Week 7 Blacksmithing Lab Data for Group E

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Notes on nail and rove attributes:
– Nails length needs to be long enough to get through two boards of wood, plus extra length to make the head and rivet
– Roves should be about 1/8″ thick

Smithing Data:

Hardware type	Blacksmith	Time (when the rod was put in— hr:m:s)	Heats	Notes	Deviations from one heat	Total time for one piece (hr:m:s)
Nail	Person 1	0:02:51	1st		18	1:12:45
		0:08:27	2nd
		0:10:51	3rd
		0:14:23	4th
		0:18:16	5th
		0:23:48	6th	Used the wrong hammer for the first 6 heats
		0:45:24	7th
		0:46:38	8th
		0:49:36	9th	Finally “Square”
		0:51:48	10th	Twisting
		0:53:29	11th
		0:54:24	12th
		1:03:12	13th	About to cut
		1:04:26	14th
		1:05:23	15th	Got the nail to snap off
		1:06:44	16th
		1:08:20	17th
		1:10:03	18th
		1:13:24	19th
Nail	Person 2	0:00:00	1st		21	1:00:44
		0:02:35	2nd
		0:03:51	3rd
		0:11:16	4th
		0:18:58	5th
		0:20:54	6th
		0:22:27	7th
		0:24:48	8th
		0:26:19	9th
		0:28:12	10th
		0:31:14	11th
		0:32:35	12th
		0:34:38	13th
		0:36:37	14th
			15th
			16th
			17th
			18th
			19th
			20th
			21st
			22nd
Rove	Person 3			Was simultaneous with the second nail so didn’t get heats		0:23:56

Average time for a novice (us) to make a nail (hr:m:s): 1:06:44

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Note on collecting temperatures:
Temperature guns made it next to impossible to get a read of the rod after it came out of/ before reheating it in the fire. Blue could not pinpoint the rod, and yellow couldn’t read the super high temperatures.

Temperature Data:

Time (h:m:s)	Fire Temp
0:05:41	203ºC
0:07:16	329ºC
0:10:03	540ºC
0:12:09	583ºC
0:31:27	767ºC
0:49:10	796ºC
0:57:41	1111ºC

Note on our fire:
Our fire had way too much space in the center, which meant our rod struggled to get hot enough

Notes from Martin, in reference to temperature/ fire control:

• Working with wood fires means one has to add wood at a constant rate

• One needs a lot of wood to create the same effect as a little bit of coal. (This is due to the spacing of wood vs coal. Coal can fill more gaps, meaning heat is held really well in the center)

• The forges we worked with are designed for coal, as the air vent is at the bottom. Bellowing air in from the sides is what one wants for wood fires (all the gaps in wood mean that heat easily escapes upwards when air is blown in from the bottom.)

• “Everything is better when it’s hot”

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The day after lab, we used an XRF device to understand the chemical composition of the nails/roves we made:

Element	Percentage
Mild Steel Nail— 1215 alloy
Fe	97.47%
Mn	0.64%
S	0.52%
P	0.10%
Si	0.99%
Ti	0.12%
Wrought Iron Rove
Fe	99.17%
Si	0.26%
P	0.24%
Ti	0.11%