Working Iron Blooms

[Rufferto]

I've been having some difficulties hand working iron blooms.  When cutting slag off of the bloom there's a number of voxels that are on the base layer that are outside of the dimensions of the bar, and using the Shift key to add a partially worked bloom to another to get more voxels to fill the gaps does not add material, unless there's a special trick to it.  Reheating the bloom will also sometimes change the orientation of the ingot outline by 90 degrees, invalidating the base layer I had previously worked. 

Are there tricks to working iron?  Is it effectively helvehammer only?

 

*edit*

After experimentation, Iron working does indeed require the helvehammer.  You can work it by hand, but the voxels will never be right.  However the helvehammer adds the missing voxels rather than move them around.  It was a race to keep it fed, so I made two forges and had blooms in continuous heat up mode.  I ended up knocking the slag off the blooms, by which time the helvehammer had nearly finished the main block, so I simply ended up splitting off the excess before the hammer could.  A stormy night really makes it fly.

Edited April 2, 2020 by Rufferto
answered my question

[Jeff Jackson]

With Iron I was able to work the outer edge voxels *back up* onto the iron piece with my hammer, thus enabling me to finish my first iron ingot by hand.
I don't have a windmill or helve hammer, but after hours of work have a single iron ingot!   

[redram]

Iron blooms should be workable without the helve hammer.  We do get sporadic reports of blooms with not enough iron voxels, but I don't know that it's ever been fully verified if those were actual bloom generation bugs, or user error.  It's correct that you *cannot* add more iron voxels by adding another bloom.

[Starlethe]

If you "*cannot* add more iron voxels by adding another bloom." Then why is it an option to be able to add more material to the iron on the anvil? And if I no longer have enough voxels (from misclicks) to make an ingot is it then wasted?

[redram]

5 hours ago, Starlethe said:

If you "*cannot* add more iron voxels by adding another bloom." Then why is it an option to be able to add more material to the iron on the anvil? And if I no longer have enough voxels (from misclicks) to make an ingot is it then wasted?

Can't say for sure on the adding option (coding is not my thing).   If you ran out of voxels, you can save it for when you get a helve hammer.  The helve hammer will complete it no matter what, creating voxels from thin air if necessary.  Or just pop into creative mode (/gamemode 2) and give yourself a new bloom.  I think down the road this'll get fixed, so you can at least re-bloom the bloom.  Or maybe toss it in a crucible.

[Omega Haxors]

On 4/21/2020 at 2:08 PM, Starlethe said:

If you "*cannot* add more iron voxels by adding another bloom." Then why is it an option to be able to add more material to the iron on the anvil? And if I no longer have enough voxels (from misclicks) to make an ingot is it then wasted?

Certain recipes require two ingots in order to made, such as the plate and chain.

[MintYogi]

On 4/6/2020 at 12:05 AM, Jeff Jackson said:

With Iron I was able to work the outer edge voxels *back up* onto the iron piece with my hammer  

To expand on this a bit: I learned that I could push a voxel back up from the bottom layer to the second layer if there was an empty voxel spot in the direction I was going to push. I found it wouldn't push up two layers.

[ChillstepRabbit]

On 4/7/2020 at 2:01 PM, redram said:

Iron blooms should be workable without the helve hammer.  We do get sporadic reports of blooms with not enough iron voxels, but I don't know that it's ever been fully verified if those were actual bloom generation bugs, or user error.  It's correct that you *cannot* add more iron voxels by adding another bloom.

I'm getting iron blooms that don't create full ingots when i hammer off the slag. I end up using all the voxels I can, but there's always one or two places where I need voxels, but don't have them. It happens uncommonly but does happen.

[redram]

8 hours ago, ChillstepRabbit said:

I'm getting iron blooms that don't create full ingots when i hammer off the slag. I end up using all the voxels I can, but there's always one or two places where I need voxels, but don't have them. It happens uncommonly but does happen.

Yes, since I made that original statement (nearly two years ago now), it's definitely verified that it does occasionally happen.  Its rare enough that it's not really been addressed.  And a helve hammer will 'complete' the ingot, so it's not a total loss.