Did the First Iron Blacksmiths Learn to Carburize Iron? Part II: Experiments Showing That it is Very Likely That They Did

Abstract

Results of short-time carburizing of wrought iron in a charcoal-fired furnace present strong evidence that our earliest blacksmith ancestors probably discovered how to carburize their bloomery iron and produced cutting and scraping tools superior to bronze tools shortly after they had learned to make this iron in the 1200–900 BC time period. Their bloomery iron needed to be forged to make useful tools and it seems likely that at least some of them heated the iron to the forging temperature in charcoal burning in their bloomery furnaces, the same arrangement as used here.