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A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, grilles, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious items, cooking utensils, and weapons. There was a historical distinction between the heavy work of the blacksmith and the more delicate operations of a whitesmith, who usually worked in Goldsmith, Silversmith, pewter, or the finishing steps of fine steel. The place where a blacksmith works is variously called a smithy, a forge, or a blacksmith's shop.
While there are many professions who work with metal, such as , , and Armourer, in former times the blacksmith had a general knowledge of how to make and repair many things, from the most complex of weapons and armor to simple things like nails or lengths of chain.
Some modern blacksmiths may also employ an oxyacetylene or similar blowlamp for more localized heating. Induction heating methods are gaining popularity among modern blacksmiths.
Color is important for indicating the temperature and workability of the metal. As iron heats to higher temperatures, it first glows red, then orange, yellow, and finally white. The ideal heat for most forging is the bright yellow-orange color that indicates forging heat. Because they must be able to see the glowing color of the metal, some blacksmiths work in dim, low-light conditions, but most work in well-lit conditions. The key is to have consistent lighting, but not too bright. Direct sunlight obscures the colors.
The techniques of smithing can be roughly divided into forging (sometimes called "sculpting"), welding, heat-treating, and finishing.
Forging uses seven basic operations or techniques:
These operations generally require at least a hammer and anvil, but smiths also use other tools and techniques to accommodate odd-sized or repetitive jobs.
As an example of drawing, a smith making a chisel might flatten a square bar of steel, lengthening the metal, reducing its depth but keeping its width consistent.
Drawing does not have to be uniform. A taper can result as in making a wedge or a woodworking chisel blade. If tapered in two dimensions, a point results.
Drawing can be accomplished with a variety of tools and methods. Two typical methods using only hammer and anvil would be hammering on the anvil horn, and hammering on the anvil face using the cross peen of a hammer.
Another method for drawing is to use a tool called a fuller, or the peen of the hammer, to hasten the drawing out of a thick piece of metal. (The technique is called fullering from the tool.) Fullering consists of hammering a series of indentations with corresponding ridges, perpendicular to the long section of the piece being drawn. The resulting effect looks somewhat like waves along the top of the piece. Then the smith turns the hammer over to use the flat face to hammer the tops of the ridges down level with the bottoms of the indentations. This forces the metal to grow in length (and width if left unchecked) much faster than just hammering with the flat face of the hammer.
Bending can be done with the hammer over the horn or edge of the anvil or by inserting a bending fork into the hardy hole (the square hole in the top of the anvil), placing the work piece between the tines of the fork, and bending the material to the desired angle. Bends can be dressed and tightened, or widened, by hammering them over the appropriately shaped part of the anvil.
Some metals are "hot short", meaning they lose their tensile strength when heated. They become like Plasticine: although they may still be manipulated by squeezing, an attempt to stretch them, even by bending or twisting, is likely to have them crack and break apart. This is a problem for some blade-making steels, which must be worked carefully to avoid developing hidden cracks that would cause failure in the future. Though rarely hand-worked, titanium is notably hot short. Even such common smithing processes as decoratively twisting a bar are impossible with it.
As with making a chisel, since it is lengthened by drawing it would also tend to spread in width. A smith would therefore frequently turn the chisel-to-be on its side and hammer it back down—upsetting it—to check the spread and keep the metal at the correct width.
Or, if a smith needed to put a 90-degree bend in a bar and wanted a sharp corner on the outside of the bend, they would begin by hammering an unsupported end to make the curved bend. Then, to "fatten up" the outside radius of the bend, one or both arms of the bend would need to be pushed back to fill the outer radius of the curve. So they would hammer the ends of the stock down into the bend, 'upsetting' it at the point of the bend. They would then dress the bend by drawing the sides of the bend to keep the correct thickness. The hammering would continue—upsetting and then drawing—until the curve had been properly shaped. In the primary operation was the bend, but the drawing and upsetting are done to refine the shape.
In forge welding, the pieces to join are heated to what is generally referred to as welding heat. For mild steel most smiths judge this temperature by color: the metal glows an intense yellow or white. At this temperature the steel is near molten.
Any foreign material in the weld, such as the oxides or "scale" that typically form in the fire, can weaken it and cause it to fail. Thus the mating surfaces to be joined must be kept clean. To this end a smith makes sure the fire is a reducing fire: a fire where, at the heart, there is a great deal of heat and very little oxygen. The smith also carefully shapes mating faces so that as they come together foreign material squeezes out as the metal is joined. To clean the faces, protect them from oxidation, and provide a medium to carry foreign material out of the weld, the smith sometimes uses flux—typically powdered borax, silica sand, or both.
The smith first cleans parts to be joined with a wire brush, then puts them in the fire to heat. With a mix of drawing and upsetting the smith shapes the faces so that when finally brought together, the center of the weld connects first and the connection spreads outward under the hammer blows, pushing out the flux (if used) and foreign material.
The dressed metal goes back in the fire, is brought near to welding heat, removed from the fire, and brushed. Flux is sometimes applied, which prevents oxygen from reaching and burning the metal during forging, and it is returned to the fire. The smith now watches carefully to avoid overheating the metal. There is some challenge to this because, to see the color of the metal, the smith must remove it from the fire—exposing it to air, which can rapidly oxidize it. So the smith might probe into the fire with a bit of steel wire, prodding lightly at the mating faces. When the end of the wire sticks on to the metal, it is at the right temperature (a small weld forms where the wire touches the mating face, so it sticks). The smith commonly places the metal in the fire so he can see it without letting surrounding air contact the surface. (Note that smiths don't always use flux, especially in the UK.) Now the smith moves with rapid purpose, quickly taking the metal from the fire to the anvil and bringing the mating faces together. A few light hammer taps bring the mating faces into complete contact and squeeze out the flux—and finally, the smith returns the work to the fire. The weld begins with the taps, but often the joint is weak and incomplete, so the smith reheats the joint to welding temperature and works the weld with light blows to "set" the weld and finally to dress it to the shape.
A range of treatments and finishes can inhibit oxidation and enhance or change the appearance of the piece. An experienced smith selects the finish based on the metal and on the intended use of the item. Finishes include (among others): paint, varnish, bluing, browning, oil, and wax.
Steel with less than 0.6% carbon content cannot be hardened enough by simple heat-treatment to make useful hardened-steel tools. Hence, in what follows, wrought-iron, low-carbon-steel, and other soft unhardenable iron varieties are referred to indiscriminately as just iron.
Hephaestus (Latin: Vulcan) was the blacksmith of the deity in Greek mythology and Roman mythology. A supremely skilled artisan whose forge was a volcano, he constructed most of the weapons of the gods, as well as beautiful assistants for his smithy and a metal fishing-net of astonishing intricacy. He was the god of metalworking, fire, and craftsmen.
In Celtic mythology, the role of Smith is held by eponymous (their names do mean 'smith') characters : Goibhniu (Irish myths of the Tuatha Dé Danann cycle) or Gofannon (Welsh myths/ the Mabinogion). Brigid or Brigit, an Irish goddess, is sometimes described as the patroness of blacksmiths. Brigit - the Order of bards, Ovates and Druids
In the Nart mythology of the Caucasus the hero known to the Ossetians as Kurdalægon and the Circassians as Tlepsh is a blacksmith and skilled craftsman whose exploits exhibit features, sometimes bearing comparison to those of the Scandinavian deity Odin. One of his greatest feats is acting as a type of male midwife to the hero Xamyc, who has been made the carrier of the embryo of his son Batraz by his dying wife the water-sprite Lady Isp, who spits it between his shoulder blades, where it forms a womb-like cyst. Kurdalaegon prepares a type of tower or scaffold above a quenching bath for Xamyc, and, when the time is right, lances the cyst to liberate the infant hero Batraz as a newborn babe of white-hot steel, whom Kurdalægon then quenches like a newly forged sword.Bonnefoy, Yves (1992) 1981, Doniger, Wendy (ed.), "Asian Mythologies", Mythologies, University of Chicago Press 1991, p. 340, an edited translation based on Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des sociétés traditionelles et du monde antique.
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 set with wonderful gems. He was captured by king Níðuðr, who cruelly hamstringing him and imprisoned him on an island. Völundr eventually had his revenge by killing Níðuðr's sons and fashioning goblets from their skulls, jewellery from their eyes and a brooch from their teeth. He then the king's daughter, after drugging her with strong beer, and escaped, laughing, on wings of his own making, boasting that he had fathered a child upon her.
Seppo Ilmarinen, the Eternal Hammerer, blacksmith and inventor in the Kalevala, is an archetypal artificer from Finland mythology.
Tubal-cain is mentioned in the book of Genesis of the Torah as the original smith.
Ogun, the god of blacksmiths, warriors, hunters and others who work with iron is one of the pantheon of Orisha traditionally worshipped by the Yoruba people of Nigeria.
During the Chalcolithic era and the Bronze Age, humans in the Mideast learned how to smelting, Melting, 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-borne and Greeks traders.
Copper and bronze cannot be hardened by heat-treatment, they can only be hardened by cold forming. To accomplish this, a piece of bronze is lightly hammered for a long period of time. The localized stress-cycling causes work hardening by changing the size and shape of the metal's crystallite. The hardened bronze can then be ground to sharpen it to make edged tools.
Clockmaker as recently as the 19th century used work hardening techniques to harden the teeth of brass 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. Accordingly, museums frequently preserve more examples of Bronze Age metal-work than examples of artifacts 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.
During the (north) Polar Exploration of the early 20th century, Inughuit, northern Greenlandic Inuit, 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 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. The historical record during the Late Bronze Age Collapse is very inconsistent. Very few iron artifacts remain from the early Iron Age, due to loss from corrosion and re-use of iron as a valuable commodity. However, all of the basic operations of blacksmithing were in use by the time the Iron Age reached a particular locality. The scarcity of records and artifacts, and the rapidity of the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age, is a reason to use evidence of bronze smithing to infer about the early development of blacksmithing.
It is uncertain when Iron weapons replaced Bronze weapons because the earliest Iron swords did not significantly improve on the qualities of existing bronze artifacts. Unalloyed iron is soft, does not hold an edge as well as a properly constructed bronze blade and needs more maintenance. Iron ores are more widely available than the necessary materials to create bronze however, which made iron weapons more economical than comparable bronze weapons. Small amounts of steel are often formed during several of the earliest refining practices, and when the properties of this alloy were discovered and exploited, steel edged weapons greatly outclassed bronze.
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 16th century, 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 process 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 Roman Empire (who ensured that their own weapons were made with good steel) noted (in the 4th century 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.
In southern Asia and western Africa, blacksmiths form endogenous that sometimes speak distinct languages.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a "village Forge" was a staple of every town. Factories and mass-production reduced the demand for blacksmith-made tools and hardware.
Blacksmiths typically worked in small shops, often in the center of a village or town. Their shops were typically equipped with a forge, an anvil, and a variety of other tools. The work of a medieval blacksmith was physically demanding and often dangerous. Blacksmiths had to be able to lift and move heavy pieces of metal, and they had to be careful not to burn themselves on the hot forge.
Despite the challenges, blacksmithing was a respected trade in medieval society. Blacksmiths were considered to be skilled artisans, and their work was essential to the functioning of medieval society.
Another common technique was welding. Welding is the process of joining two pieces of metal together by heating them until they melt and then hammering them together.
Blacksmiths also used a variety of other techniques, such as casting, cutting, and filing.
The original fuel for forge fires was charcoal. Coal did not begin to replace charcoal until the forests of first Britain (during the AD 17th century), and then the eastern United States of America (during the 19th century) 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.
European blacksmiths before and through the medieval 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.
shops in Topeka, Kansas, 1943]] During the first half of the nineteenth century, the US government included in their treaties with many Native American tribes, that the US would employ blacksmiths and at Army , with the expressed purpose of providing Native Americans with iron tools and repair services.
During the early to mid-nineteenth century, both European armiesAn Aide-Memoire to the Military Sciences volume 1'' by Royal Engineers, British Service, 1845, Col. G.G. Lewis, senior editor as well as both the U.S. Federal and Confederate armies employed blacksmiths to shoe horses and repair equipment such as wagons, horse tack, and artillery equipment. These smiths primarily worked at a traveling forge that when combined with a limber, comprised wagons specifically designed and constructed as blacksmith shops on wheels to carry the essential equipment necessary for their work.# The Ordnance Manual For The Use Of The Officers Of The Confederate States Army, 1863 reprinted by Morningside Press 1995, # The ordnance manual for the use of officers of the United States army, 1861, reprinted by Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, December 22, 2005, Lathes, patterned largely on their woodturning 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 signaled the start of blacksmiths being replaced by 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 . A shoer-of-horses was historically known as a farrier in English. With the introduction of , the number of blacksmiths continued to decrease, many former blacksmiths becoming the initial generation of automobile . 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.
Main features of Neoclassicism ironwork (also referred to as Louis XVI style and Empire style ironwork) include smooth straight bars, decorative geometric elements, double or oval volutes and the usage of elements from Classical antiquity (Meander (art), wreaths etc.).
Typical for this kind of ironwork is that the ironwork is painted white with gold (gilded) elements.
While developed nations saw a decline and re-awakening of interest in blacksmithing, in many developing nations blacksmiths continued making and repairing iron and steel tools and hardware for people in their local area.
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