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Making a bloom requires an iron smelting furnace. The work on the actual smelting end (creation of the iron blooms) is a combination of a learning process extended into experimental archaeology.

THanks for the link. I was intrigued because I did some experimental archaeology myself. I wondered what you thought about his approach, and how it might be useful in your work? Fascinating stuff!

This site talks about how iron affected the culture in west Africa, how iron turned tribes into mighty kingdoms and allowed them to gain a plethora of resources skyrocketing there economy.

A fast look at a experimental smelt. The builder of the firnace had been in conversation with Kevin Smith about his work excavating an 'industrial' level Viking Age iron smelting site at Hals in Iceland.

This site is an overview of why and how cryogenic processing improves the characteristics of iron and steel.

This is a great piece about the invention of gun powder.

Thanks for putting this article out there! I learned about the role of alchemy and the eternal search for immortality. How ironic the invention would lead to such mortality.