[Artemisia] Tangential topics regarding future bloomery efforts

[Cat Clark]

In case anyone forgot (or didn't pay attention in the first place),
there will be another bloomery at Uprising.  We did one back in 2007
and we're doing another in just a few weeks.

And in support of this year's bloomery effort, Viscount William
Gallowglass and I were out making a raid into the neglected eastern
deserts of the West Kingdom over the last few days, to find and take
home the riches of the West's best iron ore deposit, not more than 25
leagues as the vulture flies from the walls of the Cynaguan trading
town of Silver Desert.  Having made many raids myself into the
mountainous deserts of our neighbor to the west, I was surprised to
see that someone had recently been working the old deserted iron
mines. But though we spotted evidence of Western forces along the
southern horizon as we loaded our cargo, we were not spotted and our
raid into Western lands was a success.  The axles of our wagon groaned
and complained from the weight of our load on our journey back to
William's manse.  The only threat to our trip was a little rain.

But putting aside the fun though opaque peri-oid tall tale spinning, I
estimate that William and I came home with upwards of 120 to 150
pounds of iron ore of higher grade than any I have previously
collected.  Combined with the iron ore I picked up last year from this
same area, we should have greater than 200 pounds to play with at
Uprising.  And since the ore deposit we visited is about 40 miles (as
the turkey vulture flies) from Fallon NAS, we were treated to our very
own air show courtesy of Navy fighter jets practicing dog fights.

And now for the downside...

I have been visiting the Antelope Springs mining district and the
adjacent  Buena Vista Hills area south of Lovelock NV since 1987 for
collecting magnetite, cinnabar, olivine, calcite and assorted other
minerals.  The abandoned iron mines are open pits which were mined in
the 40s and 50s to feed the Japanese iron industry before much-closer
Australian iron mines came on line in the 50s and 60s and made the
Nevada iron mines uneconomic for the Circum-Pacific steel market.  For
years, these mines have been a reliable resource for rock collectors
because of the quality of the magnetite, the safety and ease of
collecting, and the lack of any mining claims on them for near 50
years.  The State of Nevada fenced off the old Thomas Pit a few years
back since this largest of the open pits had become too dangerous to
enter, even on foot, making it no longer possible to collect olivine
and pyroxene near the pit bottom.  But the magnetite on the tailings
piles and under the old loading ramps has always been abundant, so
much so that you only need a magnet to collect several pounds of
high-quality magnetite in just a few minutes, merely by walking
around.

Though not at all period, collecting enough iron ore using a magnet at
these old abandoned iron mines has always been quick and easy.  The
appeal of collecting at these mines to get a free and abundant supply
for a bloomery run at an SCA event should be obvious.  The only real
costs are those associated with traveling to and from the mines.  The
road to the gate and the driveway into the Thomas Pit area are paved
and in excellent shape - hardly the case for most collecting sites in
Nevada and surrounding states.  For years I have visited the Thomas
Pit and its tailing piles, especially since it's relatively close to
I-80.

Imagine my complete surprise when Bill and I pulled into the driveway
to the Thomas Pit and found a new gate, with a new chain and lock on
it, accompanied by a no trespassing sign from one Zephyr Iron Co.
Now, given that I had maps and descriptions of the other nine iron
properties surrounding the Thomas Pit, it took about 10 minutes to
locate the old loading ramp off another tailings pile to collect at,
off a good graded gravel road just SSE of the larger Thomas Pit -
Nevada Iron Ore Mine property.  And by the time Bill and I were done
dragging our magnets on the ground, a few hours later, it was clear to
me that this new patch of ground was even better than under the old
loading ramp at the Thomas Pit.  The size of the magnetite pieces were
a bit smaller than at the Thomas Pit loading ramp - and smaller is
better when making iron in a bloomery.  And the magnets were also
picking up a lot of magnetite sand too, something that never happened
at the old location.  When running any smelting project, sand-sized
ore is the best!  So by being locked out of my former tried-and-true
magnetite collection spot, we found an even better patch of ground to
get ore for our bloomery.

Bill and I discussed the state of iron mining and related topics on
the ride home.  It is true that our steel industry is a shadow of its
former self - but not from lack of good iron ore.  The US has large
reserves of iron ore in Minnesota, Texas (bet that surprised you!),
Nevada, Michigan, Missouri and Louisiana among others.  We do not lack
iron resources at all.  The thing that controls the world steel
industry is the cost of transportation, not the availability of ore.

So I was thinking that the signs of activity at the old Thomas Pit and
environs might be a sign of interest in the area by gold miners.  This
isn't as far fetched as you might think.  Iron ores have frequently
been mined for their gold content - like at Iron Mountain south of Mt.
Shasta in California.  And the incredibly productive disseminated gold
deposits of the Richmond Mining District are immediately to the north
of the Antelope Springs District and the Buena Vista Hills.  By the
time I got home, I was speculating that the miners in the Richmond
District might be extending their gold mining operations into the area
of the old iron mines.

Then I started researching yesterday and was ambushed by surprise.
The rights to mine the Thomas Pit and most of the surrounding mines
for iron ore have been bought up by some Australian mining concerns
through a holding company.  I was in the area in 2007, 2009 and just a
few days ago in 2010.  In 2008 there was a large exploration drilling
program that I never picked up on because I wasn't in the area at the
time.  The intent to mine and the new gates and no trespassing signs
just went up in February according to various mining industry trade
publications I read up on yesterday.  The iron mines are once again
economic.  That iron ore isn't for us here in the States.  The US
production of steel is a tenth of what it was in the 1950s.  And the
ore isn't going to Japan, which used to control the Asian steel
markets as little as a decade ago.  No, the iron ore is being mined by
an Australian concern for shipment to the world's newest big steel
market in China.

Digging further into this, it turns out that several old abandoned
iron mining districts that I know in the western USA are now either
back in production or being readied for production to feed the Chinese
steel industry.  The iron deposits west of St. George and Cedar City,
which I scouted a few years back as potential bloomery ore sources,
are now being mined again.  And the big iron deposits south of Carlin
in Nevada are currently the subjects of new exploration efforts.  What
this means is that all of the free-for-the-taking iron ore formerly
available to rock hounds and assorted lunatics in the SCA smelting
community is going away.  Needless to say, this makes me rather
unhappy.  As a confirmed smelting junkie, I would much rather collect
and use my own iron ore than buy the mediocre-grade pre-processed iron
ore from Minnesota that is the only stuff available on the American
market.  Now the Minnesota stuff has been used successfully in many
Pennsic and other SCA bloomeries - but given my prejudice for "from
the ground up" projects, I'd much rather find my own stuff.  Actually,
I have been scouting the Texan deposits lately, since I am a resident
of Texas legally and the iron-rich Welches Formation of east Texas
outcrops less than 2 hours from my house north of Houston.  Hematite
from the Welches Formation was used for making most of the iron and
steel used by the Confederate Army during the Civil War and Texas was
big iron producer until it became more economic to use the land for
lumber and cotton than for mining.  I may have even found a place to
legally collect in the Crockett National Forest (yes, there are
forests in Texas, full of Lobolly pine...and billions of ticks and
mosquitoes!).

The one  hopeful light on the horizon is that in the modern world of
mining, scale is all important.  Because pit mining is really an
exercise in transportation engineering, the bigger the operation, the
better the profit margin.  This means that small deposits are often
not mined even if they are high-grade.  There are some magnetite
deposits in western Utah and eastern Nevada that are small and because
of that, these may escape plundering on behalf of the Chinese steel
industry.  So that's something that people may want to keep in mind
for any future bloomery projects at Artemisian SCA events: we need to
be keeping our eyes open for small overlooked iron deposits.  It's not
going to make any difference this year but it may in years to come.

Our schedule for this year's bloomery is: building and prepping the
bloomery furnace on Thursday, firing the bloomery on Friday and
refining any bloom we manage to make in the forge on Saturday.  It's
pyromaniac heaven, folks, so come on by and lend a hand (or just hang
out and watch) at any time during those three days.  At 1000 plus
degrees, it'll be the hottest thing at Uprising!

ttfn
Therasia
metalgeek and Uprising furnace master