[TheForge] Re: Making Charcoal

[Mike Spencer]

Mike Schermerhorn wrote:

> The site is presently being dated Circa 1640-50,...

That's the same decade as Saugus.  High tech in the wilderness.

> ...and the excavation being done by an historian who is writing a
> book about these small outlaw ironworks that apparently dotted the
> countryside in pre revolutionary New England.

Interesting.  Keep us posted.  I'd like to have the book, hear about
the archaeology.

> As a member of the AISI we helped rebuild the Saugus Iron Works in the
> mid 1960's and with the aid of over 200 volunteers, gathered bog iron
> and sea shells (purchased the charcoal)...

Did the charcoal come from Leverett, Mass.?  There was a working
charcoal business with big brick kilns in Leverett until sometime in
the 70s.  From where I lived in the late 60s, overlooking the Sawmill
River Valley, a tendril of wood smoke creeping down valley above the
river was a clue that they were firing the kilns.

> ...to be used in a fairly lame
> attempt to make iron for the bicentennial in 1976.  

I've visited Saugus Ironworks in the 80s, have the book and saw the
movie.  A very energetic Shiela Stiven, then NS government person in
charge of promoting fine art and crafts, organized the first
blacksmithing workhop in NS in the 70s and got the movie for us.

> There were dozens of projects lined up to be made from that first
> heat of iron, and the yield was just enough to make one small trade
> axe - was fun though!

I didn't realize that the one active run of the works wasn't very
successful.  But then, running such a thing was highly skilled
engineering in its time and experience, including numerous failures,
was probably needed to make a successful iron master.

The disappointment with the Saugus movie was that it had only about 30
seconds of the blast furnace running, same for the big power helve
hammer.

When I was there, I climbed up to the headrace for one of the water
wheels on the forge shop, peered through the bushes and there was a
Buick hubcap and a parking meter.  I guess it would have been too much
to expect them to expropriate half of Saugus for a mill pond. :-)
Someone, the book maybe, said that the storage shed at the foot of the
hill contained huge a pump that could pump water up to the water
wheels fast enough to make them go.  Pretty hefty pump.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^