>>1865291He kind of did. He did get a workable proof of concept for refining the metal from iron bacteria. It was just hundreds of hours of work for a few pea sized grains of iron, and he can't really scale the process up without a bunch of extra people. If he had 9 other guys with him he could do batches 5x as large and way more often, and have a usable supply of raw iron for toolmaking, but alone it just isn't feasible.
Presumably there's no source of actual ore near him, because that would be significantly more efficient.
if he is working on something for broadcast I wouldn't be surprised if it were iron tools though. If I were him that's the show I'd pitch. Start from nothing then show a bit of every stage, sticks, stone, clay, pottery, bricks, culminating in forging a little iron knife
