Brick Tatara Steel-Making Workshop

In this weekend workshop, you'll take a hands-on deep dive into smelting: the process of reducing Minnesota magnetite iron ore into high carbon steel. We'll use a brick version of the Japanese Tatara to make high carbon steel blooms that can be consolidated and hammered into billets suitable for blade making or tool making. It's a unique opportunity for any knife-makers, blacksmiths, sculptors, metallurgists, and students of the history of technology.

Features of this two-day immersive experience: presentations about the process and comparisons to other iron smelting traditions, building the furnace, preparation of materials, firing the tatara, hot cutting and consolidation of the bloom. You should come away with a piece of high carbon steel in an amount suitable for a small blade or other tool.

As a follow up to this workshop, join us the following Sunday for Open Forge Time, in which you can work your steel into a billet suitable for your next project. Register for Open Forge Time (Saturday, April 2) as a tatara participant to receive a $15 discount.

Fee: $260  ($210 tuition + $50 materials)

Instructor: Wayne Potratz is a Professor Emeritas from the University of Minnesota Art Department with more than 50 years of metal casting experience. His work in cast bronze, iron, and aluminum has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be seen at www.ironwain.com. Potratz has done extensive creative research in historical and cultural methods of casting metals, through travels in India, Japan, Korea, China, Turkey, and Europe.