The Basics
A must for getting a good hot fire, charcoal gives a good hot instant heat which is why we use this in the forge when we are at shows. The best fuel to use in a forge is coke but this takes a bit of starting and is heavier and harder to find than charcoal so with the amount of travelling we do charcoal is the best option for us, we save the coke for the forge at home.
Bellows
There are, unfortunately, no complete examples of Iron Age bellows in existence (that we know of) but we do know that the hinged bellows were brought over by the Romans in the later Iron Age. So, using what information is available about the various bellows that could have been used, combined with some practical experiments, these are the bellows that Dai has developed for Iron Age shows. They may look simple but things are not always as simple as they look.
These bellows do produce a good fire with a reasonable effort. Using two sets of bellows we can produce enough heat to weld steel – this is around 1350°C. Useful if you are minding what you are doing but if you get distracted it is very easy to burn the end off your work and have to start again – very frustrating.
Skipping forwards to the 15th century, bellows had moved on, getting bigger and more efficient. Hinged double acting bellows were the order of the day – meaning that air was squeezed out of the bellows on both the up and down strokes of the handles. These bellows would be mounted in a frame and counter balanced, taking a lot of the hard work out of their use, something which I am sure the young apprentices were grateful for. There are pictures from the time showing bellows that look to be about 8 feet long.
A set of these bellows are a winter 2006/7 project and we aim to have them ready for use this summer (2007), they will be at the medieval shows with us and you will be able to see for yourselves how efficient they are as we should be able to keep bellowing all day.
You can read more about our big bellows project here
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