Tatara Demonstration

A demonstration of making high carbon steel (Tama-hagane in Japanese) directly from Magnetite iron ore using charcoal as the fuel.  Potratz will be building and firing the easily made brick tatara, which can be built in one hour.  The brick tatara differs from the traditional Japanese clay tatara which takes a few days to build. A 10 kilo bloom of steel suitable for forging can be produced in a 6 hour smelt using this hybrid version of the Japanese tatara.

Wayne Potratz – Tatara Demonstration
Professor of Sculpture and Foundry, University of Minnesota – potra001/at/umn/dot/edu