Iron smelting

The iron smelting with Jake Keene was a good example of experimental archaeology. For Jake this was smelt number 98 and in his words it went “quite well”. The pictures show that when the bloom had been removed from the kiln it was sawn in half to show how much iron was inside.

The iron shows up as a silvery colour. It was never Jake’s intention to work this piece of iron. However, if it was re-heated and beaten several times it would have produced a small bar of iron that could have been forged into an object or a tool, such as a blade.