Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Iron age technology on the web

Darrell Markewitz has been experimenting with Iron Age technology for at least 30 years now. I've covered some of this projects here and it occurred to me recently that I should point my readers to his blog, Hammered Out Bits. it's a real "log" of projects in process and ideas and problems that come up during those projects. I am sure, for instance, that some of you will be interested in hearing what he has to say about working meteoric iron. If you really get interested, don't stop at Hammered Out Bits, but go on to the Wareham Forge site.

1 comment:

the Wareham Forge said...

Steve and Readers:

You might have an interest in the latest set of postings on Hammered Out Bits. It covers the recent work on replicas of Viking Age ship building tools - most especially the T shaped broad axe from the Bayeux Tapestry. I had some quite valuable observations from my friend (and iron smelt master) Lee Sauder ( http://iron.wlu.edu/ ). Turns out there are a couple of different possible methods suggested by the artifacts (which I had not seen in person). Of course I chose the most difficult method!

Some of you might also be interested in checking the recent work being lead by Neil Peterson of the Dark Ages Recreation Company. Neil has been experimenting with Viking Age glass bead making as suggested by the archaeology at Ribe Denmark. A good start point for this would be the DARC blog at : http://www.darkcompany.ca/blog/index.php

Darrell

(thanks for the plug!)