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How did they make iron in the Iron Age?

A full answer would take too long, so instead I’ll just mention why iron is superior to bronze.


It’s not that it makes blades that are sharper or stronger . There’s nothing wrong with a good bronze blade and the stuff lasts forever with just a quick polish. That’s why the army still uses so much brass.


The advantage of iron is that the raw ingredients are found just about everywhere. In the bronze age weapon manufacture was concentrated in just a few key sites. In Britain that was basically North Wales and East Anglia. That obviously gave these places immense political power.

Come the iron age and there was a blacksmith in every village. Weapons, and more importantly farming tools, were available to almost everyone. The modern equivalent is probably when computers went from being the size of houses to the size of typewriters. Suddenly everyone had one and not just governmentsThentsThe current technology didn't raise the temperature high enough to melt the iron. They sourced the metal from bog iron or iron ore. They ground this to a powder. Then they lit a bloomery with charcoal & raise the temperature using bellows.

Bog iron

They alternated adding charcoal & iron ore powder. After a few days, they lowered the temperature & then extracted a bloom. Which is a mass of iron and steel mixed with slag.

The shiny bit is steel. The dull gray part is iron. The black bits are slag.

It has to be heated, hammered and refolded to drive out the slag.


Picture Source Wikipedia

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