"Pete S" wrote in message

Folks that I hang around with are messing with these things on a
regular basis. We have used processes, mostly, that were around as
long as about 150 BCE, and well before. The largest bloom from one
of these events that I have ever seen personally weighed in at under
100 pounds.
Anything bigger than that is well out of the scope of the home
shop, I'd say.

Pete Stanaitis

On an extremely small home scale you can melt steel into a puddle and
add whatever alloying elements you want with a TIG torch. Or you could
try removing some of them by zone refining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_melting

jsw