Lost Towns of the Pine Barrens

Part two in the series on Iron Making in the NJ Pinelands.

New Jersey’s Pine Barrens had all the needed components to support a thriving iron industry. The highly acidic pine needles on the forest floor leached acidic rain water down through the sandy soil and the iron laden clay beneath it. That bog ore built up along the shores of the local waterways and was harvested.The pine trees played another role in this industry. If you take pine wood, and slowly cook it, you create charcoal. That charcoal burned at just the right speed and intensity to fire the furnaces and forges that created the bog iron.

There is another ingredient to this recipe. Flux. Flux is added to the mixture and it helps get rid of the impurities, leaving just the iron. Lime is a good flux, and since the pine barrens was not far from the Jersey shore, sea shells were the obvious choice.

Water is necessary for human life and for making iron. Most of the furnaces were built near an available water supply. This water was used to power the bellows that would blast air into the bottom of the furnace to keep the fires going. The blast furnaces were built of brick, and at their center was the crucible. There was usually an opening near the top where ironmen would dump in the bog ore, seashells and charcoal in layers. The furnace would go into Blast, and the iron making would begin. It was not a quick process and the furnaces had to be manned round the clock.

Next time we’ll talk about the actual process of putting the furnace into blast.

More next time on losttownsvideo.com