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Metal Forming In Medieval Europe

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During the Medieval period through the 5th and 15th centuries in Europe, technology advancement in metal forming and extraction was becoming popular. The reason for this is because of the battles and empires in the time periods having the desires to expand and build up their military. To complete this task, an edge in iron working and metal forming had to be solidified as a strength for those wanting to further expand their countries boundaries. An example of this would be the Roman Empire. (Source) This research paper is going to talk about how people in the medieval time periods extracted iron ore, what technology was utilized to make armor, and what armor was produced and how it was made in the middle age era. (Brief history, studies of …show more content…

“Bloomery” referred to the process at which the iron was made. (who used the bloomery). Iron ore would be smelted with hot charcoal.(Find temperature of a bloom versus blast furnace) A blacksmith would use a hammer and anvil to remove slag and form the iron ore into wrought iron containing 0.02% to 0.08% carbon which was absorbed from the charcoal. ( http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/h-carnegie-steel.htm) The downside to this process is that iron would be full of slag due to the restrictions in size of the bloom furnace which ranged from 1m to 2m high (pg877 history of warfare). A bloom was portable and could be made virtually anywhere. A bloomery was made with stone, clay and other hard earth materials to support the high temperatures to smelt the iron ore ingots. For heating the bloom charcoal was used. Bellows were used to blow air into the furnace to increase the heating of the iron ore. The bellows can blow air into the fire either by hand or by a water wheel. (http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/h-carnegie-steel.htm) The size of the furnace would restrict the size of the armor and the slag would interfere the strength of the armor. This limitation was noticed and an attempt to make the bloomery hearth larger would be made. When the bloomery was made larger this made the temperatures higher …show more content…

Wootz consists of high carbon (nearly 1.2%C to 1.6%C) crucible steel. This is first created by small pieces of iron in sealed crucibles and charcoal being heated into a cake. Then the mixture is left to cool slowly, and exported to manufacturers. The cakes would be manipulated by forging it into blades. Through this process, the cementite was broken up, decreasing the brittleness and created a watered silk texture to the blades surface. (The night an blast furnace pg 11, 12, 14) Wootz steel would be imported by Europe and also called Damascus steel.(History of Metallurgy pg

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