Mesa Arts Center here in the Phoenix area has a 8 week course running this summer that aims to cover making steel from black sand that you see in the desert washes around the area. Sounded like fun and something I have a bit of interst in, so Isigned up.
We’ll be covering two techniques – primarily a crucible technique where we’ll doing 9 ‘buttons’ each, which we’ll forge into a billet. Also will be a day at the instructors workshop doing a tatara pit.
First class was this past Saturday – gathered early, at 5am, to head out into the desert to collect some black sand, then back to the workspace to do some cleaning on it. For our purposes we’re just cleaning with small prospecting magnets – not doing a wash.
