Author: ezradharris

Parchment was made out of animal skin. The way the Egyptians would have made it is by shaving off the fur of the animal skin, then they would stretch the skin in the sun under tension. The upside of the parchment is that it preserves longer than the papyrus paper and it would not be easily torn apart because it was made animal skin.

The downside of parchment is that it would curl when there was humidity. The way they would deal with the problem is that they would use wooden book covers with straps to keep the parchment from curling.

The ancients were probably using parchment starting in 500 BC 

Here is an example of high-quality parchment book: 

Here is a funny skit about a monk trying to use a book for the first time:

Without paper, people would not be able to write down what they had learned. They would not be able to have books to keep on a bookshelf because if you had a rock and you spent the time trying to chisel a whole book into a stone, it would take a super long time to chisel and would be too heavy to hold or to send to someone.

The first type of paper was papyrus. Papyrus was made by the Egyptians out of a plant called papyrus. The way they would make papyrus was to cut the plant lengthwise and then they would press the juices out. After that, they would soak the strips in water for a few days. And then they would weave the wet strips together. After weaving, they would press the weave for three days to press out any extra water. Finally, they would let the weave dry in the sun for one day. This would give usable papyrus that you can write on.

I’m amazed at how flat the papyrus paper ends up being. 

Here is a video on making papyrus:

A bloomery is an invention used in the middle ages. To get wrought iron from sand and other chemicals, the way a bloomery would work is they would have to burn charcoal, then add the sand then add more charcoal. This part of the process goes for about 4-7 hours.

When the bloomery process is nearly finished, they would either break a hole in the bottom or unplug a plug.

Once unplugged, a stream of molten iron and slag pours out. What comes out is called the bloom. Once the bloom is hardened, they pick it up with tongs, and they will reheat the bloom for about one minute in a furnace to a very high temperature without remelting it. Once it is hot enough, they move the reheated bloom onto an anvil and hammer off any slag. Once they have finished hammering the bloom, the bloom has now become wrought iron. They can now use the wrought iron to turn it into any tool they want.