The Bronze Age Begins
The Bronze Age begins with the clanging of many hammers on our garage floor... Have a listen. Julia had this hammer that let out an amazing ring; the tongs on the claw acting like a tuning fork. Our plan is to build one of these: photos by Bastian Asmus We were inspired by Bastian Asmus ' great article, " A natural draught furnace for bronze casting " in which he describes how he built a clay furnace and fired it with different kinds of charcoal, and was able to reach temperatures sufficient for melting and casting bronze without additional forced air. Thinking that the best way into Bronze would be to go as primitive as possible (at least at first), this design seems perfect. First step was to prepare our clay. Even though I bought some high-temp raku-type clay, we thought to add grog to it in any case, to temper it further. So we took some old ceramics, and a brick, and pounded away... Nukka got right in there, continuing in the tradition of our previous dog of joinin...