[TheForge] historical blacksmithing questions

[Jerry Frost]

Collecting meteroic iron isn't hard, hundreds or thousands of tons fall 
daily but mostly as burned dust. The easy way is to use a magnet to clean 
your rain gutters. Another not so easy way is to spend time walking over 
frozen lakes in winter, I'm thinking a push type cleanup magnet would be a 
good bet. Maybe hitting backetball courts regularly? Large meteorites aren't 
uncommon, just rare over time, about every 50,000 years something 
significant hits us. Meteor Crater or Barringer Crater in Arizona was a 
nickle Iron meteor around 100-150" in dia. though when I visited in the mid 
60's the sign said it was 81' in diameter. Anyway, Barringer Crater is about 
half a mile across and IIRC 400' deep. The impact was some 50,000 years ago. 
There is mining equipment at the bottom from Barringer's attempt to find the 
meteorite but it's scattered below ground outside the rim. There's a lot of 
nickle mining in Eastern Canada due to a BIG impact some 13 million years 
ago (IIRC) Hudson Bay is thought by many to be an impact crater. Cumberlan 
Gap in the Appalachians is an impact crater from a similar time, roughly 
13-15 million years BP. Aw heck the whole planet is of meteoric origin.

Another notable impact is I don't know how long ago but the meteorite is 
quite famous, it's THE rock under the Dome of the Rock.

As for being used by blacksmiths, some of the very early Egyptian "iron" 
blades are meteoric as are some other early iron artefacts. I don't have any 
cites though so I may be hearsaying junk I heard or read, though some was 
from Discovery Channel and NatGeo regarding Egyptian metal.

Ancient humans lived by the same rules other "wildlife" lives by, the energy 
budget. If it takes more energy than it yields you don't do it. Finding food 
for instance, if you have to expend a thousand calories to collect something 
worth only 800, you don't do it or you end up checking out of the gene pool. 
This applies like so. Meteoric iron is nearly pure, it's major "impurity" 
being nickle at around 5% so it's only a little soft unalloyed with high C. 
Refining your own iron is a labor intensive process, however you do it. The 
energy budget for picking up the occasional meteor is far better than 
refining iron. We do it today because it pays to do so, we know how to make 
steel dance to our tune. Ancient man basically knew metal was stronger than 
stone and worth enough effort to find and or refine it.

Primeval copper was most often "native copper" relatively pure seams or 
"nuggets" found in streams like gold. Native copper can be traced to it's 
seam of origin or minimally it's region of origin. Just like gold nuggets. 
The ONLY "native" iron you'll find is meteoric. This is one reason you'll 
find iron tools in Copper almost bronze age Egypt. Meteors fall everywhere 
and folk use whatever they can.

Bronze is another thing, sort of an accident by the current thinking. When I 
was actually studying it in the 70's the thinking was bronze came about when 
we started smelting tin and smart monkeys we are decided to try making an 
alloy with copper. Yeah, sure, I thought the same thing but the instructor 
set me straight. You betcha! Current or should I say most recent evidence 
shows copper being refined with natural draft stone smelters. Basically a 
tallish chimney with an opening on an upwind bottom side. Copper ore and 
charcoal would be loaded from the top cupola fashion and refined copper 
would be removed from the cooled ashes afterwards. THEN it seems someone was 
smelting copper in an area where the rocks they used to make the smelter 
were tin ore and voila Bronze!

An ancient Roman instruction manual(?) from around 200-400 BC(IIRC) 
regarding metal refining and use outlines approved methods for determining 
just what a particular batch of bronze is good for. No, they didn't smelt 
copper and tin then alloy them, they made the copper smelters from tin ore 
and tested the results for application. There was more to the story but my 
head is hurting enough now and I'm sure you guys are about ready to start 
throwing dirty cybersocks at me.

Jer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <dann at wctatel.net>
To: "Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 5:24 AM
Subject: Re: [TheForge] historical blacksmithing questions


>
> Wasn't Davy Crocket's or Jim Bowie's  fighting knife reportedly fabricated
> using meteorite metal ?
>
> Re Nazi- Buddhist Art
> Good art,  but putting this all together...
>
> The Buddhist statue- carving, made from the meteorite with the carving
> done an estimated at,  or about the Year One Thousand.  The meteorite is
> believed to have fallen 10,000 years ago, and the image is a a guy with an
> ear ring and a  big hat and swastica on his chest, and his hand on his
> groin, with his armour having a special very male protrusion.  Is it all
> about a manual on how an early Nazi gets relief ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dann
>
>
>> speaking of meteorites:
>>
>> Buddhist statue samples match space rocks in Chinga meteorite field
>>
>> An iron Buddhist statue, brought by the Nazi party of Germany to
>> Europe, was made from a meteorite that likely fell along the
>> Mongolian and Siberian border 10,000 years ago, according to a study
>> by a team of researchers including Elmar Bucher of Stuttgart
>> University. An analysis of statue samples showed they closely match
>> the known space rocks that scattered from the border's Chinga
>> meteorite field. LiveScience.com (9/26)
>>
>> <http://www.livescience.com/23483-nazi-buddha-carved-meteorite.html>http://www.livescience.com/23483-nazi-buddha-carved-meteorite.html
>>
>>
>> steve
>>