I seem to be starting new projects all the time, but they keep me interested I guess. This project is about making my own steel - Oroshigane - or Scrapahagane as some Westerners jokingly call it. In my case it is literally Scrapahagane as I am using scrap pre-industrial iron I have collected in the form of old nails, horseshoes, door hinges, broken tools etc. I pound that down to flat pieces, then cut smaller (15-20g) chips from them, and fill a graphite crucible. When the crucible is full, add some charcoal, (maybe some vegetable matter, as some claim the extra hydrogen faciltitates carbonization) and fire them in a forge for several hours. Ideally I will have created steel (iron with carbon in it), and then I will have to stack it and forge weld it to a single billet. I have done this once under Michael Bell's guidance, so it should work, as long as the scrap I have gathered is indeed the purer pre-industrial iron and not some modern iron or steel (which contains a lot of manganese, etc, etc). To be continued...
Pile of scrap iron
Pieces flattened to about 1-2mm thickness
Crucible starting to fill up with iron chips
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