Bay 12 Games Forum

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thanks!

So if you haven't already done so, you'll need to gather 21 rocks to make 21 rock blocks. A rock block is any rock + dirt/sand. You need 10 to make a wood furnace and 10 for the blast furnace. You can do this under the Mason's menu.

The wood furnace is needed to make refined coal to power the blast furnace.

Now you can work from the Furnace Operator's menu. On the same tile as the wood furnace, drop a log, and 1 unit of firewood. You can cut a branch to make firewood. This would be the 3rd reaction in Furnace Operator's menu. Log becomes bar of coal.

Now drop the bar of refined coal onto the same tile as the blast furnace along with 2 leather gloves/mittens. Now you're ready to smelt some metal object into metal bars.

I had you collect 21 rocks to make 21 rock blocks because the last stone block + a helve will make a stone hammer (under the Stonecrafter's menu). You can drop the stone hammer onto the same tile as the blast furnace.

Now in the Metalsmith (tools) menu, you'll make first a metal hammer, followed by the tongs.

With that, you're ready to go.

Also, did you load a game, even to look at a world for an embark, and then generate a world afterwards?  There used to be a major save corruption bug that occurred when data wasn't cleaned up after unloading a map before generating a new world.