Primitive Technology: Wood Ash Insulated Furnace

The furnace behaved better than normal but could have done better as the blower broke during use and there was a period where I was fixing it when no air was being supplied (the fan also needed fixing on the fly). The furnace seems to consume charcoal faster than usual for the same effort when it is working which is good as it means it is getting hotter. 10 charges of ore and charcoal were used and 34 g of iron were made (the third best). The best smelts I've done produced 41g and 39 g for 6 charges and they can be seen in the iron knife video ( https://youtu.be/dhW4XFGQB4o?t=209 ). I'll repair the blower and test it again some time. Thanks. (Edit: reminder to turn on captions )

I hope everyone understands what a colossal flex (the good kind) his choice to include the fire starting in real time is. The fact he can do it in 30 seconds is a supreme demonstration of skill

This dude is the goat He invented a entire genre And he doesn't fake it like other channels

One thing I love is that this channel silently demonstrates why humans came together. Doing all this alone takes such a long time, but with a group of people all doing these different things, the speed at which anything gets done does up so quickly.

It's exciting to see him collect the iron prills, it builds up my anticipation to see what he's gonna make out of them regardless of the size of the finished product

Don't forget to turn on subtitles! He explains what he is doing there

This series really shows what an amazing accomplishment the iron age was. The amount of work for just the smallest bit or iron is insane.

I will never get bored watching John in the wild do for the "first time" what our ancestors did thousands of years ago. I'm amazed for two reasons, one for the amount of time and effort John puts into doing this experiment, and two on how our ancestors understood all of these passages, especially for the iron making, just by trial and errors. Really amazing. Thanks John I really appreciate your dedication.

Love how this channel went from this dude's cool hobby to applied archeology. Wonder how many paper's he's been cited in so far.

Man I'm so happy this dude decided to get back to regularly posting videos. This truly is one of my most favorite channels ever.

Very nice design. I can imagine you adding a tall removable chimney on top of the furnace, bringing in a big flat stone anvil, increasing the size of your fan, and eventually forging iron into steel. I love seeing the processes evolve. Every time you post a video, I get so excited to watch it. It is so soothing, and melts my stress away. Thank you for the amazing content!

My favorite part was when the forge went FWHOM after the first charge was loaded. Thanks for continuing this adventure, I'm really excited for the progress you're making.

You can increase your yield by starting out with smelting some of the slag from previous smelts, to create an initial slag bath for the new iron to form in.

It's always a good day when Primitive Technology uploads

It just amazes me how much your technique changes and improves over the years. When you were creating the furnace I was taking careful note of how you shaped and manipulated the clay and the lack of effort you seemed to be putting into it. You made it look like a simple and trivial affair. You lines, distancing, and shaping were spot on as if you had done it thousands of times before. When compared to you much older videos it is clearly obvious that are constantly improving. Keep up the great work. I love watching it.

The fact that the nuggets are dramatically increasing in size is a great indicator

I feel like it’s safe to say that this guy is a one man village at this point, he goes around to his different structures doing all the different jobs that would normally be done by different people all by himself, it’s very impressive

That sudden flash of fire at 9:52 was neat!

things I would do to improve iron yield on your design: 1. make the air come in at an angle, so that it spirals out making it more efficient 2. have some sort of crucible at the bottom 3. let it be hot for longer so that the iron goes to the bottom and the slag to the top

The fact Primitive Tech has been doing YT for 8 years and still has fun doing it shows he wont retire anytime soon, appreciate the dedication