I was wondering about this for a while. When someone says Mongols, Tatars, Perchengs and so on... I imagine nomadic horse-riding tribe that spends a lot of their time on horseback driving their cattle/sheep/horse herds through the steppe.
Now, this is an almost certainly an incorrect image. Nomadism is a wide umbrella for various kind of behaviours and does even include a stable central location with migrating gathering/pastoral parties.
However, the other part of the picture is a steppe. The way I imagine steppe is unending grassland with not enough trees. Such grassland would make firewood difficult to find, especially for a not very mobile society. And this would make the possibiliy of heating a large amount of iron ore, extracting metal and then heating the metal long enough to work it into required shape a difficult prospect. And thats for already skilled metalworker, I can't imagine how a metalworking culture could develop in a place with a lack of fuel. Note that this comes from European and Europe was and to certain degree still is, covered by forest, so lack of firewood (outside of cities) isn't generally a problem.
Did steppe tribes develop a metalworking culture? How did they solve the problem with lack of firewood? Or do the steppes provide enough firewood and potential problem if they were migratory?
The lack of fuel is a major limitation for smelting in many regions. Even if some trees are available, the use of charcoal for smelting can result in soon having no trees at all. The simple solution is to make iron when in an area where fuel (and ore) is available, or to get iron through trade or tribute/tax from people who have fuel available. The Eurasian Steppe is/was bounded to the north by extensive forests, and to the south, while much of Central Asia is relatively treeless, there are still forested regions:
and there were more forests in the past, before deforestation through clearing for agriculture, overgrazing, and use for fuel (including the Medieval iron industry - Central Asia was a major iron exporter).
For the first of these, steppe nomads might spend part of the year at the edge of forested areas, and can use this time to make iron. For trade, steppe peoples typically have valuable trade goods (horses) desired by sedentary states with well-developed iron industries (including China, which had partial freedom from the tyranny of wood and charcoal through using coal), and iron can be obtained by trade. Since those states had other desired goods, trade was happening anyway, and iron or iron good could be included in that trade. The forested region to the north had an old tradition of small-scale iron-smelting. Steppe peoples could and did obtain some of this iron by trade, or by demanding tribute/tax.
Metalworking - blacksmithing - is more accessible, and more necessary, for steppe nomads. The amount of fuel needed is smaller, and fuels other than charcoal can be used, including that common steppe fuel: dried dung. The minimum toolkit needed for forging is small and light: hammer, anvil (which can be a rock), bellows, and tongs for the actual forging, and other metalworking tools such as files and grindstones. Steppe nomads with carts/wagons can easily carry such a toolkit. Of course, they might obtain ready-made tools, weapons, etc. by trade or tribute/tax, but it is useful to be able to repair objects and to be able to recycle broken iron objects.
Finally, how much iron are we talking about? Pre-modern states with large iron industries appear to have produced about 1kg per capita per year (e.g., about 1kg for Edo Japan, 0.7-1.3kg for Song China, 1.5kg for the Roman Empire). It's likely that a steppe family could comfortably manage with about 1kg per year for the whole family (so a fraction of 1kg per capita). This would be no great burden for trading. To produce this much iron would take about 10kg of iron ore and about 10kg of charcoal. In terms of weight, it's better for nomads to obtain iron or ready-made iron objects from their neighbours rather than charcoal to do their own smelting.
References and further reading:
The Ala Archa photo is from http://www.whereyounow.com/portfolio/silk-road-explore/
On iron smelting in the northern forest zone:
This has some nice drawings of simple forges, including that of a nomadic Mongolian blacksmith. Also, Vodyasov reports that a Yakut family of 5 might have iron object of about 4kg weight in total. Since not all of this will need to be replaced every year, the per capita production doesn't need to be high.
