Bladesmithing / Forging
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
mograph
Master of Arts
Zumorito
Green Belt
Oh I know; I have a list of subjects in the order of most vital to least vital. Still modifying it and adding to it. The first handful of subjects goes something like this though.
01. Self-Control
02. Water Procurement
03. Stoneworking
04. Woodworking
05. Fire Craft
06. Food Procurement
07. Navigation
08. Rope Making
09. Shelter Building
10. Making Clothes
11. Basket Weaving
12. Primitive Big Game Hunting (Spear, Bow and Arrow)
13. Raising Livestock
14. Wild Horse Taming (fresh outta the wild)
15. Mining
16. Blacksmithing
17. Cooking
18. Glass Making
19. Soap Making
20. Medicine Making
21. Glue Making
22. Pigment Making
23. Paper Making
24. Poison Making
25. Chalk Making
26. Pottery
27. Growing Crops
28. Cotton Spinning
29. Leathercrafting
30. Treasure Hunting
31. Reading
32. Writing
33. Mathematics
34. Science
35. History
36. Health & Nutrition
37. Psychological Arts & Sciences
38. Chemistry
39. Foreign Languages
40. Art
41. Music
42. Dance
43. Engineering
44. Computer Science
45. Martial Arts
46. Gunsmithing
47. Escape & Evasion
48. Improvised Munitions
49. Military Sciences
50. Quantum Mechanics
....Notice how AWESOME life got for people RIGHT AFTER the discovery of metalworking? XD Helluva thing, that metal. XD
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
That is a pretty awesome bucket list by the way.
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
Thanks. Put a lot of thought into it.
By the way. Could you mabye cross reading and writing off that as you seem to be doing that already.
Volcanos / Really? Hey, are you a kid? You sound like it. Your ideas come right out of Gilligan's Island. Of course if you are a kid, that won't mean anything to you ...which is quite alright as it was a really dumb TV show anyway. If you are not a kid, you definitely have a child-like imagination.
Back to the topic: I built a brake-drum and vacuum cleaner forge a long time ago, also a castable refractory bronze foundry fueled with propane ...which was much more practical, since I'd worked a couple of years in a foundry before making my own. Since then I've built a couple of ceramic kilns. In general, heating isn't all that hard to do.
Anyway, first, you don't start with iron bearing sand unless you live in a place without iron ore, as for example, feudal Japan. Modern Japanese steel is smelted from ore like everywhere else. Secondly, primitive forges and foundries aren't that complicated. A proper one may be, but as I said, it isn't that hard to produce a lot of heat. You basically just need fuel (wood, charcoal, coal, coke, etc.), a firing chamber to contain the heat and a forced air supply. Or if you live where I do, you open the door at 3pm any day from June through August.
A friend of mine made a crude but functional non-ferrous metal foundry simply by digging a hole, lining it with charcoal briquets and using a shop vac reversed to blow air through a piece of pipe into the bottom of the hole. With a small discarded carbide crucible he could easily melt a few pounds of aluminum or bronze to do simple castings. In earlier times, you would have had to use some kind of ceramic or ? for the crucible and a pair of bellows to supply the air.
If you go on youtube, handier people than I do all kinds of stuff like this. Check out this video for example:
Zumorito
Green Belt
Really? How do you make a campfire hot enough to melt metal? (Sorry, didn't see that post before).
Cross Reading? I've been cross-referencing I guess. I start of by visualizing myself butt naked in the jungle. Then arrange my priorities from there; the first thing I'd have to do is keep my wits about me, think positively, and control my emotions and possibly regulate my body temperature with biofeedback/transcendental meditation. This is all part of the very first thing on my list: Self-Control. I'd be getting thirsty by then though, so I'd have to find water. It would be rain-water to start, as I wouldn't yet have a means of boiling water. Then making a stone tool to carve into dry wood or hollow out a coconut/gorde to hold my water and gather more. Then I could use stones to create a spark, or carve into dry wood to make a friction starter, and then I'd be able to begin Fire Craft and so on and so forth.
Start off naked and afraid and go from there haha. XD
Cross Reading? I've been cross-referencing I guess. I start of by visualizing myself butt naked in the jungle. Then arrange my priorities from there; the first thing I'd have to do is keep my wits about me, think positively, and control my emotions and possibly regulate my body temperature with biofeedback/transcendental meditation. This is all part of the very first thing on my list: Self-Control. I'd be getting thirsty by then though, so I'd have to find water. It would be rain-water to start, as I wouldn't yet have a means of boiling water. Then making a stone tool to carve into dry wood or hollow out a coconut/gorde to hold my water and gather more. Then I could use stones to create a spark, or carve into dry wood to make a friction starter, and then I'd be able to begin Fire Craft and so on and so forth.
Start off naked and afraid and go from there haha. XD
Last edited:
Zumorito
Green Belt
Probably won't see myself as an Adult until I'm 26 years old. The human brain and body finally finish developing right around the age of 25, so 26 just to be safe. I'll be officially full-grown then haha. I always thought it was kinda weird that so many kids don't identify themselves as kids...what's wrong with being a kid? 
Zumorito
Green Belt
Awesome info; I hadn't thought to make a ceramic furnace before. Great idea; my chief concern with making a campfire that hot was burning down a forest/not having it contained too well haha. Pottery is on my ultimate training bucket list though so that could be totally doable. Thanks.
No problem, I'm still a kid (most of the time) and I'm 61.
BTW the most technologically basic cultures don't just jump into iron-smithing i.e. a "naked savage" doesn't locate ore, smelt it and produce iron or steel from scratch. Cultures develop their technological knowledge over time. First, beginning in neolithic times people learned bake the grains they began to cultivate, and with similar technology, to fire clay, make pottery and bricks to build permanent dwellings, etc. Then they adapted this technology to work naturally occurring metals (gold, some copper) and then learned to smelt ore leading to the use of bronze, then iron, and finally steel.
The idea that you would be running around in the wild in a loin cloth trying to refine and work iron or steel with rocks and sticks as about as as absurd as trying to use coconuts, bamboo, and vines to make a short-wave radio. Hence the Gilligan's Island reference. Heck why not make a computer or starship while you are at it?
To do something simply, with few tools --like the guys re-creating Celtic iron smelting is one thing. To presume to be able to such things with no tools at all is not very realistic. Naked people in the wild have a hard enough time getting food and shelter.
BTW the most technologically basic cultures don't just jump into iron-smithing i.e. a "naked savage" doesn't locate ore, smelt it and produce iron or steel from scratch. Cultures develop their technological knowledge over time. First, beginning in neolithic times people learned bake the grains they began to cultivate, and with similar technology, to fire clay, make pottery and bricks to build permanent dwellings, etc. Then they adapted this technology to work naturally occurring metals (gold, some copper) and then learned to smelt ore leading to the use of bronze, then iron, and finally steel.
The idea that you would be running around in the wild in a loin cloth trying to refine and work iron or steel with rocks and sticks as about as as absurd as trying to use coconuts, bamboo, and vines to make a short-wave radio. Hence the Gilligan's Island reference. Heck why not make a computer or starship while you are at it?
To do something simply, with few tools --like the guys re-creating Celtic iron smelting is one thing. To presume to be able to such things with no tools at all is not very realistic. Naked people in the wild have a hard enough time getting food and shelter.
Zumorito
Green Belt
Food and Shelter is easy; there's countless different species of bugs that can be eaten, and in certain climates, water is overly-abundant. Caves and rock structures can be used as shelter, as well as tying together thin trees to form a hut; the idea is that when the fall comes, leaves will gather on top of the "wikiup" as it's called. Then when the snow comes it packs it down/makes it muddy. Over the years it builds up into a very sturdy structure. Beware though that on certain terrain your wikiup will begin to morph it's shape as the ground moves from being frozen and thawed over the years. In the ideal location though, it could last indefinitely.
And I never said anything about mining and forging with NO tools haha; pretty sure that's next to impossible, if not flat-out impossible (and I'm not one to use the word "impossible" very often; I don't like that word).
And making a radio isn't too awfully difficult either. You'd just need to make some wire/cables out of your metal and make a circuit board using some soft wood; hook up some lemons, or better fruit for electrical conductivity etc. Engineering is on my list of things to learn as well. After making some basic electronics I could gradually work my way up to computer manufacturing and computer science to eventually then work my way up to building my own space program; why the heck not???
And I never said anything about mining and forging with NO tools haha; pretty sure that's next to impossible, if not flat-out impossible (and I'm not one to use the word "impossible" very often; I don't like that word).
And making a radio isn't too awfully difficult either. You'd just need to make some wire/cables out of your metal and make a circuit board using some soft wood; hook up some lemons, or better fruit for electrical conductivity etc. Engineering is on my list of things to learn as well. After making some basic electronics I could gradually work my way up to computer manufacturing and computer science to eventually then work my way up to building my own space program; why the heck not???
Not really accurate. If you have the food, water, and shelter part down, you can do a lot of worthwhile stuff, including the arts, enjoying poetry, music, literature, etc. If you don't have that first part under control, you can be living in modern times and life still really sucks.
A wealthy aristocrat or merchant in ancient Sumer or Egypt some 4-5000 years ago enjoyed a far more pleasant life than the very poor in 19th Century England ...or in many places today.
Probably won't see myself as an Adult until I'm 26 years old. The human brain and body finally finish developing right around the age of 25, so 26 just to be safe. I'll be officially full-grown then haha. I always thought it was kinda weird that so many kids don't identify themselves as kids...what's wrong with being a kid?
Grown ups take responsibility for themselves, children get to avoid that responsibility as they aren't ready for it. At 21 you are an adult and will be treated as such unless you have developmental issues that affect your decision making ability.
Zumorito
Green Belt
Meh; doesn't really work like that where I come from. I grew up in the arctic and my father had my siblings and I working hard labor everyday; we've built everything we have ourselves and by and large live like the pioneers did. Both my parents were elderly when I was born and so everyone had to pitch in. Responsibility never really determined adulthood for us. Then of course there's the Legal/Politicial definition of adult, but seeing as I'm a man of science, I prefer the scientific definition of an adult, which technically speaking is 25 years old. Doesn't mean though that I don't have to pull my own weight and continue improving myself. Based on the life experience of senior citizens, 25 year old's can still be considered children. That might be another reason I don't have any problems with identifying myself as a kid, which is a few steps up from child in my mind lol; all the authority/mentor/rolemodels in my life have by and large been shriveled up old people; kinda hard not to feel like a child in the presence of so much combined life-experience. XD
