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:
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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...
You may try perforating the clay walls of the kiln and smoothing the clay over. Perhaps use a bamboo skewers to make the perforations. Most refractory brick is very light, filled with air. You can also use organic material in the clay that burns away leaving voids in the clay, like saw dust, flour, corn starch. As for a first go, in making a high temperature melting furnace, I would follow the plan you already have.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestions!
Deletethe march of history as the story of hard won increases in temperature. Congrats
ReplyDeleteYes, it wasn't too hard, but even pounding those bricks gives you a small taste of how 'hard won' those increases were.
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