Bronze age copper smelting
Bronze age copper smelting during the "Iron smelting days" & ancient metalworkers weekend in Archeon (Alphen a/d Rijn, Netherlands), 17 October 2010. I performed my first demonstrations on how copper smelting could have taken place during the bronze age 2000-800B.C. The smelts were succesful, and yielded 3-4kg copper from 10kg malachite ore in two runs of the furnace. Each run took about 2-3hours, and used up about 4kg of charcoal. At the end of the video you can see a big lump of copper stuck to the bottom, weighing about 2kg. I also smelted some tin in the smaller furnace to the left. Both the tin and copper will be used to cast into bronze tools or weapons later on.