Smelting Iron in Africa

[NormanV]

I watched it from start to finish, fantastic! It shows what we as humans are capable of, even without electricity. We, (soft Westerners) too easily complain about minor problems. It just goes to show what you could do if we just got on with it!

[RobWilson]

(11-25-2014, 04:57 PM)awemawson Wrote: The fuel was charcoal made from the local chestnut which is coppiced in profusion locally. The people involved were rather 'precious' insisting on absolute authenticity in all things, but the result was somewhat disappointing - I don't think it was hot enough really. The bloomery was authenticly built up from local clays and probably hadn't had enough time to fully dry before firing although it was fired for two days and the intervening night. I left when they started arguing whether knocking the bloom out would break the furnace :(

Thats a dam shame Andrew ,,,,,,,,,,,,, mined you I am not suprized ,as I dont think I have seen a successfully British reconstruction  smelt/melt of anything . There are allot of variables in a project like that . 


  

(11-25-2014, 04:58 PM)NormanV Wrote: I watched it from start to finish, fantastic! It shows what we as humans are capable of, even without electricity. We, (soft Westerners) too easily complain about minor problems. It just goes to show what you could do if we just got on with it!

Well said Norman ,and  so true . 


Rob 

[EdK]

Finally got to watch all of it. I liked the forging part best. Fascinating!

Ed

[stevec]

Very interesting, but I don't know what coppiced means.

"The fuel was charcoal made from the local chestnut which is coppiced in profusion locally"  .

Steve

[awemawson]

Coppicing is a 'renewable ' way of harvesting chestnut wood. Every fifteen or twenty years the saplings are cut down to a few inches off the ground. When the stump re grows multiple shoots emerge forming a tight clump of new saplings from the same root. This can be repeated for hundreds of years. Coppiced woods have a very distinctive character, with these tight clumps where each sapling emerges at an angle then grows upwards so the timber has a handle shape at the base. If a managed wood is neglected and the coppicing cycle not repeated the trees grow to full height but are still distinctively coppiced . The timber is mainly used now for fencing as chestnut contains natural preservatives that slow down rotting in damp earth.

[vtsteam]

I was very interested in coppicing here a number of years ago. There are reportedly trees that have been continually coppiced for 1000 years. I recently came across this reference to something similar re Blean woods in SE England: "Some of the beech coppice is believed to be 700 years old. "

Coppicing starts with cutting a tree of about 6" diameter off a short distance above the root crown. This is called a "stool". The tree forms a callous over the cut and eventually barks over there and remains viable. Meanwhile side shoots come out near the crown because the roots are still producing as much nutrients as once supported the entire tree. and they grow at a very high rate and become poles which are relatively straight and branch free for a long length. It's the straight poles that are valuable for older fencing and building purposes. But now they are also of interest as easily chipped biofuel. The biomass production rate of a coppice wood is generally considered to be much higher than a conventional forest.

Coppice woods by themselves can become vulnerable to pests, and also particularly deer, since they essentially consist of mast -- deer food. They can also discourage natural habitat variety. Instead of a solid coppice wood, it was realized early on that there are advantages in alternating tracts of coppice and conventional woodland. These seem to result in the best of both worlds -- lumber and alternating habitat for plats and animals, reduced losses, and availability of coppice products.

[awemawson]

In Petley Wood, which is on the other side of the A21 from my house, so only a few hundred yards, they were coppicing chestnut and alder for charcoal up to the 1980's, and had been doing so since Roman times. (AD 40 or so). Initially it was for the iron smelting, but in the 1700's and 1800's they went over to gun powder production. The locals here in East Sussex, renown for being unruly, were selling iron cannon and gun powder to the French when we were at war with them !!! They had good contacts established smuggling brandy silk and tea :)