Being President of the Indiana Blacksmithing Association, let me assure you,
does not make me a leading blacksmithing expert. It is my personal observation
that there are very few blacksmithing "experts" because the craft requires such
great breadth of knowledge. The most capable smiths have just learned a bit more
than others and may have a natural bent for a particular part of the craft.
Nevertheless I hope that I can open your eyes to an ancient craft which still
survives today and is growing in the number of people who have shown an interest
in learning more. The Indiana Blacksmithing Association tries to satisfy this
interest with monthly meetings and a monthly newsletter. We also operate a
lending library of books and video tapes and other materials which are available
to our members to help them with their specific interests. We provide a weekend
conference in June of each year during which we try to present experienced
demonstrators of the craft. In December we present a free mini-conference
usually featuring one demonstrator. All of the events are open to any interested
person and I encourage you to attend if you think you might be interested in
learning more about the craft.
The Indiana Blacksmithing Association has approximately 280 members and the
Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America, of which we are one of
approximately 45 chapters, has nearly 3,800 members in several countries. The
Artist-Blacksmith's Association of North America - called ABANA for short - is
headquartered in Nashville, Indiana. ABANA holds a major international
conference every other year -the next to be held at Alfred State University,
Alfred, New York in June 1996. ABANA publishes two quarterlies: the very
professional The Anvils's Ring and the newsletter, The Hammer's Blow. The latter
is designed more for the beginning blacksmith.
I have yet to meet a blacksmith, of any age or experience, who did not firmly
believe that there was more to learn. It is a fascinating craft. So much has
been done by so many over so long that much has been learned. New tools, new
materials and new processes are constantly changing the craft. The need for a
modern smith to keep up on these changes is just as pressing as it is for all of
us to keep up to date in modern communication methods and medical advances.
Let us begin with a loose definition of what a blacksmith is. The word smith
comes from the German word "schmied". The work of the blacksmith comes from the
forge - black. The blacksmith is one of many metal working crafts which are
loosely related. The blacksmith is really at the foundation of many of these
other crafts. He must in most cases make their tools.
There is, for example, the white smith. The white smith will take the work of
the blacksmith and file and finish it until the base metal shines brightly.
There is the tin smith, copper smith, locksmith, silver smith, gun smith, gold
smith, saw smith, wheel wright, ships smith and so on to name just a few. In
other words there are many specialties in metal working -just as there are
specialties in the medical field. Smiths just specialized sooner because they
required and developed specialized knowledge and tools sooner.
Let us not forget the specialist smith who is the horses friend - the farrier.
This smith must know a great deal about an animal's physiology in order to do a
good job of applying shoes. This is a highly skilled job and one of the few
smiths who works with living things.
There is also a very wide branch of industrial smithing. Because all of these
smiths required specialized tools - not to mention specialized knowledge - they
all relied on the blacksmith to make these tools if they themselves could not
make them. It has been said, and with good reason, that the blacksmith is the
only craft which makes its own tools. Some smiths even became tool smiths. Let
me say here that women blacksmiths - and there are quite a few - make their own
tools, also.
It is a good thing that many smiths have the insight and skills needed to make
their own tools because different tools are needed for almost every job. An old
blacksmith shop is cluttered with these specialist tools - the purpose of some
long forgotten. Some tools dropped in haste and not needed again have simply
become part of the earth floor found in some old shops.
We are all familiar with a blacksmith's anvil, but the one we probably think of
is called the London Pattern. It has a sort of round horn on one end and a
thinning tail on the other. It has two holes near the tail. The square hole is
called the hardy hole, and it needs to be since a wide range of tools will be
mounted in it. The other smaller round hole is called the pritchel hole and it
is used for punching holes for rivets. The top of the anvil is hardened and
serves as a table on which most forging is done. The horn makes it easily
possible to make curved shapes or to change the curve of an existing shape.
Dozens and dozens of anvil shapes have been developed and in the late 1800s in
Europe nearly every little valley and craft had its favorite shape. I suppose
that anvil makers were hard pressed to keep up with who wanted what. Even today
there is a wide range of shapes available. The farrier's anvil is specialized to
make animal shoes. It is lighter, has a longer horn or beak and usually has a
protrusion on the side of the body for special work.
Anvils come in many weights - from a few pounds to nearly a thousand pounds. The
weight of an anvil in a country blacksmith shop will usually vary from 125 to
500 pounds. The English developed an interesting way of marking anvil weights.
It consists of three numbers. Pay attention now! The first number is the number
of hundred weights. A hundred weight is 112 pounds. The second number is
quarters of a hundred weight or 28 pounds. The final number represents the
number of single pounds.
Here is an example: The anvil is marked 2 l 4. Not 214 pounds at all! 2 times
112 equals 224 pounds to which we add 28 pounds - one quarter hundred weight -
for a total of 252 pounds. Next we add 4 pounds for a true anvil weight of 256
pounds. More than one modern smith has puzzled over this system.
It is an ancient system and I can see the old Anglo Saxon weighing it with an
ancient scale called a yard - what we, who still remember it, call a steel yard.
The anvil hung on one end of the beam and two weights equal to hundred weights
stacked on the other. Next a weight equal to a quarter of the hundred weight.
Finally, enough small one pound weights to balance the beam. In an age when most
were illiterate, it was easy to see how much the thing weighed in small numbers
related to the weighing system.
Most modern anvils are marked in pounds or kilograms, but anvils have long lives
if cared for and many made a century or more ago are in use today.
The next tool you may think of is a hammer. I do not know of another craft where
the variety is so wide. You can buy new today basic hammers in the Swedish,
German and French styles and these come in a generous range of weights. These
are, however, just a drop in the bucket. Blacksmiths frequently make their own
hammers to suit their personal taste. I know of two professional blacksmiths
working in Indiana today who made very distinctive hammers as their general
purpose working hammers. Old hammers are modified for specific jobs or new ones
are made. It is often cheaper and quicker to make a special hammer than to buy
one, if, in fact, one can be found in the special style needed for a specific
task.
Of all the tools used by the smith the tongs are by far the widest in variety.
Tongs are used to hold hot materials and a different set is required for each
size and shape of material. Is it to hold the material from the side or the end?
A different tong shape will be needed for each. As the work develops several
different tongs may be required for holding it firmly. All serious smiths soon
learn how to make tongs and as a result not very many varieties are for sale
new. An old shop which does a wide variety of work may have made a couple of
hundred shapes of tongs of all sizes. They may be hanging on racks or the walls
or lying on the floor. Tong jaws have been developed to hold nearly anything and
a competent smith will want the right jaw shape to hold the work firmly and most
importantly - safely!
While most tongs are easily held in one hand, some have been made which are so
heavy (because of the work piece to be held) that they must be held by a crane
and a number of men.
The final major tool is the forge. Forges have been made in many shapes and from
many materials. They range from the very simple ground forges with goat skin
bellows used yet today in Africa to sophisticated cast iron or steel or brick
forges with electric blowers used in professional shops. Forges are arranged to
get their wind (to fan the fire) from either the side or from the bottom. Each
has advantages. Most American smiths use the bottom draft forge. The draft may
come from the traditional bellows - which some smiths still prefer, from a hand
cranked blower (which replaced the bellows) or from an electric blower with
speed control or damper. To heat the material a variety of heat sources are
used. Low sulfur bituminous Pocahontas coal is preferred by many smiths because
of its flexibility. The use of natural or propane gas is becoming more
widespread especially for production work where many similar pieces are being
made. Charcoal and coke have also been used. Hand held high temperature torches
are often used on intricate work. Each smith will have these basic tools, but
his success will depend on a great variety of other tools. These include hot and
cold hardys for the hardy hole. Hardys are used to cut hot and cold material.
There will be punches of all kinds, fullers (used to reduce and/or spread
material), flatters (for smoothing), cutters, mandrels (to form work around),
bending forks, scrolling tools, bridges (used to work on the top part of work
which must hang down above the anvil, vee blocks, snappers, (used to cut
material by snapping it off), drifts (a form of punch or mandrel), nail or bolt
or rivet headers, and so on and on. The list can be endless.
There is also that curious block of steel which looks like a piece of Swiss
cheese and is called a swedge block. These come in a number of shapes, but their
purpose is to provide various shapes to form metal against or in. They are
usually heavy and may be used flat or on edge as the need arises.
Modern smiths use modern tools such as arc and gas welders and cutters, plasma
torches, electric and compressed air tools for drilling and grinding. They also
use hydraulic tools. For nearly 500 years they have used power hammers to move
large masses or to substitute for occasionally needed helpers. These may operate
from water power, steam, compressed air, or electricity. Hydraulic presses,
developed within the last 150 years are also used.
Some industrial smiths working with new materials like titanium - a material
lighter and stronger than aluminum - have helped put spy planes in the air and
men on the moon. Today some work at massive hydraulic presses of up to 3,000
tons and more to push materials held by giant manipulators into rough forgings
for industry. The manipulators for these large presses are like giant two-story
tall fork lift trucks with special grasping tongs on the front which can hold
nearly white hot ingots while lifting, lowering, tipping and rotating them
quickly. These tongs also move independently front and back to allow for changes
in the materials length during working.
The modern smith does as his forbears did and uses the latest technology to keep
up with competition. This extends to laser cutters or high pressure fluid
cutters as well as numerous materials developed in the last century.
Why forge pieces when we could just as easily cast them or cut them out of solid
stock? The answer is easy - strength. Using the proper materials and forging
processes, parts made by forging are stronger per unit of weight than those made
by other processes. This is of great concern in a great many machines and
processes. Aircraft would be heavier and carry less load if forging were not
available. The cost of air transport would rise. Highway vehicles would weigh
more, carry less load and be more sluggish were it not for forgings in many
places. Forgings made from the proper alloys, worked at the proper temperatures
and cooled in the proper way make much of our present day civilization possible.
Let us turn now to the materials used by the blacksmith. Most blacksmiths learn
to use a number of materials because each has specific advantages. You might use
copper or brass (a combination of copper and zinc) or bronze (a combination of
copper and tin) or aluminum or titanium or any number of materials, but the
primary material is iron in one form or another.
Iron is so important that I need to tell you a bit about how it has changed over
the centuries. Certainly the element iron or Fe has not changed, but the
material used by the smith has changed greatly. Even today it is changing.
Changes in sheet steel are being made to satisfy the regulators who are
demanding greater gas mileage in cars. Lighter, stronger steel alloys are needed
for this purpose while maintaining drawability - that is, the ability to shape
the material. Changes in construction steel are being made to permit architects
to design lighter and stronger buildings.
These changes affect the blacksmith, who is no longer the primary user of the
output of the iron and steel industry. Only a small part of current production
now goes to the blacksmith, where once nearly all would be shaped by him.
The ability to change steel at will to meet various requirements is a
comparatively new ability. Less than 100 years ago we really knew very little
about iron and steel when compared to current knowledge. Today we learn more
each year, probably more in some years than was learned in some centuries. Some
of the old alchemists would be both astounded and delighted. The science of
metallurgy has developed at a rapid rate and new instruments have made advances
ever faster. The blacksmith has benefitted in some ways and lost favorite
materials in others.
We do not really know how iron was first discovered. It may have been a cooking
fire in just the right spot which first made a material harder than any metal
then known. It might have been a lightning strike. Whatever it was, people
discovered a better material and began a search for more.
It is thought that iron working developed about 6,000 years ago in the Caucuses
of Europe from which it spread rapidly both east and west. It finally replaced
bronze in isolated England shortly before the Romans arrived. We know that the
Romans required about 320 tons of metal to build the Coliseum in Rome - a rather
large quantity at the time and an indication of the growth of the metal working
process. The extraction of iron from the earth has been a process long in
development - a development which continues yet today. Early American iron -
that which was not shipped in - was made from bog iron. Bog iron was so named
because it was often found near the surface near bogs in the Eastern United
States. It was once mined near Rochester, Indiana.
In the early Americas a facility was built at Saugus, Massachusetts near Boston.
Here water power operated bellows and hammers. Reconstructed by the National
Park Service you can see this first American effort today. It produced pig iron
which had to be further refined to make wrought iron. It built on much earlier
work in iron refining going back at least as far as the eighth century and well
developed in Coalbrookdale in England.
The making of iron in the period from about 1700 to about 1890 required really
large quantities of charcoal. Scotland today has few trees because they were cut
for this use. In England the problem became so bad that the Crown set aside
certain forests so that there would be wood available for the building of the
great English naval fleet. These remain today. In the United States much of the
Eastern half of the country was stripped of trees to make charcoal for iron
refining. As an example four square miles of forest were consumed each year for
a furnace producing just fifteen tons of pig iron a week. Furnaces were erected
wherever ore, limestone (used as a flux), and trees were plentiful. It helped if
water or road transportation was nearby. Besides those sites operated by the
National Park Service, an interesting site is Fayette, Michigan, in the upper
peninsula, which operated until 1891 making charcoal iron. This facility had its
own harbor and railroads branched out to bring wood to the beehive ovens for
conversion to charcoal. Ships would take away iron and bring limestone. Place
names abound in certain parts of this country recalling these furnaces.
The product of all this effort was wrought iron, a unique material no longer
produced except occasionally in the museum facility at Coalbrookdale in England.
Wrought iron is almost pure iron with very little carbon. Unlike all other irons
it contains a silica slag which becomes bonded intimately with the iron
improving its ductility. Wrought iron was produced in this country until after
World War II when it went into decline and was discontinued. It has a high
degree of resistance to corrosion.
Today blacksmiths still value wrought iron and recover it from previous uses
wherever possible. Only a couple of years ago one of our members recovered the
material used in a bridge near Peru. This material has been shared out to
several historical shops. It forges at higher temperatures and is more fluid in
how it moves. Wrought iron is easily identifiable by the "threads" or "sinues"
which are seen when the material is cut and bent or when it is etched or is
corroded. These are present because of the pure iron and siliceous materials
that are in fine layers. Good art smiths will tell you that the metal will teach
you what it will do. These smiths tell us that some shapes are not possible with
other materials.
While wrought iron is a marvelous material it did not meet the needs of tool
makers and developing industry. They needed a stronger and harder material -a
material we call steel. Steel starts with the pig iron made from iron ore and
has carbon added to make it more uniform and harder. It does not have slag
included. There are a very large number of alloys of steel - each for a
different purpose. The addition of nickel, for example, produces stainless
steel. Manganese is added for toughness - the ability to take wear and physical
shock. Steel can be made so hard that tapping it with a hammer will cause it to
shatter like glass.
Carbon is the principle thing which sets apart wrought iron at under .3%; carbon
steel at .3% to 2.2%; and cast iron 2.2% and up. As the material is heated and
cooled the carbon combines in different ways with the material.
The making of steel was developed in the Orient and in India where it was known
as Wootz steel and was some of the finest in the world having been made since
early in the Christian era. Unfortunately Europe was in the dark ages and it was
not until the development of blister steel that steel was found in any quantity
in the area. Blister steel was pure iron which was placed in proximity to
charcoal dust and soaked in heat. Carbon from the charcoal dust slowly
transferred into the iron making it workable. The system was not very good and
hardly any two pieces were alike.
Finally in 1740 Benjamin Huntsman of Attersea, England had had enough. He needed
high quality steel for the clock springs he manufactured and developed a secret
method for cooking blister steel cut into small pieces out of the carbonizing
effects of the furnace. Out of this came the first cast steel of uniform high
quality. He kept this secret for a number of years until one cold and rainy
night a supposedly drunken workman begged shelter in the small factory. A kind
factory foreman admitted him to the factory and while "sleeping off" his
alcoholic stupor the drunken workman observed the entire process. The process
was put to use by many others and the fame of Sheffield steel became world wide.
Throughout this long number of centuries the blacksmith has adapted to the new
materials which the iron maker has provided. He is still adapting today.
Much of my life I have heard of mild steel. This means steel with a low carbon
content. Smiths have used this since wrought iron is no longer regularly
available. It works at a lower temperature than wrought iron and can be forge
welded like wrought iron although somewhat differently. Now the carbon content
is increasing and forge welding is becoming more difficult. Forge welding is the
ability to join two pieces heated to surface melting temperature in the forge.
The act of hammering these pieces together joins the melted surfaces together
and the two pieces are now one molecular piece.
Now let's look at the training of these people called blacksmiths. Two courses
have been followed in recent decades. In Europe, especially in Germany, a very
strict training regime continues. You must apprentice with a master for a
certain number of years. The apprenticeship will include much training in
materials and methods. It will also include full business training. At the end
of the training you are fully tested and prepared to hang out your business
sign. In fact, you may not hang it out until you have passed the course
satisfactorily. You become a licensed blacksmith and the public can be assured
you have certain well defined qualifications.
In the United States we have proceeded differently. Much of the training is
simply not available in a shop setting. Classes are given in some schools.
Apprenticeships are sometimes available, but seldom from what the Germans would
call masters. They are led by those having somewhat more experience. There is no
test or licence required to hang out your sign and take on business. If you have
applied yourself you may succeed, but market forces alone will judge your
competence to practice and your success.
Obviously the German smith is better trained. The introduction of the European
Economic Community has placed certain strains on this system since by law a
smith from France or Spain or Italy can now go to Germany and bid on work there.
Their training is not as good and the German smiths are concerned that other
Germans will not receive the same high quality preparation they expect from a
licensed German smith. Time will tell how this gets resolved, but I'll place my
bet on the Germans. In the United States meanwhile, beginning smiths are offered
training which is usually catch as catch can in groups like the Indiana
Blacksmithing Association, personal instruction in private (usually home) shops,
a number of craft schools around the country and personal experimentation. About
a dozen craft schools offer short 2 day to 2 week courses. Out of this helter
skelter system have come some remarkable craftsmen and women. They have worked
hard to learn what they needed to know, and have taken every opportunity to
learn from others. A number have gone to Europe for training lasting sometimes a
couple of years. They have learned how to do business from such organizations as
the National Ornamental and Miscellaneous Metals Association (NOMMA). They have
learned from other smiths in ABANA and elsewhere.
The passage in recent years of increasing government regulations and the growing
liability awards made by juries have further increased the blacksmith's
difficulties. These usually apply to large work often placed in public places.
But through it all the forming of metal into a decorative or useful shape which
you know will be around for a while is a most satisfying experience. To know how
to form a scroll of beauty and symmetry, one which is pleasing to the eye and
far better than one made by machine is worth the effort. To make a difficult
railing and have it right and a delight to the eye is an extension of the
efforts of many masters over many centuries to bring forth the best iron has to
offer. To take a piece of waiting iron and put it into a shape and place which
is satisfying to others is to add to the fabric of civilization in a very
positive way.
Yes indeed! I report to you that blacksmithing, which was moribund in the United
States just two decades ago, is healthy, growing and active. From the person who
just comes to watch - and this too is an ancient custom - to the person working
at his own small forge for his own relaxation and enjoyment and onward to the
forgers of huge sculptures, each is enjoying benefitting from the craft in some
way.
The history of blacksmithing is still being written. I write a tiny bit of it in
our newsletter each month. New people join us all the time to learn a bit more
for their own use and enjoyment. Perhaps you would like to join us also. I
extend an open invitation to visit.
this too is an ancient custom - to the person working at his own small forge for
his own relaxation and enjoyment and onward to the forgers of huge sculptures,
each is enjoying benefitting from the craft in some way.
The history of blacksmithing is still being written. I write a tiny bit of it in
our newsletter each month. New people join us all the time to learn a bit more
for their own use and enjoyment. Perhaps you would like to join us also. I
extend an open invitation to visit.