His blog will usually tell you how long he actually worked on things. Some of them are surprisingly fast. But he is also probably not posting all of his failures.
sure, notice how he says things like "3 double handfuls of charcoal, 3 single handfuls of iron-bearing sand", or "dry fire for one hour before trying to smelt", etc. Any time he mentions a number or a ratio, I guarantee it's hard-won knowledge that took ages to come up with (even if it was one of his ancestors that did it, and he just learned it from a book).
