Tatara smelt April 2011

Local bladesmiths Tom Ferry and Dave Lisch advertised that they would be doing another tatara smelt at the NWBA conference this past April. I had missed their first two attempts at making tamahagane, so I was really excited about being in the right place at the right time to watch the process. There were a lot of hands available for the work, but I was able to help with the chicken-wire frame around the chimney flue blocks. I put about a dozen shots together in my flickr stream and this should embed the slideshow... click to see the individual pics, most of them have an explanation of what's happening.