I've been thinking about it lately and i've come to the conclusion that for a nomadic tribe in the iron age, a charcoal forge would have necessarily been something you could construct easily from readily available materials, as there's no real way to make and move a forge back then.
I've seen some types of wood fires that are designed to oxygenate themselves via a bottom draft (kind of a trench that comes into the bottom of the earth fire pit) that uses the natural behavior of heated air to draw new air in the bottom.
basically, i'm wondering if anyone has experience with this type of fire, and if you used lump charcoal, do you think it can get steel up to a working heat?

Gang: If we think of Lewis& Clark and their "little trek" we read of their two blacksmiths repairing and making things at many points along the way. Clearly they did not haul some sort of "portable forge", at least none is noted. I have researched regarding what they would use in place of coke or coal and charcoal was told that common charcoal such as gleaned from a dead fire would have been most common, though it would take a lot of it to equal the heat of coal. Given that, it is entirely within reason to postulate that a skilled man could easily have used rock and earth to cobble up a firebox with some sort of bellows and air feed to create a serviceable forge of some sort.

Boone

I think that way back when the technology for bellows and higher heats for forging made their way from the far east with Polo and the other early explorers.

Lads: Since my first comment earlier today I reviewed some notes from an interview with a historic restoration/reinactment blacksmith who is at a museum farm in California. I asked him basically the same question. It was he who said that common fire charcoal would work, adding that one could "get by" with a small anvil - perhaps 25-35 lbs, a hammer or two, a pair of tongs, a cutting stake, cutting chisel, and perhaps a few other hand tools - and files, of course. I then reviewed the list of items that M Lewis requisitioned for his Corps and did not fine any note of even an anvil! No "forge" or "portable forge", and only files noted among the smaller tools. Yet, we see in Lewis' Journal more than one mention of the blacksmiths plying their trade, servicing rifles, making or repairing things and the like. Seems that we have enticing clues but no real answers - what's new about that????

Boone

Sometimes folks get too wrapped-around-the-axle (imho) when it comes to low tech applications. I saw a so called "documetary" where a few archaeologists made a crude bellows, and were only moderately successful. (As an archaeologist myself I was embarrassed.) It never occurred to them to actually ask a smith or look at smithing books. As in the "documentaries" where the archaeologists finally ask a master mason how the Egyptians raised an obelisk, and the master mason shows them in about 15 minutes how the "mystery" was done that puzzled them for a good century.

You need a flat rock, a hammer, a bucket of water, charcoal, and some hollow tubes and two assistants.

I saw this in a book on basic blacksmithing. You need a fire, and you can do it with green wood added, but charcoal works better. You get two apprentices (or more but two minimum), and long wooden reeds..., or modern, iron, blow-pokers (something with a hollow-tube). You have the apprentices blow on the fire, alternating their breaths, so they give a steady stream of oxygen, one inhales while the other exhales. If you use reeds you will need a stack of them, as the ends burn and the apprentices have to keep getting closer to the fire, and then they have to replace the reed and keep going. The steady stream of exhaled air onto the charcoal will get the fire plenty hot..., and the rest is simple if you have a strong, flat rock, and a hammer.

You can use the same method with a big "chimney" of rocks, filled 2/3 charcoal, and then 1/3 copper ore, with a basin dug into the ground at the bottom. The same technique will give you a nice ingot of copper when done, and you could make a nice "ice man" axe head with the finished product.

True, mostly conjecture, but once you figure out what could be done with commonly found materials, you're probably pretty close to the answer of "how" it was done.

LD

. . .
you really have to hand it to our ancestors, they were good at simple but effective, a skill i find disturbingly lacking in the modern day, and rapidly decreasing. I think some time in the near future we're going to be trying this technique, since it seems a lot easier than box bellows, and a lot more likely. should be fun, especially trying to use my bronze-age bladesmith anvil, which is basically a 3"x3" cube with a spike in the bottom that you drive into a stump or log.
I'm really excited, thanks for the help

tim Lively and Tai Goo made a video on bare basics knife making. I haven't seen the video, but I believe they illustrate building a forge, in addition to tool and knife making.

http://www.survival.com/volume-9.htm

I purchased a book a while ago called the $50 Knife Shop, I think that is the title, by Wayne Goddard. If you have the slightest mechanical ability the book I believe would help you make a knife. He even has a chapter on Tai Goo, who is in the video mentioned by JD.

If you want a vague idea of how some folks did things like this in the past, just see if you can fnd a video of some of the smiths in Yemen making a jambiya the old way. Then definately check out what Tai Goo is doing. From what he has posted on some of the forums, he has actually been going for more and more simple and traditional methods over the years and still creates mindblowing, complex pieces. You can do darnnear anything the old way, but it will just take you longer. lol

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jmforge,

Post anvil maybe.

Did Lewis and Clark have single bit axes? Drive the sharp end into a stump and the back end automatically becomes a post anvil.

Lads: Yes, according to the L&C equipment lists they did have single bit axes, quite a number of them. They also had at least one adze and two saws, as well as files. Add in some tongs, a cutting chisel, and maybe a drill of some sort and you could make all manner of things. I do know that one of the Company soldiers was a gunsmith as it is written he "kept our rifles in good order". Also, in two occasions a bellows is mentioned, so they had that as well.

Boone

I suspect that by the iron age in many areas the nomadic life stye had become a thing of the past, this would be around 1100-1200 BC if I recall.

Actually the migration period continued well into the Roman era - the Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, et al were still migrating after the turn of the millenium.

For more info on early iron age and migration era on through the Vikings forging tools and techniques - I suggest you check out http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php
Several guys who hang out there are into that period (and later) including several from Europe and they not only forge using many of the old techniques, but even make their own iron and steel......

trg,

Not neccessarily. Ashley's men had some blacksmithing tools cached at Blacksmith's Fork south of present day Logan, UT. Their brigades stopped in there to do repairs. I think one of Jed's journals talks about what they had there. I'm sure they used something akin to a small stump anvil and locally made charcoal from juniper and pinyon. I don't remember what all they had, but it wasn't much in the way of tools. They probably couldn't do big jobs.

Also, I was at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum the other day and they have a reconstructed blacksmith shop in it from a turn of the century farm. They actually had a fair sized anvil in there, a foot pedal operated grinding wheel, and a hand crank blower. All of that is outside our discussion here, but their forge was just a pile of flat rock off the hillside stacked up. The middle of the pile of was packed with clay mixed with ash to form a pan and a tuyere with a pipe run from the blower into the base of the fire. Aside from the cast hand crank blower and pipe, the whole forge set up was very iron age and it was still being used in the 1930's inside a hand-hewn, 3-sided log cabin.

Sean

You don't even need charcoal - mi compadre Tai Goo who has been mentioned uses regular dry fire wood in small chunks and does everything up to and including welding with his blown air setup made from an old barbeque

I was just tossing out a general statement of the begining of a trend which spread across the globe over the centuries, the early Britons and other tribal groups were superb iron workers, when some groups found a nich that supplied their needs of the new era they would at times settle as what they needed was there,(natural resources)I have studied the post Roman era and movments of peoples then to present and from the Babalonians thru the Golden age of Greece but I drifted way back in time and we probably should move up to the 18th or 19th century at least,as this will get us back into the zone the question has developed into.