To make a forge you need heat and a lot of it that is pretty easy with fire and some wind. Blow air into a contained fire and coals and it will rapidly heat up the furnace. I need to build a mud structure with a vent on the bottom and cylinder smokestack design on top. this will allow me to feed the fire both fuel and oxygen while slowly adding dirt into the forge to slowly build up iron chunks from the high heat. the process takes a lot of dirt for little iron but given a couple of hundred pounds of dirt it should be enough to make an iron ax and maybe a pickaxe as well. my problem will mostly make sure my forge gets hot enough to melt iron. which is 1538°C, an incredibly high temperature to achieve with a basic wood fire. So in order to do this ill have to first burn wood at a lower temp without oxygen being introduced. Simpler terms are to cook the wood in the forge first without letting it catch on fire until I get charcoal. Easy enough, the first step is I need to build a forge large enough to hold large amounts of wood and dirt when the time comes and an air vent to manually force air into the fire to increase the temps for later forging purposes. I can get clay from the lake bed its pretty common around here and I spotted a large amount of it fishing earlier. Going to the lake I started to gather all the clay I can and slowly start to build a rather large foundation for the forge with a circumference of 10 feet.
Big enough for me to lay across, once that's done I start to build the outside walls up and smoothing it out as much as possible once the walls are as tall as me I start to build the ceiling using branches as support for the clay to stop it from collapsing from the weight. Once finished with that I build a chamber on the inside right in the middle to place the smelting materials. Adding vents to allow the heat through into the chamber the outside chamber being where I add fuel. once that's finished I need to make clay doors to cover the material chamber and the door to ass fuel while leaving a vent in the fuel chamber to force air into the chamber.
Now I need to let that dry and that will take a day or so for now I can start gathering large logs and dirt for my next step. With that in mind, I grab a couple hundred 4-5 foot logs and stack them next to the forge. once that's done I notice it's already getting dark out. Not really wanting to see what kind of creatures lurk the woods at night I decided to catch a few fish before heading into the cavern for the night. looking back at my progress for the day I'm going over what else I can do.
I know I need to find a way to force air into my forge to increase the temps as the charcoal burning temperature is slightly lower than the irons melting point without forced induction. with an idea coming to mind I go over to my larger log pile and grab a few. I start to hollow on out making a round chamber in the middle and a hole near the top of it. once finished I split another log into thin pieces and shave them down into blades and lock them together making a fan blade design without angling them.
Making sure they fit inside my hollow log and spin freely without catching a make a small axle to fix them to the goes through a hole in the side and use it to turn the blades inside. making a crank to turn by hand and a cover for the other side of the log and to feed air in the side. I start to turn the crankshaft and watch as the air starts to come out the hole on top at a fast rate slightly blowing my hair out of my face. It's a basic blower-style induction but it will work for now it will just take a lot of stamina to keep going.
Deciding to call it a night I lay near my fire and start to go to sleep the only sound is the crackling fire and roaring waterfall. excited to see what I can do tomorrow.
Waking up the next morning slightly sore from laying on the hard ground I head out to check on the forge and see that it's nearly dry should be enough to start making charcoal and by the time that's fished, I should be able to start smelting dirt to get iron. throwing some wood in the fuel chamber I lite it and let it burn without placing the clay door onto it. I then place a large amount of wood into the other chamber to make the charcoal place the clay door over the opening and use wet mud to seal the door to stop air from entering the chamber once it's used up by the fire in the fuel chamber insuring that charcoal will be made.
letting that go by itself I start to gather all the dirt I can in the forest. it's not red dirt so the iron content is rather low but it's still present. using a good amount of the day gathering dirt and rotation the charcoal for more wood to make more charcoal I slowly build up both my charcoal stash and my dirt pile to the point I have easily half a ton of dirt. also decided to build a second smaller forge for smelting the actual iron to refine it more making a crucible out of clay and an ingot cast to make iron ingots. I also decided to make a cast for an sc head and a pickaxe head out of the dirt to be ready for casting out of iron. I'd prefer forged but for now, casting will have to work.
The smaller forge should be easier to heat up and maintain the actual smelting of metals into a liquid state for casting. seeing that it's late again I get a couple more fish for the night's dinner before heading back to the cavern. once done with dinner I decide to make proper handles for the ax and pickaxe using some nice logs I found in the woods while gathering dirt.
shaving them down to smooth handles is easy following the traditional shape and size of a lumber ax and pickaxe. also carving out the wood wedge for the head securing onto the handle. feeling that my progress is pretty fast for the day I doze off feeling satisfied with my days progress.