No, not the music, the substance. I’d really like to know what the first person to ever smelt was thinking.
*I’m gonna start a fire and get these rocks so frickin’ hot that they melt.
Ya know, just to see what happens.*
Ya know, when you put it like that, it is pretty sweet.
Fire is really cool. A fire that can melt rocks is really cool. Does it take any more explanation than that?
Actually, Dissonance, the first smelting was probably accidental. Someone had some ore bearing rocks in a fire and at some point notice that they were melting! :eek: I’m in school to be a machinist, and I can tell you that it’s pretty fun stuff to play with. If you haven’t seen it yet, you ought to take a look at Lindsay Publications site. All kinds of really fascinating books on the subject. I first got their catalog about 15 years ago and rapidly got hooked on it. It’s what got me going to school to be a machinist. The catalog has books on how to make your own foundry so that you can spend your weekends melting metal! (Haven’t done it yet, but it looks really easy, if a bit dangerous.)
FIRE!!!
LOL! How did I know this was going to happen.
But, yeah, metal is a very cool substance. I doubt we’ll ever know, for sure, how the first metal came to be smelted, but Tuckerfan’s theory sounds good. I always wondered if, perhaps, someone noticed some shiny, unusual stuff amongst the outflow of a volcano, and took it from there.
I am nothing if not consistant when it comes to Fire!!! DaveTeddy. 
Do you know what the best metal is, IMHO, Mercury… you can float a Cannon Ball in that, and that just makes it amazingly amazing in my book.
I used to like mild steel, but then my leg armor and my helm rusted up a bit. Now I’m saving up for Stainless steel armor. Of course, all my chain mail I’ve made is from galvy.
thank goodness for weapons and armor, they “spur” on so much technology.
oh wait, this isn’t an SCA message board… sorry
DaveTeddy? Oh! That’s me! 
Yeah, Mercury is very cool. It’s too bad it’s so darn dangerous. Of course, that didn’t stop us from playing with it, in chemistry lab. We never had enough of it to float a cannonball, though. Come to think of it, we never had a cannonball, either. That’s probably a good thing, but I wish I’d gone to your school!
Oh, this wasn’t at school, we certainly never had that amount of mercury laying around!
I have played with many cannons though! Kabooooom!!!
This was something I saw on a science program.
Being Dangerous is half the fun!
Real smelting was probably discovered via pottery making in kilns. Those can get quite a bit hotter than an open fire. Somebody just had the right rocks at the bottom of the kiln and when they opened it up “ooh, shiny stuff”.
I can buy accident or a kiln. Or an accident in a kiln, but that brings up the problem of what possessed someone to make a fire so hot that rocks melt or to decide to get clay up to an insane enough temperature in the first place.
Absurd surreal metaphysical musings of any sort? They don’t even have to pertain to metal, flames, lava, or clay…
I just rec’d my D1.1 certification (all position)in welding, it takes between 6000degF and 10,000 deg F to weld mild steel together.
Fire! fire!!
oooooh, now that’s some serious FIRE!!!
I’ve done a bit of Bronze casting in my time… pwetty pwetty gween flame!
oooooooh!