Talk:Smelting

message: 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)
thread_title: Comment

message: 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.  —Preceding unsigned comment 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)
replies: text: Good point.  That whole section has always bothered me.  First off, it's unreferenced with respect to the seven known metals in the ancient world.  Further, my understanding of gold extraction in ancient times is that it was "free" gold, detectable by eye.  It was concentrated  by various means (e.g. golden fleece) and melted as opposed to smelting.  I've been really busy of late, and haven't had a chance to really work this section over.BSMet94 03:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, there. I wrote that paragraph a couple of years ago, when there was almost nothing in the page and someone was asking to improve it. The intention was to say "can be smelted", not that they were smelted in ancient times. There are indeed gold ores and they can be smelted, but I didn't add them with the other ores because gold ores are very rare (for example, calaverite, AuTe2). While it is true that gold (and copper and silver) could and still can be extracted in native form, I thought that this was more related to extractive metallurgy rather than to smelting. Regarding the "seven metals", that's bit of common knowledge; for example, the Bible refers to these seven metals... like in Malachi 3:3 "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness". And so forth. Cheers :)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fbastos7 (talk • contribs) 22:59, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Practical smelting

message: The formula for cassiterite is incorrect and should be SnO2, not SnO  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.125.30.218 (talk) 23:38, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs major revision 

message: 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)
thread_title:  References 

message: I have reverted the recetn move of the references to the end of the article.  I appreciate that this location is unconventional.  The problem is that these references only relate to the preceding section.  The rest of the article is unreferenced.  The change appears to imply that the referneces apply to the whole article.  Peterkingiron 22:30, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: This is all good historic stuff but how about something more up-to-date?  For instance, the reverbatory furnace is horribly polluting and is being replaced fast by more modern copper smelting methods like the Outokumpu flash furnace, the Teniente reactor, Isasmelt, etc.  The smelting business is moving on fast. Mafestel (talk) 11:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If you know about it, why do you not write it up?  I am a historian, and mainly intersted in iron, rather than non-ferrous base metals.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My knowledge is probably too patchy but I will have a go at modern smelting methods when I have time.  This would have to be incorporated into the historical side, about which I know nothing.  It sounds like a joint effortMafestel (talk) 10:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I watch this page and will therefore be able to tidy up anything you produce.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:   How about something up-to-date? 

message: 1500 bc or 3200bc? that's a 1700 year gap. what does this mean? sometime between those dates? Toyokuni3 (talk) 20:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: After looking through the history, it previously listed both 1500 and 3200 BC, so when one of the editors came along, he lumped them together as part of his clean up. A ref needs to be found for the proper date. Wizard191 (talk) 22:48, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

text: I agree that this is not well expressed.  It is however correct that lead can be smelted in a fire, but copper requires a hihger temperature.  Some one has added to each paragraph an unreferenced mention of smelting by the Incas.  These would be much better collected into a single paragraph at the end of the section, so that the first smelting (several millenia ago) does not keep being interrupted by what the Incas did much more recently.  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: First bronze

message: Behold, this is where Wikipedia falls down.  I look up Wortley Top Forge (on its own site, not on Wikipedia) as a result of which I look up Bloomery in Wikipedia.  From there I get a link to this article (which does not reciprocate) and here I find laments about inadequacy and lack of verification, with appeals for someone else to do something.  
Incidentally, the previous editing toolbar was instantly usable.  The present one will take some getting used to.  --MWLittleGuy (talk) 19:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Outsider view

message: Which ignoramus was it that removed the chemical equations from this article? Is it the position of the those who control this page that proper presentation of the fundamental processes of smelting should be avoided? Are basic chemical equations too advanced for most readers, or is the objective simply to make this page as unuseful as possible?
My position is that without the equations, this article is little more than idle chatter and of no serious use whatsoever. Even those will passing interest are being shortchanged. Though no doubt there's a WP:RULE somewhere that justifies this hack job. ObsessiveMathsFreak (talk) 15:03, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemistry? 

message: The cultural reference to Goldmember is a reminder why these "cultural references" sections should be done away with. 66.172.189.14 (talk) 18:56, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, this one is incredibly tangential, so likely should be removed.Morgan Riley (talk) 19:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural References 

message: Shouldn't there be a connection to Redox somewhere in there ? --Jerome Potts (talk) 16:01, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Reduction" 

message: The disambiguation page for Regulus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulus_(disambiguation) ) links to this page, specifically, the end product of metallic ore smelting, but the word "regulus" occurs nowhere in the article. 
Regulus, the metallic form of antimony
Regulus, the end-product of metallic ore smelting
Regulus, an alchemical symbol (variously 🜲, 🜳, 🜴, or 🜵) for the regulus-producing process
It is also mentioned in the first chemical equation/diagram at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Beguin , referring to "metallic antimony," although there is some clear overlap between the meanings. Nateguimondart (talk) 16:40, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regulus