Posted by:
SL Cabbie
(
)
Date: September 27, 2013 02:24PM
I looked at this one a few years ago when I was researching the claims of the "hyper-diffusionists.The early process didn't involve melting iron (which results in the brittle alloy we know as "pig iron" from which cast iron is usually made), but rather a process involving a "sponge" and "bloom," terms used to describe the intermittent stage before the impurities are driven out during the forging process.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051011073801.htm>Bloomery furnaces smelt iron in a direct reduction process, where the iron never becomes liquid. If the furnace gets too hot and the iron liquefies, it picks up a lot of carbon and becomes cast iron, which is too brittle to be worked into tools, swords and other objects that require a more flexible metal.
>The furnace produces a "bloom," which is like a big sponge, with a network of glass-filled channels running through it. The iron has loosely bonded together, leaving the glass that was produced from all the impurities in the iron ore.
>After the bloom is produced, a blacksmith starts working it while it is still hot, repeatedly hammering and reshaping it to drive the glass out, leaving the iron. With just a little manipulation, the iron is good enough for tools, although they might break easily where large glass inclusions make them weak. With lots of hammering, shaping and reheating, the blooms can be formed into the fine steel found in samurai swords, for instance.
What is worth noting is that many LDS apologists have resorted to linguistic legerdemain in claiming JS "didn't mean steel" when he said "steel."
The BOM is a 19th Century fraud, period. DNA science has demonstrated that one irrevocably, as has the archaeological evidence (or rather lack of); it offers a racist message that denigrates Native Americans and their cultures and civilizations, and common sense makes one wonder at the mental gyrations used to "evaluate" this sort of romantic shinola.