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I'm re-sending this newspaper story about student smelters, anticipating
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everyone can access. So the text is included below:




MTU students learn to smelt metal the prehistoric way

By BETH KAMPSCHROR
Daily Mining Gazette, Houghton
(Published in the Mining Journal, Marquette, MI USA, 9-4-99)
HOUGHTON - Deep in the ‘bowels of the MME building at Michigan Technological
Universi-ty, a gang of soot-blackened stu-dents dump coals on an unholy hot
fire.
 They’re not imps. They’re not in a sweatshop. They’re industrial
ar-chaeology students making iron the way they used to back in the good old
days - from about 800 B.C. to 1200 A.D.
 Visiting assistant professor Carl Blair said they’re doing it to figure out
where the gromps have gone. Gromps are the tiny leftovers of the iron-making
process that aren’t big enough to do anything with.
 “You don’t find gromps on ar-chaeological sites very often, whereas when we
do this work, a lot of gromps are produced,” be said, adding that on a site
in Eng-land last summer, they went through five tons of iron-making debris
and found three or four gromps. Blair thinks ancient peo-ple practiced
“waste not, want not.” Like modern people who take little bits of soap to
make a big bar, so those people did with gromps.
 “My theory is that if you spent all this time to make the stuff, what’re
you going to do? Are you going to throw it out? That would be stupid. So,
what if you put in a bunch of gromps together?” Blair asked.
 He and his team of students are smelting using a 5-foot tall brick furnace.
On top is a blue-hot flame that’s burning off the iron-making gases, such as
carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Inside is the 2000-degree fire that
transforms iron ore into a big piece of  “iron bloom.”
 “I tell people it looks like a sea sponge.” Blair said. And it kind of
does, except that it’s nothing you’d want to rub on your skin. The 20-pound
plus chunk has sharp edges and leaves your hands reddish-black from touching
it.
 Blair said his fascination for recreating ancient smelting began when he
started to write his doctoral
dissertation on the environ-mental impact of early iron produc-tion.
  “I was working in Kelheim, which was the Pittsburgh of Iron Age Europe,”
he said. But no one knew exactly how they made iron back then, so he had to
figure it out himself.
  “The biggest thing used in an-cient iron smelting was charcoal,” he said.
For example, his group burned 150 pounds of charcoal to get 23 pounds of
bloom and would have to burn about 100 more pounds to get the bloom to
become the 7 pounds of iron.
  This particular project started in 1991 at the University of Minnesota,
where Blair is a research professor. Corporations, industry, individuals and
other agencies have given him money to do this work.
  “We’ve gotten bits and pieces from hither and yon,” he said. This project
is relatively cheap, consid-ering that a six-week excavation project can
cost $90,000. And he has a labor advantage.
  “I get free labor out of the stu-dents,” he said, as two nearby stu-dents
made crack-the-whip noises and they all laughed. “I’ve been very pleased
with how they’ve worked.”
 Furnace master and industrial ar-chaeology graduate student Julie Bailey
said it’s fun to make iron
this way.
      “Basically you just keep the fire going. I keep teasing and saying we’
re going to bring in marshmallows and brats,” she said. She esti-mated she
spends 10 to 20 hours a week in the foundry getting sooty.
      History undergraduate Aaron Allen said he can’t wait to play with the
iron blooms after all the lab tests are finished.  He’s taking Blair’s
experimental archaeology class and mans the smoking kiln about twice a week.
“I’m a blacksmith, so I’m really looking forward to consolidating the
 bloom,” Allen, 21, said. “We’re going to heat them up and take a
sledgehammer and pound them down.”

William D. Conner
908 S. Roys Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43204
Phone: 614-276-5219;  e-mail:  <[log in to unmask]>
web sites:
America's Mysterious Furnaces <http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc>
New Analysis of Time <http://www.iwaynet.net/~wdc/time.htm>






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