Talk:Smelting

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Needs to be differentiated from the stub Extractive metallurgy, which is currently categorized under Engineering. --Leperflesh 22:38, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Done. Noisy | Talk 19:35, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Practical smelting 2 Needs major revision 3 Someone improve this article!! 4 References

[edit] Practical smelting

I've started a section on how to actually do this. Remember wikipedia will be read all over the world, by kids with one laptop per child etc, and this kind of immediate practical advice could be really useful to communities who want to build forges and metalworks. (Like, it look humantity thousands of years to figure smelting out, and it was arguably the second most important invention of all time after the wheel.) Anyone reading this who has worked as an old-style blacksmith etc, please fill in the details! (also if society is ever wiped out by nukes etc and we have to begin again, asimov-style, wikipedia should contain this sort of knowledge; there are probably hippie-style communities out there who would also be interested too). Possibly this should go on wiki-how and be linked from here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.167.74.60 (talk • contribs) 03:47, 31 May 2006.

First off, an "old style blacksmith" is doing something called forging (basically heat and beat), not smelting. These little global village things sound cute. Take copper for instance: how is your community smelter going to keep from polluting the little community with sulfur dioxide, arsenic, mercury, cadmium and all the cats and dogs found in copper ore? That's why there are no such things, and we therefore regulate the companies that have the means to build large-scale smelters. Please sign your posts. BSMet94 19:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Needs major revision

This is not a good article. The discussion is limited to iron; most metals need to be smelted to obtain metal, but that is nowhere mentioned.

Furthermore, the article has gained certain accretions, like the first use of iron. This is intersting and should appear in Wikipaedia, but would be much better elsewhere. Peterkingiron 08:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to tidy up this article, but it is possible that I have messed up the section on base metals; if so I hope some one will correct it. My familiarity is mainly with historic, rather than existing processes. Peterkingiron 23:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

We meet again. I'm on my crusade to clean up all the extractive (or at least pyrometallurgical) articles. It's going to be slow, and I'm coming only from the theory and modern practice standpoint. My knowledge of metallurgical history only goes back to the 1800s. That's where you come in, Peterkingiron! I have a copy of De Re Metallica, but there's a big gap in my library from the 1500s to the 1800s.... heheheh. BSMet94 20:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Someone improve this article!!

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.15.127.254 (talk • contribs) 03:47, 31 May 2006.

Ugh. What exactly is (or what should be) the philosophy of this article? When an article is entitled simply "Smelting," I sort of assume that it will be a descriptive article giving simply a definition of smelting, smelting processes (chemistry), and smelting practices. The bit recently added about bronze smelting is way too wordy. That could be covered in two lines at most and a "see also." The smelting article should confine itself to smelting. If you want to discuss history and the role smelting played in history, shoudn't that be somewhere else in a history article?BSMet94 15:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

History is often a good means of approaching processes. However I am doubtful how useful it is to say much about 'camp fires'. Nor am I sure of the relevance of pottery kilns and glazes. I would suggest a structure:

Smelting basics → Chemistry

Early history - origins of smelting for each metal

Later Processes - describing them metal by metal, probably by cross-reference to main articles on each metal

Modern processes.

The coverage of lead smelting processes in Wikipedia is abmysal; I have not investigated those for tin, copper and copper alloys (bronze and brass), but suspect they are as bad. Peterkingiron 17:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

I know Wiki encourages refernecing, but having references only for Early Iron Smelting looks most peculiar. Furthermore, that section does cite its sources - it says 'see History of Ferrous Metallurgy'. Is that (or even an article subsidiary to it) not the right place for these references? Peterkingiron 13:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)