Here I put some of my own writings on Blacksmithing, metal and metallurgy. This is for your interest and research, so as you can make an informed decision on your purchase or just to have something interesting to talk about.
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A knife is a tool just like a hammer or a file, and just like them it has to be made correctly.
Just like any other tool a knife has parts. A lot of these parts people know differently, but across the board these are the most common and simple names. |
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Wrought Iron is the traditional material that blacksmiths would have worked with, and is produced in a foundry; the blacksmith himself would not make it. But because most of the stuff he would make would be made out of “wrought iron”, a gate for example, would be described as a “Wrought iron gate”. These days wrought iron from a foundry is very rare and the most common material smiths use is mild steel. A gate should be described as a “Mild steel gate” if you were wanting to be 100% truthful, but a “Wrought iron gate” has a much nicer, ‘old worldly charm’, so it’s still used today to describe what is made by a blacksmith. |
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Alloy: a mixture of two or more metals, or of metal and non-metallic elements. Anvil: the iron or steel block with a hardened steel face on which the Blacksmith forges hot metal. Anvil tools: tools with a square shank to fit the hardie hole of the anvil. These include hardies, fullers and swages. Farrier: a Blacksmith who specialises in shoeing horses. Forge: verb: to work hot steel with a hammer; noun: both the fire used to heat the metal and the workshop in which this takes place. Hardie hole: the square hole through the face of the anvil, designed to accept the shank of the hardie and other tools. Quench: abruptly cooling hot metal in oil or water. Tempering: reducing the dead hardness of steel (quenched from red heat), in order to soften it to the required degree of toughness. |
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 Let’s look at the word first BLACK SMITH. The black refers to the slang name that was given to iron, which was ‘The black metal’ and smith basically means ‘worker of’, so all together: “The worker of the black metal”.
There are many types of smiths for example: - Whitesmith = worker of lead
- Silversmith = worker of silver
- Redsmith = worker of copper
- Wordsmith = worker of words
- Woodsmith = worker of wood
But there was none more important than the Blacksmith because all other trades need tools and hardware made out of iron or steel. Blacksmithing is one of the longest surviving trades and of these few, the one that shaped more of history that any other. There was even a whole age attributed to them: The Iron age. |
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