Dictionary Definition
blacksmith n : a smith who forges and shapes iron
with a hammer and anvil
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
Pronunciation
- /'blæk.smɪθ/, "bl
Extensive Definition
Over the centuries blacksmiths
have taken no little pride in the fact that theirs is one of the
few crafts that allows them to make the tools that are used for
their craft. Time and tradition have provided some fairly standard
basic tools which vary only in detail around the
world.
"All a smith needs is
something to heat the metal, [something to hold the hot metal
with,] something to hit the metal on, and something to hit the
metal with."
The forge is the fireplace of
a blacksmith's shop. It provides the means to keep the fire
contained and controlled.
Tongs are used to hold the hot
metal. They come in a range of shapes and sizes. Intriguingly,
while tongs are needed for a great deal of blacksmithing, much work
can be done by merely holding the cold end with one's bare hand:
steel is a fairly poor conductor of heat, and orange-hot steel at
one end would be cold to the touch a foot away or so. Trivia:
vice-grips were invented by a smith who wanted a better sort of
locking tongs.
The anvil at its simplest is a
large block of iron or steel. Over time this has been refined to
provide a rounded horn to facilitate drawing and bending, a face
for drawing and upsetting and bending, and one or more holes to
hold special tools (swages or hardies) and facilitate punching.
Often the flat surface of an anvil will be hardened steel, and the
body made from tougher iron.
Blacksmiths' hammers tend to have
one face and a peen. The peen is typically either a ball or a blunt
wedge (cross or straight peen depending on the orientation of the
wedge to the handle) and is used when drawing.
While a great deal of work is
done with those four basic tools, blacksmiths tend to augment their
tools with some of the following (depending on the kinds of work
they do):
Swages (hardies) and fullers
are shaping tools. Swages are either stand alone tools or fit the
"hardie hole" on the face of the anvil. The metal is shaped by
being driven into the form of the swage. Opposite to the swage in
some respects is the fuller which may take a number of shapes and
is driven into the metal with a hammer. Swages and fullers are
often paired to bring a piece of metal to shape in a single
operation, essentially a set of dies. A fuller and swage pair might
be spoon shaped, for example, the swage dished to form the bowl and
the fuller the convex mirror of the swage. Together they will
quickly stamp a spoon shape on the end of a bar.
There are many other tools
used by smiths, so many that even a brief description of the types
is beyond the scope of this article and the task is complicated by
a variety of names for the same type of tool. Further complicating
the task is that making tools is inherently part of the smith's
craft and many custom tools are made by individual smiths to suit
particular tasks and the smith's inclination. In the late 1930s
Alexander G. Weygers (a sculptor, painter, and smith} published The
Complete Modern Blacksmith, in which he provided instructions for
creating many useful tools for a blacksmith, which was followed in
1979 by The Making of Tools.
With that caveat one category
of tools should be mentioned: jigs. A jig is generally a custom
built tool, usually made by the smith, to perform a particular
operation for a particular task or project. For example, a smith
making decorative scrolls for an iron fence will make a bending
jig, or scroll iron, to apply a particular shape to the stock,
ensuring that each scroll has the same bend. (To estimate the
length of stock required to form a scroll of any given size and
number of turns the Clackson
scroll formula is used.)
History, Prehistory, Religion, & Mythology
Hephaestus (Latin: Vulcan) was the blacksmith of the gods in Greek and Roman mythology. A supremely skilled artisan whose forge was a volcano, he constructed most of the weapons of the gods, and was himself the god of fire and metalworking.The Anglo-Saxon Wayland
Smith, known in Old Norse as Völundr, is a heroic blacksmith in
Germanic mythology. The Poetic Edda
states that he forged beautiful gold rings with wonderful gems. He
was captured by king Níðuðr,
who cruelly hamstringed him and imprisoned him on an island.
Völundr eventually had his revenge by killing Níðuðr's sons and
forging objects to the king from their skulls, teeth and eyes. He
then seduced the king's daughter and escaped laughing on wings he
himself had forged.
Seppo Ilmarinen, the
Eternal Hammerer, blacksmith and inventor in the Kalevala, is an
archetypal artificer from Finnish
mythology.
Tubal Cain
(not to be confused with Cain, brother of
Abel) is
mentioned in the book of Genesis of the
Old
Testament (the first book of the Torah) as the
original smith.
(Arguably, much of the
following information could or should be placed in the articles on
iron, steel, other specific metals, and
metal in general. It is
included here, however, since the development of the metallurgy of iron and steel
is inextricably linked to the history and understanding of
blacksmithing.)
Definition of terms:
- Iron is a naturally occurring metallic element. It is almost never found in its native form (pure iron) in nature. It is usually found as an oxide or sulfide, with many other impurity elements mixed in.
- Wrought Iron is the purest form of iron generally encountered or produced in quantity. It may contain as little as 0.04% Carbon (by weight). From its traditional method of manufacture, wrought iron has a fibrous internal texture. Quality wrought-iron blacksmithing takes the direction of these fibers into account during forging, since the strength of the material is stronger in line with the grain, than across the grain. Most of the remaining impurities from the initial smelting become concentrated in silicate slag trapped between the iron fibers. This slag produces a lucky side effect during forge-welding. When the silicate melts, it makes wrought-iron self-fluxing. The slag becomes a liquid glass that covers the exposed surfaces of the wrought-iron, preventing oxidation which would otherwise interfere with the successful welding process.
- Steel is a mixture of Iron and between 0.3% to 1.7% Carbon by weight. The presence of carbon allows steel to assume one of several different crystalline configurations. Macroscopically, this is seen as the ability to "turn the hardness of a piece of steel on and off" through various processes of heat-treatment. If the concentration of carbon is held constant, this is a reversible process. Steel with a higher carbon percentage may be brought to a higher state of maximum hardness.
- Cast Iron is iron that contains between 2.0% to 6% Carbon by weight. There is so much carbon present, that the hardness cannot be switched off. Hence, cast iron is a brittle metal, which can break like glass. Cast iron cannot be forged.
Steel with below 0.6% Carbon
content cannot be hardened enough to make useful hardened-steel
tools. Hence, in what follows, wrought-iron, low-carbon-steel, and
other soft unhardenable iron varieties will be referred to
indiscriminately as just iron.
Gold, Silver, and Copper may all be
found in nature in their native
states, as reasonably pure metals. It is likely that these were
the first metals to be worked by Humans. These metals
are all quite malleable, and humans' initial
development of hammering
techniques was undoubtedly applied to these metals.
During the Chalcolithic
era and the Bronze Age,
humans in the Mideast learned how
to smelt, melt, cast, rivet, and (to a limited extent)
forge Copper and Bronze. Bronze is an
alloy of Copper and approximately 10% to 20% Tin. Bronze is superior
to just copper, by being harder, being more resistant to corrosion,
and by having a lower melting point (thereby requiring less fuel to
melt and cast). Much of the copper used by the Mediterranean
World came from the island of Cyprus. Most of the
Tin came from the Cornwall region of
the island of Great
Britain, transported by sea-born Phoenician and
Greek
traders.
Copper and Bronze cannot be
hardened by heat-treatment, they can only be hardened by
work-hardening. To accomplish this, a piece of bronze is lightly
hammered ad nauseam. The localized stress-cycling causes the
necessary crystalline changes. The hardened bronze can then be
ground to sharpen it to make edged tools.
Clocksmiths as
recently as the 1800s used work-hardening
techniques to harden the teeth of brass gears and ratchets.
Tapping on just the teeth produced harder teeth, with superior
wear-resistance. By contrast, the rest of the gear was left in a
softer and tougher state, more capable of resisting
cracking.
Bronze is sufficiently
corrosion resistant, that artifacts
of bronze may last thousands of years, relatively unscathed.
Because of this, there are frequently more examples of Bronze Age
metal work in museums, than there are from the much younger
Iron
Age. Buried iron artifacts may completely rust away in less than 100 years.
Examples of ancient iron work still extant are very much the
exception to the norm.
Still during the mists of
prehistory, humans became aware of the metal iron, in the form of meteoric
iron. Iron artifacts
may be shown to be of meteoric origin by their chemical
composition: containing up to 40% Nickel. As this
source of this iron is extremely rare and fortuitous, little
development of smithing skills peculiar to iron can be assumed to
have occurred. That we still possess any such artifacts of meteoric
iron may be ascribed to the vagaries of climate, and the increased
corrosion-resistance conferred on iron by the presence of
nickel.
During the (north) Polar
Exploration of the early 1900s (AD), Inuit of northern
Greenland
were found to be making iron knives from two particularly large
nickel-iron meteors. One of these meteors was taken to Washington,
D.C., where it was remitted to the custody of the Smithsonian
Institution.
The Hittites of
Anatolia
first discovered or developed the smelting of iron ores around
1500 BC. They seem to have maintained a near monopoly on the
knowledge of iron production for several hundred years, but when
their empire collapsed during the Eastern Mediterranean upheavals
around 1200 BC, the knowledge seems to have escaped in all
directions.
In the Iliad of Homer (describing the
Trojan
War and Bronze Age
Greek and Trojan warriors), most of the armor and weapons (swords and spears) are
stated to have been of bronze. Iron is not unknown, however, as
arrow heads are described
as iron, and a "ball of iron" is listed as a prize awarded for
winning a competition. The events described probably occurred
around 1200 BC, but Homer is thought to have composed this epic
poem around 700 BC; so exactitude must remain suspect.
When historical records resume
after the 1200 BC upheavals and the ensuing Greek Dark
Age, iron work (and presumably blacksmiths) seem to have sprung
like Athena,
fully-grown from the head of Zeus. Very few
artifacts remain, due to loss from corrosion, and re-use of iron as
a valuable commodity. What information exists indicates that all of
the basic operations of blacksmithing were in use as soon as the
Iron Age
reached a particular locality. The scarcity of records and
artifacts, and the rapidity of the switch from Bronze Age to Iron
Age, is a reason to use evidence of bronze smithing to infer about
the early development of blacksmithing.
Despite being subject to rust,
iron replaced bronze as soon as iron-wielding hordes could invade
Bronze Age societies and literally slice through their obsolete
bronze defenses. Iron is a stronger and tougher metal than bronze,
and iron ores are found nearly everywhere. Copper and Tin deposits,
by contrast, are scattered and few, and expensive to
exploit.
Iron is different from most
other materials (including bronze), in that it does not immediately
go from a solid to a liquid at its melting
point. H2O is a solid (ice) at -1 C (31 F), and a liquid
(water) at +1 C (33 F). Iron, by contrast, is definitely a solid at
, but over the next it becomes increasingly plastic and more
"taffy-like" as its temperature increases. This extreme temperature
range of variable solidity is the fundamental material property
upon which blacksmithing practice depends.
Another major difference
between bronze and iron fabrication techniques is that bronze can
be melted. The melting point of iron is much higher than that of
bronze. In the western (Europe & the Mideast) tradition, the
technology to make fires hot enough to melt iron did not arise
until the 1500s, when smelting operations grew large enough to
require overly large bellows. These produced blast-furnace
temperatures high enough to melt partially refined ores, resulting
in Cast Iron. Thus cast iron frying pans and cookware did not
become possible in Europe until 3000 years after the introduction
of iron smelting.
China, in a separate
developmental tradition, was producing cast iron at least 1000
years before this.
Although iron is quite
abundant, good quality steel remained rare and expensive until the
industrial developments of Bessemer et al. in
the 1850s. Close examination of blacksmith-made antique tools
clearly shows where small pieces of steel were forge-welded into
iron to provide the hardened steel cutting edges of tools (notably
in axes, adzes, chisels, etc.). The re-use of quality steel is
another reason for the lack of artifacts.
The Romans (who
ensured that their own weapons were made with good steel) noted (in
the 300s BC) that the Celts of the Po River
Valley had iron, but not good steel. The Romans record that during
battle, their Celtic opponents could only swing their swords two or
three times before having to step on their swords to straighten
them.
On the Indian
subcontinent, Wootz steel was, and
continues to be, produced in small quantities.
During the 1700s, agents for
the Sheffield
cutlery industry scoured the
country-side of Britain, offering new carriage springs for old.
Springs must be made of hardened steel. At this time, the processes
by which steel was produced resulted in an extremely variable
product: quality was in no way ensured at the initial point of
sale. Those springs which had survived cracking through hard use
over the rough roads of the time, were proven to be of a better
quality steel. Much of the fame of Sheffield cutlery (knives,
shears, etc.) was due to these extreme lengths that the companies
went to, in order to ensure that high-grade steel was used in their
manufactures.
The original fuel for forge
fires was charcoal.
Coal did not
begin to replace charcoal until the forests of first Britain
(during the 1600s), and then the eastern United States of America
(during the 1800s) were largely depleted. Coal can be an inferior
fuel for blacksmithing, because much of the world's coal is
contaminated with Sulfur. Sulfur
contamination of iron and steel make them "red short", so that at
red heat they become "crumbly" instead of "plastic". Coal sold and
purchased for blacksmithing should be largely free of
sulfur.
During the 1900s various gases
(natural
gas, acetylene,
etc.) have also come to be used as fuels for blacksmithing. While
these are fine for blacksmithing iron, special care must be taken
when using them to blacksmith steel. Each time a piece of steel is
heated, there is a tendency for the carbon content to leave the
steel (decarburization). This
can leave a piece of steel with an effective layer of unhardenable
iron on its surface. In a traditional charcoal or coal forge, the
fuel is really just carbon. In a properly regulated charcoal/coal
fire, the air in and immediately around the fire should be a
reducing atmosphere. In
this case, and at elevated temperatures, there is a tendency for
vaporized carbon to soak into steel and iron, counteracting or
negating the decarburizing tendency. This is similar to the process
by which a case of steel is developed on a piece of iron in
preparation for case
hardening.
(European) blacksmiths before
and through the mediaeval era spent a great deal of time heating
and hammering iron before forging it into finished articles.
Although they were unaware of the chemical basis, they were aware
that the quality of the iron was thus improved. From a scientific
point of view, the reducing atmosphere of the forge was both
removing oxygen (rust),
and soaking more carbon
into the iron, thereby developing increasingly higher grades of
steel as the process was continued.
Prior to the industrial
revolution, a "village smithy" was a staple
of every town. Factories and mass-production reduced the demand for
blacksmith-made tools and hardware.
During the first half of the
1800s, the U.S. government included in their treaties with many
Native American tribes, that the U.S. would employ blacksmiths
and strikers
at Army
forts, with the expressed
purpose of providing Native Americans with iron tools and repair
services.
Lathes, patterned
largely on their wood-turning
counterparts, had been used by some blacksmiths since the
middle-ages. During the 1790s Henry
Maudslay created the first screw-cutting
lathe, a watershed event that signalled the start of
blacksmiths being replaced by machinists in factories for the hardware
needs of the populace.
Samuel Colt
neither invented nor perfected interchangeable
parts, but his insistence (and other industrialists at this
time) that his firearms
be manufactured with this property, was another step towards the
obsolescence of metal-working artisans and blacksmiths. (See also
Eli
Whitney).
As demand for their products
declined, many more blacksmiths augmented their incomes by taking
in work shoeing horses. A
shoer-of-horses was historically known as a farrier in English. With the
introduction of automobiles, the number of
blacksmiths continued to decrease, many former blacksmiths becoming
the initial generation of automobile mechanics. The nadir of
blacksmithing in the United States was reached during the 1960s,
when most of the former blacksmiths had left the trade, and few if
any new people were entering the trade. By this time, most of the
working blacksmiths were those performing farrier work, so the term
blacksmith was effectively co-opted by the farrier
trade.
Starting in the 1970s, trends
in "do-it-yourself" and "self-sufficiency" led to a renewed
interest in traditional blacksmithing. Books and organizations to
help beginning blacksmiths abound, including many re-enactment
smiths demonstrating the art at historical sites. New Hampshire
Blacksmith Joe Tucker
worked as a Blacksmith for more than 75 years, and helped to
popularize the craft among young metalworkers. Many of the more
successful modern blacksmiths produce custom metalwork, and are
referred to a Artist-Blacksmiths.
Artist-Blacksmiths is not merely a modern phenomenon, however: see
Samuel
Yellin.
While developed nations saw a
decline and re-awakening of interest in blacksmithing, in many
developing nations blacksmiths continued doing what blacksmiths
have been doing for 3500 years: making and repairing iron and steel
tools and hardware for people in their local area.
Notable blacksmiths
Historical people
- John R. Jewitt, an Englishman who wrote a memoir about his years as a captive of the Nootka people on the Pacific Northwest Coast in 1802-1805. His captor kept him alive because he recognised the value of Jewitt's metal-working skills.
- Masamune, a legendary Japanese swordsmith.
Fictional characters
- Joe Gargary, the father-figure of Pip, the protagonist of Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations
External links
- IForgeIron.com Blacksmithing Forum, Gallery, Blueprints, and Chat
- The Artist Blacksmith's Association of North America
- Anvilfire.com Blacksmithing and Metalworking Reference
- Modern Blacksmithing By J.G. Holmstrom 1901
- Video Victorian Blacksmith at work
- Blacksmiths keep Boston's transit system rolling
- Royal Naval Museum - Sea Your History - Blacksmiths Discusses the work of the Royal Navy's blacksmiths.
- http://vishwakarma.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=9 Vishwakarma the presiding deity of blacksmiths.
Bibliography
- Weygers, Alexander G. The Complete Modern Blacksmith, republished in 1997.
- Weygers, Alexander G. The Modern Blacksmith, 1974.
- Weygers, Alexander G. The Making of Tools, 1973.
blacksmith in Bengali:
কামার
blacksmith in Danish:
Smed
blacksmith in German:
Schmied
blacksmith in Estonian:
Sepp
blacksmith in Spanish:
Herrero
blacksmith in Esperanto:
Forĝisto
blacksmith in French:
Forgeron
blacksmith in Italian:
Fabbro
blacksmith in Javanese:
Kowal
blacksmith in Luxembourgish:
Schmadd
blacksmith in Dutch:
Smid
blacksmith in Japanese:
鍛冶屋
blacksmith in Norwegian:
Smed
blacksmith in Polish:
Kowal
blacksmith in Portuguese:
Ferreiro
blacksmith in Quechua:
Irriru
blacksmith in Russian:
Кузнец
blacksmith in Simple English:
Blacksmith
blacksmith in Slovak:
Kováčske remeslo
blacksmith in Slovenian:
Kovač
blacksmith in Serbian:
Ковач
blacksmith in Finnish:
Seppä
blacksmith in Swedish:
Smed
blacksmith in Tamil:
கொல்லன்