
We spend a lot of time learning how to pack and gate a mold. Here Josh adjusts the molds for a three piece cast.
Pulling the #30 crucible from the furnace.
The pour into the mold...
My future cane heads - natilus shell, sea urchin shell and a tribolite with gates and sprue.
Rough castings after wire brushing - the leaf dish is finished out.
Close up of the patina-ed leaf dish - treated with Birchwell M20 and then ferric phosphate.














We then packed them with bone meal and sealed them, leaving a air gap, before heating to orange heat.
These have to "cook" for several hours, so I first worked on forging a knife from some of the meteorite I converted to steel and then pattern welded the rest to some 1075.
The seven layer billet came out okay - tomorrow we hope to cut and reweld it twice more. Ric holds the billet below:
A close up of it ground and etched...
All in all, it was a productive day. I made 2 woortz knives - one of them from meteorite, rolled out the bloomery iron to a workable thickness, and made a billet while our 2 batches of blister steel cooked. For dinner I went to a fish boil. It's kinda like a New England boiled dinner where perch, potatoes, carrots and onions are all cooked in one pot. 
However, perch is oily and so they boil it over at the end to get rid of the excess oil by tossing a cup of kerosene on the fire.
It was surprisingly tasty thro I still prefer salt water fish. Tomorrow we turn the blister steel into shear steel and I fly home.