Medieval: Metal - Bronze, Foundry, Weapons

Medieval bell founding - 11th century - day 16 to 18 - casting the bell
"On the 16th day the furnace was built further, the building material was mixed with clay, and the mould was fired further. On the 17th day the furnace was completed, the mould continued to fire and my foundry team finally arrived. The charcoal burner also took the opportunity to do a lot of work.

On the 18th working day, exactly five weeks after the start, the bell was cast from three crucibles with 20 kg tin bronze each. This is the alloy Theophilus specified. At 12.00 in the melting furnace the metal was started to melt, which had already melted 3.15 h later. Nevertheless, we only cast at 17.20 to give the visitors of the Vespe the opportunity to witness the casting.
At 20.45 the bell had already been demoulded, as beehive bells have to be freed from the casting core due to their thin wall thickness while still warm to prevent them from tearing due to the shrinking metal."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdryZGkbRPk
Medieval bell founding - archmet >> .

Applied archaeometallurgy

Wealden Iron Industry
http://www.wealdeniron.org.uk/hist.htm
Weald Timeline
http://www.wealdeniron.org.uk/Robertsbridge/timeline.htm
Blast furnace, watermill foundry
Blast furnace - Tudor
https://youtu.be/8OvPzvAB3EI?t=38m49s
https://youtu.be/8OvPzvAB3EI?t=38m58s

Bronze casting bell - strickle, lost wax method
https://youtu.be/ynkh4Hwf9ik?t=13m8s

Metal Smithing - Silver, Copper, Bronze, Iron - Elice
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXYFDuJaCJL3oF3-AtjlTsTpNPcoKJU02

Watermill Foundry
Watermill Foundry - forging Devon billhook - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inG3RVERfjA

Bloomery to Blast Furnace - bog iron to steel - history, technology, blacksmithing, science - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ4yu4Vcs9nIhm5pGhxnJ5W6

Bronze casting bell - strickle, lost wax method
https://youtu.be/ynkh4Hwf9ik?t=13m8s

Metal Smithing - Silver, Copper, Bronze, Iron - Elice
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXYFDuJaCJL3oF3-AtjlTsTpNPcoKJU02

Blacksmith
Blacksmith making tools medieval way. Camlann Medieval Village, Carnation, WA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3tei6m07lc

Blacksmithing documentaries - archanth
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrYzzr8yja6EyEqhHATgy6d18kQ9Fh_Bo

Early Metalworking - Bronze, Copper, Gold - forge, furnaces casting - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ5IrSIpOHOrnQBhdC7u3eTX

Blacksmith's Passion - 18th Century reenactment > .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ80SWdUd-8

Bloomery to Blacksmithing

Fire-basket Arrowhead > .

Bloomery to Blast Furnace - bog iron to steel - history, technology, blacksmithing, science - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ4yu4Vcs9nIhm5pGhxnJ5W6

Essentials of Blacksmithing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZToka1-8oQA

Arrowhead, Forging a medieval long bodkin - English Heritage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB0jkfI27Ew

Forging Arrow Heads - Rolling the Socket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQ8djS1ghk

Forging Medieval Arrow Heads - Drawing the Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnvKoyScLg

Hector Cole Demonstrates how to forge a Saxon Tanged Arrowhead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUbky6NqEBw

The longbow series
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFCF15CB4B6832B2A

Forest of Dean
http://www.wealdeniron.org.uk/Forest%20of%20Dean.htm

Wealden Iron Industry
http://www.wealdeniron.org.uk/hist.htm
Weald Timeline
http://www.wealdeniron.org.uk/Robertsbridge/timeline.htm

Blacksmith Working a Medieval Forge in UK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwmQU_FKLCY

Blacksmithing
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEFMsUiiH111Lhlx-ur5SBeN_M60RLHl7

The Birth Of A Weapon. Part I. English longbow making
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68L7n5Shd3I

Ancient Skills ∞ Tony Blake
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCyObHHCBCSpSX55SVjasr1J

Weaponry, Medieval Warfare, Castles - archanth
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrYzzr8yja6GQ7hextiUuGvbRjuH7a8aX

An early 16th century reverberatory furnace for casting cannon - Applied Archaeometallurgy

"A reverberatory furnace is a metallurgical or process furnace that isolates the material being processed from contact with the fuel, but not from contact with combustion gases. The term reverberation is used here in a generic sense of rebounding or reflecting, not in the acoustic sense of echoing."
.......
"Chemistry determines the optimum relationship between the fuel and the material, among other variables. The reverberatory furnace can be contrasted on the one hand with the blast furnace, in which fuel and material are mixed in a single chamber, and, on the other hand, with crucible, muffling, or retort furnaces, in which the subject material is isolated from the fuel and all of the products of combustion including gases and flying ash. There are, however, a great many furnace designs, and the terminology of metallurgy has not been very consistently defined, so it is difficult to categorically contradict the other view."
....
"The first reverberatory furnaces were perhaps in the medieval period, and were used for melting bronze for casting bells. They were first applied to smelting metals in the late 17th century. Sir Clement Clerke and his son Talbot built cupolas or reverberatory furnaces in the Avon Gorge below Bristol in about 1678. In 1687, while obstructed from smelting lead (by litigation), they moved on to copper. In the following decades, reverberatory furnaces were widely adopted for smelting these metals and also tin. They had the advantage over older methods that the fuel was mineral coal, not charcoal or 'white coal' (chopped dried wood).

In the 1690s, they (or associates) applied the reverberatory furnace (in this case known as an air furnace) to melting pig iron for foundry purposes. This was used at Coalbrookdale and various other places, but became obsolete at the end of the 18th century with the introduction of the foundry cupola, which was a kind of small blast furnace, and a quite different species from the reverberatory furnace.

The puddling furnace, introduced by Henry Cort in the 1780s to replace the older finery process, was also a variety of reverberatory furnace."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverberatory_furnace .

Iron production
Early Metalworking - Bronze, Copper, Gold - forge, furnaces casting - playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ5IrSIpOHOrnQBhdC7u3eTX

Essentials of Blacksmithing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZToka1-8oQA

Arrowhead, Forging a medieval long bodkin - English Heritage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB0jkfI27Ew

Forging Arrow Heads - Rolling the Socket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQ8djS1ghk

Forging Medieval Arrow Heads - Drawing the Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnvKoyScLg

Hector Cole Demonstrates how to forge a Saxon Tanged Arrowhead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUbky6NqEBw

Iron production in the Viking Age - Lofotr Viking Museum (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j33LogIy-mo

Medieval Iron Production in Holland Thijs van de Manakker - smelting ore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rjjpuhCLI

How to make iron in the old way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GicwSlSmaeE

Blacksmithing
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEFMsUiiH111Lhlx-ur5SBeN_M60RLHl7

Color clues in hardening metal

Yellow -- cutting stone
Blue -- cutting hot steel
Purple -- cutting wood
Edwardian Farm 5:
https://youtu.be/CixN0k4drhs?t=29m32s

Hardening tools by quenching
https://youtu.be/7P4eCopYK_Q?t=48m20s .

Chain mail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw2UDtU2SgM
The longbow series
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFCF15CB4B6832B2A .

Furnace

Primitive technology: Natural Draft Furnace
I built a natural draft furnace to test ideas about how hot a furnace could get without the use of bellows. Natural draft is the flow of air through a furnace due to rising hot air. The hot gasses in the fuel bed are more buoyant than the cold air outside the furnace causing them to rise. Fresh combustion air then enters the base of the furnace to replace the rising combustion gasses, keeping the fuel bed burning. This effect increases with: 1. the average temperature of the fuel bed relative to the outside air and 2. The height of the furnace. Two other important factors are the size of the tuyere (air entry pipe) and lump size of the fuel bed as these effect the resistance to airflow through the furnace. The furnace was tested with wood fuel and some ore was melted but produced no iron. High temperature were indeed produced (probably about 1200 c). These types of furnaces were once used for smelting copper and iron ores in around the world in ancient times, usually using charcoal as a fuel and in some cases wood too.

I designed the furnace using a formula from the book “The mastery and uses of fire in antiquity” by J.E. Rehder. It was designed to have a space velocity (air speed within the furnace) of 6 m per minute which is recommended for iron smelting. The furnace was 175 cm in total height but with a height of only 150 cm above the tuyere. The height between the air entry and the top of the furnace is what determines the strength of the draft, the space beneath the air entry is not included in the formula. The internal furnace diameter was 25 cm. The walls were about 12.5 cm thick at the base but got thinner with height. The tuyere (air entry pipe) was 7.5 cm internal diameter and about 20 cm long. The tuyere was placed into an opening in the base of the furnace and sealed with mud. The whole thing took about a week to make due to the slow drying time that was assisted by keeping a fire burning in side it. The furnace was designed to use charcoal (which in this case should be 2.5 cm diameter lumps) but I used wood to test it instead as it was easier to acquire. To test its melting ability, bog ore was found further down the creek and roasted. The roasted ore was then crushed and stored in a pot.

The furnace was filled with wood and lit from the top. The fire burnt down the furnace producing charcoal. On reaching the tuyere the fire then started burning the charcoal. Wood was also continually added from the top along with a few small handfuls of the roasted bog ore (not shown in the video). The temperature of hot objects can be visually estimated from their incandescence. After about an hour, the light coming out of the tuyere was high yellow to white hot indicating a temperature of at about 1200 c. Colour temperature charts vary but white hot is usually given to be at least 1200 c, examples of these charts can be found on the internet for reference. It was uncomfortable to stare into the tuyere and doing so left an after image when looking away, indicating the strength of its brightness. After about an hour and a half the furnace was left to burn out. When opened the next day the tuyere was covered in slag with bits of slag found on the furnace floor also.

This experiment shows that high temperatures can be achieved without the use of bellows or charcoal, which might significantly reduce labour in the production of iron. The furnace was technically easy to build as it was a simple vertical cylinder. When running, the wood added to the top of the furnace converts to charcoal in the upper part of the stack and is consumed in the lower part. The ore I used was new to me, normally I use iron bacteria as an ore. This new ore produced no metallic iron so I’m inclined to use iron bacteria in future. Natural draft furnaces were once used to smelt copper and iron ores in the past, usually with charcoal fuel and less frequently with wood. The main benefit of these furnaces seems to have been the reduction in labour they provide and simplified infrastructure (fewer workers and no bellows required during operation).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7wAJTGl2gc

Pyrotechnology
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGnWLXjIDnpBVRqu5lz5JGaQxjPs7q3CJ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/playlists .

Bloomery to Blast Furnace - bog iron to steel - history, technology, blacksmithing, science - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ4yu4Vcs9nIhm5pGhxnJ5W6

Early Metalworking - Bronze, Copper, Gold - forge, furnaces casting - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEWIuyeNp2k
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ5IrSIpOHOrnQBhdC7u3eTX

Metal - bronze, brass - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ6Vqo28IWiJoVx0Q2uvLbI7

Metal - copper - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ67S7J7P1ImpR9coIkHitdN

Metal - iron - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ7Nl84L_EHc-PMfemRR1n1u

Metal - pewter, tin - Drakkar Knarr
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vRsHsClLJ5xnITYIqZlGt04kPHOEqgi

Metal Smithing - Silver, Copper, Bronze, Iron - Elice Quillinane
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXYFDuJaCJL3oF3-AtjlTsTpNPcoKJU02

Smelting lead
https://youtu.be/madCyZtBHTk?t=11m56s
Refining smelted lead
https://youtu.be/madCyZtBHTk?t=23m32s

Bronze

Foundry: Prehistoric Bronze Casting - Making of an Iron Age ring - by Dr. Bastian Asmus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBAyEy3FBB0

Bronze Age Replica Casting a 1400 B C bronze axe in a soap stone mould
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt0XJz3Sf_0