Eli5 how was steel made/melted in ancient times? Coal wasn’t everywhere, was it?
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Charcoal can be made from burning wood in an oxygen starved environment.
So you could say you can find it anywhere a fire has been and likely predates modern humans.
Humans have been using it for thousands of years for various purposes.
Many stories of early steel production involve charcoal and not actual coal as the carbon source.
Charcoal can be made from burning wood in an oxygen starved environment.
So you could say you can find it anywhere a fire has been and likely predates modern humans.
Humans have been using it for thousands of years for various purposes.
Many stories of early steel production involve charcoal and not actual coal as the carbon source.
It was pretty inconsistently made in ancient times, usually where the local iron had the right impurities and local techniques also allowed for it.
It was pretty inconsistently made in ancient times, usually where the local iron had the right impurities and local techniques also allowed for it.
It was pretty inconsistently made in ancient times, usually where the local iron had the right impurities and local techniques also allowed for it.
Charcoal can be made from burning wood in an oxygen starved environment.
So you could say you can find it anywhere a fire has been and likely predates modern humans.
Humans have been using it for thousands of years for various purposes.
Many stories of early steel production involve charcoal and not actual coal as the carbon source.
Most iron in the ancient world was smelted in a bloomery. The bloomery burns charcoal, which gets hot enough to separate the iron from the other impurities, but not enough to melt the iron. The impurities melt off as “slag” or “bloom”. The iron “sponge” is then heated and beaten to remove the remaining slag, then forged into whatever is needed.
About 300BC, blacksmiths in China figured out if you mixed the iron and charcoal, it dramatically lowers the melting point. Cast iron is much more brittle than forged iron due to the high carbon content, but can be cast like bronze and gold, which they were already using.
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