Author: Philip Süßer When the flowers summer rain are overpowered by sulfur smell When malachites' green blessing shines through charcoal dust; Volunteers great in spirit rush to help were need is be Whether bustling, whether tired lead them on oh Roseman
Today the experiments went into their second round. In order to produce pure copper a second smelting step was needed. In preparation for this step, the bottom of the pit we dug yesterday (let’s call him “Big pit”) was covered with a thick layer of charcoal dust, to prevent that the molten material would react with the clay and be lost in the ground.
While this was done, another pit was used to smelt malachite and reduce it to pure copper. This was done in order to find out whether the right conditions could be met in the pits, and also to experiment with different forms of crucibles. The results varied between “very well” over “molten crucibles” to “crucible too large to properly heat up the inside”.
Last but not least the “Big pit” was fired up. The roasted dungballs were put onto a bed of freshly glowing amber and covered with charcoal. The bellows were worked again in order to reach temperatures around 1400 °C. Unfortunately, this time we weren’t able to achieve sufficient separation between matte and slag to quench the top and take of plates of the iron rich melt. Nevertheless, the experience was valuable. After many hours of bellow working and staring into the flames we only had to clean up and go back to our homes. But for some of us, this was only the beginning…
