus Iron Works ... i was dragged there on a class trip as a little kid, expecting to be bored out of my mind, but it was pretty cool ... they had the demonstration and actually did a pour, showing how the double bellows worked (powered by a pond upstream) ... a long while later, my dad moved to Saugus and lived about five miles from the iron works... tok the kids there but they never had much interest...

 

[crockett]

I think if more class trips were done that some of our young people would have their imagination stirred and may go on to manufacturing careers. On the backyard smelting, Foxfire 5 has a little on it; the process was different and there was a lot more hammering to get the iron. As I understand it the blast furnace produced pig iron and from pig iron you could hammer it and create wrought iron but the backyard process bypassed the pig iron stage and made wrought iron from the start however the output was very low.

 

[Pete44ru]

I followed an article in one of the Foxfire books, many years ago, to make this bag.

Good stuff in those books ! . :bow:



.

 

[MSW]

nice looking bag!

 

[Archie]

here is some cool info on iron ores. http://miningartifacts.homestead.com/IronOres.html

Up northern MN (no suprise it's called the iron range)there is so much iron in the ground the streams run rust colored and in some areas the ground is rust colored. They are even talking about redirecting the major highway through the area (hwy 53) to make room for the mine. I have held the ore in my hand but I'll be dawged if I know how to smelt it. I can imagine before the mines started up 150 or so years ago a feller could probably pick up the pure iron off the ground and melt it into pig iron.

 

[Jaeger]

I think there are a number of kinds of iron ore, Crockett. One kind that we see in the Great Lakes area is hematite, or even specular hematite, which is dark grey and really sparkly, and actually feels heavy in your hand. We find it on the bottom of the St. Clair River, where it has fallen off ore-carrying ships. I think the specular hematite is a particularly rich type of iron ore.Other kinds of ore are red in color, as you might expect.

 

[crockett]

Thanks all, I'm going to keep an eye out for iron ore from now on.

 

[Zonie]

Here's a link that gives some interesting information about converting iron ore to iron.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/iron2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery

 

[bpd303]

Here is another link to Colonial Trades Ore to AX... at Stratford Hall this weekend.
http://www.stratfordhall.org/event/blacksmithing-ore-to-ax/