Hallo there!
And many thanks to you, Rat Man; I'm happy that you guys appreciate my efforts, and this motivates me to continue them!
And to share the results with you
About this: Bill, which help do you need? What can I tell you?
I'm not a very skilled ironsmith (the total time I've spent forging is about 59 hours), but I'm willing to share anything I can! Metal working is a very fascinating world, my preliminary studies have been hard, because there're very, very few ironsmiths around here to learn from, so I'm more than happy to share them freely!
About your question on resources, I can tell you the following...
There're very few mines of pure iron in the world: they're located in West Greenland (Disko island), in Germany (Buhl, near Kassel) and in Bohemia (Chotzen).
It may sound strange, but there's more iron from meteorites: the mineral is then called siderite, and the biggest one comes from South Africa. It's the "Hoba", a mixture of iron and nickel, measuring 3x3 meters and one meter in thickness (9.6 x 9.6 x 3.2 feet if I'm right). Many more siderites can be found in India and Japan, and this is one of the reasons why these countries gave birth to upper-class weapons such as the kriss and the katana.
We, common mortals, have to content with various iron minerals, which contains different percentages of iron: magnetite (74% iron), hematite (70%, found in Etruria), limonite (59,8% iron, found in Etruria too), pyrite (46,5%) and the goethite (42%).
Mines of such minerals are widely spread across Europe, and in ancient times were wildly exploited.
In Italy, there were mines in the Elba island, and in the Western coast of Tuscany; in the Aegean area there were mines in Greek islands and in Asia Minor (the biggest of which was in Cyprus). In the Pontus lived a population, called the Calibi, which were famous iron melters. In Turkey, there were iron deposits in the Tauro Mountains, and in Amaxia, Cilicia (mines that Anthony gave to Cleopatra as a present). Strabo told us about iron mines in Meroe, among the Ethiopians. Bilbilis, in Central Spain, was an iron mining site, and so was Norico, in Northen Carinthia. In Gaul there was Lugdunum (now Lyon) and in Britannia there was Ariconium, in the Dean forest.
A lot of mines there were, actually.
But think to the costs: trading iron from Tuscany to Marche, meant a travel of about 3 days. It was cheap to trade both raw iron ingots, or finished weapons, or tools.
Trading iron from farther places, meant a higher price - and, in fact, it seems that not even the nobles had any iron tool produced outside of Central Italy.
By the way, this trade became a common practice among the Italic populations, as time passed: by the middle of VIth Century a.C., the panoply is mostly imported from Greece, and, with the arrival of the Celts, spear heads and some swords were imported from them, too.
I hope this was clear enough; I'm at your service if you have any other question!
Even if they're about hammering or tempering techniques, I'm not the kind of smith that jealously keep these secrets
Greetings,
Mauro.