Call A Hammer A Hammer

[Charles R. Stevens]

"Institutional" lol

[SReynolds]

 and impact it with the momentum transfer tool 

​that is funny, right there.

[tzonoqua]

for some reason I can only view page 1, nevertheless, a hammer is not a die, it's a hammer. We have a perfectly fine technical language in Blacksmithing to describe the functions of certain tools.  I suppose things can and will change... If we are starting to call hammers dies, what becomes of the poor, lowly hammer? And then, what of the top and bottom sets, swages, flatters, butchers, monkey tools et al??? Shall we just call all these the "hitty" things?? And What of the tongs?? We could call those the "grabby" things, then we could just sort out all this confusion once and for all, with " hitty and grabby" things.      

Edited April 15, 2015 by tzonoqua

[Alan Evans]

I have been getting blank pages when I try to open the second pages recently as well...

I have found you need to refresh by tapping the little curved arrow thingy and then it loads the posts.

Alan

[norrin_radd]

for some reason I can only view page 1, nevertheless, a hammer is not a die, it's a hammer. We have a perfectly fine technical language in Blacksmithing to describe the functions of certain tools.  I suppose things can and will change... If we are starting to call hammers dies, what becomes of the poor, lowly hammer? And then, what of the top and bottom sets, swages, flatters, butchers, monkey tools et al??? Shall we just call all these the "hitty" things?? And What of the tongs?? We could call those the "grabby" things, then we could just sort out all this confusion once and for all, with " hitty and grabby" things.      

​But if you really think about it "hitty and grabby things" really work more like "thingamajig's" so lets go with "hitty and grabby thingamajig's" or thing'ys 

I prefer to just point at something I want and grunt....

This is a pretty interesting/comical thread.

 

Edited April 15, 2015 by norrin_radd

[Benton Frisse]

Really glad I found this topic, as I was thinking about this. 

I recently took a class and the smith was calling the round face of his rounding hammer a "round die" and  I had never heard it called that. But I'm glad I've read this thread and figured out why! 

[Charles R. Stevens]

My Mother and Better half bothe refer to nearly everything as "thingies" Okies...

I still think as long as one puts qoutation marks around it, die is a usefull way of conveying the idea of the interation between hammer, anvil and hot steel. If it works to get the idea into a new smiths head, or it shakes up a old smith enugh to get him forging in a more eficent manner its good, then we can worry about propoer normanclature latter. 

If you think this "perversian" of english is bad just try horsemanship. "Natural horsemanship" "feel" 

[dragon]

We do have perfectly good words for things.  But words alone don't convey meaning. The contexts of words and the experience of the users of words also matters.   "Hammer" is a perfectly good word for a hammer.  And the word does imply hitting things, hammer also being a verb with that meaning.  But, at least to me, and I assume for at least some others out there as well, a "hammer" does not convey meaning as a forming/shaping tool or action.  The word die, on the other hand, used in the context of using a hammer as a shaping tool, does convey that meaning and makes something click.  "Die", also implies a degree of precision that hammering does not -- after all, what could be more crude than hitting with a hammer, and what is more repeatable than forming with a die?  That can influence the way you think about and try to use a hammer.

As a context, we should remember most of us have not grown up using the words 'fullers', or 'swages', or even hearing the terms used much, if ever.  They don't even have features that imply their meanings based on words or wordparts we've encountered in other places.  They're just a bit alien and a cause of confusion that can get in the way of learning for some people.  Most people have heard of dies at least in the context of some kind of mold or molding tool.

arftist:  OK, left and right.  There's a fun concept.  When using the words, do you mean, yours, someone elses', or an object's (if it has a definable front and back, it has its own right and left)?  Now, I know you meant in the context of a hammer face, but that's a great example where many people get context mixed up every single day.  Heck, I sometimes have to tense the muscles in either of my arms to figure out which is left or right.  Granted, I've been called weird more than once.

But back to the real matter. What do sides, faces, peins, or heels of hammers have to do with anything?  They do little to nothing in connecting the meaning of the tool in use to the name of the part.  Many people out there have a context of actions that are more important to their experience than the names of things, particularly when learning a new skill.  Similarly, "Roman claw die" makes absolutely no sense in the context of hammers as dies, because it is not used as a forming tool.  Nobody would make that mistake if they understood the context.

And it's perfectly OK not to understand a given context.  We're all a little different.  Assuming we're all the same is where the problems of miscommunication really are.

Language is not set in stone (what a silly term, you can just scrape the stone down and recarve the words), meanings, contexts, and pronunciations change.  Change isn't bad. It happens, no stopping it. If it didn't happen, we'd never go from wide-eyed kids to crusty old curmudgeons. I am gleefully awaiting the day when I earn my crusty old curmudgeon badge.  Just go and try to read Old English using your knowledge of modern English. Or compare the Latin of early Roman times to that of the 16th century. The scholars of the future will generally understand that they need to know the context in which things are said rather than just the meaning listed in the dictionary. Sometimes they even have to resort to experimental archaeology to figure things out.  There are uncountable pages of analyses of just that sort of stuff in the academic world.

Miscommunication is unavoidable.  What matters is recognizing that there is miscommunication happening and trying to find a way around it when it causes problems.

 

[ThomasPowers]

Pretty much none of my students know what a die is besides a 6 (or more) sided object used in games of chance! So no better teaching them "die" than swage and fuller. 

I'd think if you already were familiar with the term Die used as a metalworking tool you could manage the other terms.

What does Uri use as he's another smith pushing to use a hammer for more tasks than straight impact?

Edited April 15, 2015 by ThomasPowers

[Alan Evans]

British English, American English, Brazealian English…

If a new way of shaping metal was created then it would be better that a new word to describe it was also invented. This is not the case; controlling the direction of movement of metal under the hammer is not new. It is what smiths do...and have always done. Cross peins, straight peins, diagonal peins; flat, full, crowned, ball or round face hammers have all been used for hundreds of years in order to mover metal in the direction required. Their distinguishing names are pretty descriptive. The common words to describe the part of the hammer face; side, corner, edge, toe and heel of hammer are also not difficult for the layman to grasp.

To repurpose the word die which is already used within the metalworking industry to describe something else...whether the US usage of it to describe a power hammer pallet or the stamping and casting description of a female mould seems unnecessarily confusing to me. 

@ Dragon I am confused by your post. It appears to be both arguing for common sense as well as an acceptance of change, by reducing our vocabulary to use one word to describe a plethora of things. The fact that this word already has a use in the industry I see no justification to ignore the existing lexicon in favour of it. 

Alan

P.S. My apologies to the other nations of the americas for the use of "American English" rather than "US English"... the joke didn't work so well otherwise.

[tzonoqua]

ahhh thanks Alan, I managed to read page 2 by refreshing page.

Re power hammer, I was recently corrected by a friend when I referred to my power hammer 'hitty' things as dies, and told they were actually called pallets.  

[dragon]

Hmm, no I don't mean to say we should reduce our vocabulary.   I'm trying to say how the words used about things can affect the way we think about them. This is particularly true if you don't have a background that gives you some familiarity with what you're learning about.   Working with hand tools used to be a lot more common, as was the observation of others using them regularly.  Today, a great many people do not have anything even remotely approaching that kind of familiarity.  This is a world where many peoples' first response is to throw something away and buy a new one instead of oiling a stuck part to make it work again.

Maybe I have taken the idea and run with it a little too far.  I've always liked playing with word meanings and how they shape the apparent view of things.

Does it help if I say my context for argument is informal learning, teaching and discussion on the internet, primarily aimed at relatively inexperienced folk that have no solid experience in how metal moves?   I think most newcomers lack the experience of moving metal and/or using tools more than anything else. Words cannot replace experience, no matter how precise. In fact, I argue that too much precision hinders an absolute beginner, because they're at a stage where they have no idea of the relative importance of things. (Gotta have this special hammer, gotta have this special anvil, gotta have this special forge.. etc.) The best that can be done, outside of being right next to the student to show them and then watch them try, is using analogies that try to bootstrap some of the students' prior experiences into play.  In today's world, we very frequently interact with people whose experiences are nothing like our own, so it calls for some more flexibility in the words used to bootstrap onto a student's prior experiences.   It doesn't matter how precise or descriptive a term seems to be if it doesn't smoothly connect with someone's experience of how things work.  But if you can find a connection somewhere, then use it.  Not everyone is going to be equally responsive to the same way of saying things.

Ideally, I'd say someone should go at least full week forging some sort of project over and over that incorporates most of the common operations, and then introduce them to the correct vocabulary of what they've been doing after they've acquired the experience of how metal moves and how the tools work.  Once the experience of the process is there, attaching new words to isolate the process into smaller parts is fairly trivial, and more likely to be helpful, since it will often suddenly answer something that was bugging them the whole past week.

But ideal situations usually aren't practical. So we're left to using other means.  If new words or ways of phrasing things seem to help some people, leave them be and let them continue on with their learning.

[ThomasPowers]

so hit the metal with your 20 sided die and see  if it makes it's saving throw...

[Alan Evans]

@ dragon, I follow some of what you say but I just arrive at different conclusions. 

I think it does no favours to a beginner for them to learn an entirely different vocabulary from the industry norms. If you are shown that a cylindrical form driven into the workpiece will make the metal move at right angles to its axis; and told that tool is called a fuller, where is the difficulty? Whether that action is produced by a dedicated fuller or the edge of the hammer or anvil; spring tools or shaped pallets under the power hammer, it is still the same process. 

I think it especially confusing when the repurposed words already describe other tools and processes within the metalworking craft. At what point in their training do you then say, "Right you have reached the stage that you are now allowed to use the usual terms for these tools and processes, so just set to and unlearn what you have been taught…"

I agree with Thomas...whatever your background and lack of experience, if you can cope with learning the word die you can cope with learning the word hammer, fuller etc.

Alan

[nicole]

Yes I will keep my day job. Haiku time:

 

I hammer the die

Steel fullered moves

Die fuller hammer

[Charles R. Stevens]

Would that be carpenters, fraimers, maysons, body, rapost, tin, riviting, enginears, jack, dead blow, lead, brass, jewlers.... Yep one word for a whole lot off tools. But english is daft like that. Heck the automotive industry can't even use the same normanclature. Growing up driving, and then mechaniching on GM products I still get caught trying to use GM names for parts, and since the average "parts man" (I use the term loosly, especialy dealing with places like autozone) uses Ford normanclature. Names, even in the same industry very from region to regian or company to company. 

But In the end, I dont come away that the man credited with refering to a hammer and anvil as dies was renaming a hammer, mearly describing hi thought process in imagining how the hammer, anvil and hot steel interact and how the different shaped serfaces interact. Brian dosn't strike me as a great orater, and the deap shouth has its own diolect for sure. But he is an efficent smith trying to express his thoughts as to how to move effetiantly. 

Be nice TP, many of us got here with the same fantiseas of swords and wands, dwarves forging in their stone halls... Who was it that wore a chainmail halberk working on an Oklihoma servey crew?! I admit that i have second addition D&D books colecting dust on my bookshelves, and a few sets of dice, some even large enugh i dont need my reading glasses to read. i also admit to liberating my mothers hair drier and using charcoal to heat treat a stock removal short sword when I was 16. Strange paths lead us to where we are. I now practice two, often related anchient arts because I read the hobit and the lord of the rings trilogy in junior high. Heck I will admit it, my forst character was a cleric (always stick the new guy with a cleric).

now, that said, i find it flustraiting to see the news media (print and brodcast) using a dumbed down english lexicon invented by Boston public schools to adress low english test scores among minirity students. That experiment was abandend as it neither adressed the problem and certainly created many new problems for the students. But "bubonics" found a home in our media. 

I also fing it extreamly flustratinf, at an age that I consider youngish, to find my self strugling to find the proper word I wish to use. My ecuse for early sinility is the fact that I raised Two girls. 

So, I will still call refer to the off side, neir side, waist, heel, horn (or is it bick?!) hardy hole, pritchel hole, clip horn (don't all anvils have one?!) and turning cams (handy as buttons on a shirt). 

I will also continue to use verius hammers to forge metal, even if trying to describe the peculary uses of a rounding hammer and its low crowend convex face. 

Lets not even get started on the spring tools, chisels, sets, butchers, fullers...

 

 

 

 

[Alan Evans]

Would that be carpenters, fraimers, maysons, body, rapost, tin, riviting, enginears, jack, dead blow, lead, brass, jewlers.... Yep one word for a whole lot off tools. But english is daft like that. snip...

 

​It is one word to describe the tool that we strike a blow with, and your list distinguishes the function of the blow or the activity of the user. We use hammer to distinguish that type of action from other hand tools, like screwdrivers, saws and the close relative the axe. Why do you find that daft? The point I was making is that we have the word hammer to cover that family of tools, round faced hammer, full faced hammer, cross pein hammer and etc. which all seem fairly logical and descriptive to me.

Die introduces a whole load of other connotations from die-casting and stamping which confuses me.

Hmmmm, maybe that is my problem with it. It is only a confusion for those who have used the word hammer and fuller all their working lives, a beginner knows no better by definition so is not confused! 

I haven't heard Brian speak and have only read some of his posts on here and seen a few videos of toolmaking. So maybe as you say, the context would make more sense.  I did see one of his students working at a BABA get together a few years ago with what appeared to be an oversize hammer for the workpiece and his body. More energy seemed to go into lifting it than putting it down, but what he made looked fine….I was worried for the damage to his body more than anything else. 

I am sure that in the long term if it is found efficacious to refer to hammers as dies it will become the norm.

Alan

[turbo7]

 Just watched Brian's video on forging tongs, when Brian is talking about the anvil and the flat face of the hammer he calls them "flat die", they are flat, used to shape hot metal, flat die seems fair enough, when Brian is talking about the round face of the hammer he calls it a "round die", it's rounded, used to shape hot metal, round die seems fair enough, when Brian is talking about choking up on the hammer to hit lighter he calls it a hammer, why? Because he is talking about the hammer. A hammer usually has 2 faces, or die, you can hit with the round or flat face, or you can hit with the round or flat die, is it the same thing? I reckon it is. Look at why begginers are shown to move the stock across the anvil not shift where the hammer lands, I do it this to make moving the stock a habbit for when I advance to using a power hammer with die's. The die are shaped, used to move hot metal, the only difference is the hammer holding the die. I would like to hear Brians take on why he referes to the hammer face as "die" because I am only a begginner. With all due respect.

[gote]

OK we are talking about a tool. This tool can be used to hit nails, it can be used to move Iron, it can be used to kill someone, it can be used as a wall decoration, it can be used crush stone, it can be used to ....   All these things can be done using mr B's rounding hammer or mine German style smithing hammer (a carpenter's hammer can also be used to pull nails). So I see the forensic expert standing beside the corpse holding the tool with fresh blood on it and says "the weapon is obviously this hammer". The lawyer says:   "My client does not own a hammer he only owns dies so he is not guilty. Besides your honor this is not a hammer it is a 'blunt instrument'".

We usually name things as things not as what they do. A car is a car not a "carry me to town". A family sedan is not a school bus even if I drive kids to school in it. Mr B has himself a video that explains why he prefers a "rounding hammer".

Dies are used in blacksmithing and they are referred to as swages.

I refuse to believe that the newbies ar so stupid that they do not understand "This is a fuller I use it to move the iron crosswise by hitting it with the hammer" Or " by hitting the iron with the hammer tilting it it will move the iron in the direction of the tilt" Or (my preferred) "This part of the hammer is called the pein. When I hit the Iron with it I move the iron icrosswise to the pein".

I do think that it is confusing, however, to call a tool a hammer and the mext minute call the same tool a die.

Most people know what a hammer is most people do not know what a die is. Those who do know, know it as a kind of mould and would consider a "round die" to be a round hole in something. 

Cheers

Göte

 

 

Edited April 17, 2015 by gote

[dragon]

Alan:  Maybe you're right in your place.  I hardly think of blacksmithing as being an industry here in the states. I imagine that over there it's still considered part of a proper trade or tradition.  It's almost like if we had hobbyist or amateur plumbers in one country, but professional guild or union trained plumbers in another, arguing over the way eachother uses certain terms. One group is mostly doing it for fun and some might do it professionally, but without the institutional standards and history you may have over there.  Different contexts entirely.

TP: Heh, I rather like that way of thinking about it! Just gotta figure out which die sides maximize the odds of the steel losing its save. It could be the difference between making a cursed knife or +1 knife, ya know.  Though it certainly helps more to just be a higher level blacksmith.

nicole: Now I'm wondering how many syllables 'steel' is for a haiku.  I've heard it pronounced in one go, and also as a more exaggerated "stee-ull"

Charles: What's this dumbed down boston english lexicon thing? I skipped most of my English classes back in highschool to hide in the library and read.  When they're still lecturing about how to tell nouns and verbs apart in highschool, somethin' ain't right. It was kind of funny, in college I enjoyed the English classes.  But they were the absolute worst, most boring classes back in highschool.

gote:  I'm not trying to say newbies are stupid at all.  There's nothing stupid about not understanding something. Understanding isn't about smarts, but the framework you have built up around something.  One can read a high level physics book and know what all the words mean, without actually understanding it.  You'd have to, either through math, or through experiment, experience physics in some way to really have a good understanding of it.

Take your car, almost everyone experiences cars every day of their lives. People have the experience of cars and attaching any particular word to it is a simple matter. And car does in fact seem somewhat descriptive of what it does.  It looks like it probably derrives from 'cart' or 'carriage'. And that's what a car is, a cart or carriage for transporting people.

Blacksmithing and tool use on the other hand, you might only be exposed to today if you have a parent or friend into the hobby/trade. If you don't have the exposure, there's a lack of framework on which to apply terms and processes.  I think most schools here don't even have shop classes anymore.  And what I remember of them, it seemed like the only kids that took them were the ones that already had familiarity with them in the first place.

Now, I realize I'm probably taking the idea way too far if I'm giving the impression I think newbies are stupid.   I just know I've seen other people somewhat bewildered when learning something new that they have no real exposure to, and I remember how when I first started, I put way too much emphasis on this or that tool or set-up, or how some thing or another seemed awfully more important than it really was, just because I didn't have the experience to judge otherwise, and nobody right there next to me to show me what was wrong.  Just lots of differently worded explanations in books and on the internet, that may have been technically correct, but didn't get the point across in a way that matched the experiences I had at that point.  But once in awhile, I'd  either experience something new that made old explanations make sense, or I'd stumble across a particular wording that made a lightbulb go on, and my work improved afterwards. 

[ThomasPowers]

Now when I have  new students striking for me, (or when I strike for them) my vocabulary is quite simple: hit, push, pull, turn, flip, center and cold. The tool they use is a hammer or sledge and the push and pull are with respect to them---no stage right issues! A turn is 90 deg, a flip is a 180 degree turn.  Anything else gets discussed ahead of time.

 

And Charles I was not on a survey crew, *I* was a mud logger and used to camp out on-site and go on cross country hikes wearing my chainmail shirt (like the time I got caught in electrified barbwire in NW Oklahoma.) I too, have a set of polysided dice; but when I started playing it wasn't "Advanced" just a couple of tan pamphlets. I have also read LotR a score of times and can quote Bored of the Rings at length.  I still want my fantasy authors to not trash my "Willing suspension of disbelief" by messing up simple details of how smithing was/is done in low technology situations. Also when someones uses a historical term I want the item they are applying it to to look like something from the time and place specified like "viking axe" for instance.

 

gotta go herd some bits

[Charles R. Stevens]

Gote, would that be an Automobile?  Locomotive carriage? Armalight rifle?

Thomas, I stand  corected. Still an insainly impresive feet in this day, you certainly can speak with some athority as to what it was like to work and live in periud armor. I for one am glad that they used a fence charger and didnt have it wired to the mains. As to AD&D, I started with basic, when you had to paint half the D20 and the cover had a red dragon that sufferd from the indignity of being blue.

dragon,  a social experiament from the 80's, just look at the headlines on a news paper, read them out loud and hear your 3 year old trying to express them selves. Now as any ine can see my spelling and kebording suck, and for some reason the wordproceor on my phone gets bodgy when I post (the drop down gets spastic) so far be it for me to complain about spelling, but one if the easiest ways to spot this is the spelling of grey, or in this case "gray" one also finds many of the cofusing words that sound the same but are spelled differently are aliminated  

Mr. Evans, i understand and respect the point, I also respect the tecnical aspect of a shared diolect. What I see is a gentleman who is a very effetiant and compitent smith, trying to share his "inner language" or how he thinks about the interaction between hot steel, anvil and hammer. How he uses the verius profiles presented to efeciantly move steel. From the posts I have read of BB's he chalanges himself and others to think about what they are doing and why. I have seen where peaple have assumed he was attacking them or their prosses. When what I read was a man struggling to express him self wile honestly asking "why do you do it that way". So my take is that his use (missuse) of die is an atempt to answer the question "why do do it that way"

i found several of his descusions of process enligtning, and tho i dont think of my anvil and hammers as "die", i now have a much more intuitive vew of how to use the "whole anvil". I use the near and far sides of my anvil (they came from the factory with a increasing radius from front to heal) as a fuller, and think of it as such, i use the horn not only as a turning surface but as a large radius bottom tool for drawing, i use the clip horn or the sharp front edge of the top face as butchers, the radie under the heal, horn and between the feet have all seen use (thank you Glenn) and as i use a lot of 1/4 and 5/16 by 3/4" i use the turning cams. 

I use a 2# rounding hammer as it dose the job on both hot and cold shoes, and tho i carry a 2 1/2# cross pein and 1 1/2# ball pein the see little use in my day to day work (farrier) now for general forging i find 3# hammers to be comfortable to use, but 4,6, and 8# hand sleges and some one handed use of the 14# come along. With proper technich this is tiring but not injurus, if you have to force your hammer down, get a heaveyer on as yours is trying to float away. Tilt the head up so the handle is virtical and pull your arm in to your body so leverage is't working against you and lift the hammer, let gravity do most of the work, add a bit if you can, especialy at the end, but dont get carried away. I personaly dont like to choke up on heavy hammers, but I cant deniy BB's tecknich and tooling is efective. 

And as to the murder weapon? It is indead a blunt instrument in medical terms, and the "24 oz. framers hammer" would be consista t with the blunt object" medicin and science do very much depend on specific if odd frazes. As dose the leagalsystem.  

In short Brian's use of "die" (yes it should be in quotations as it is a descriptibe use of the nown as opposed to a proper one) is a continuation of his explination in "why I use a rounding hammer" i do not belive it is an atempt to change the smithing lexicon. Is it nesisay? To him obviusly so, to most of the rest of the smithing world? Probbably not. But it is a usefull way for an efficent and skilled smith to express himself. If he was a a writer insted of a farrier, he probbably would have used the laguage in a propper manner. 

Would i take classes from him, yep, From Thomas? Yes sir, at least a dozen other smits that post here? Most certainly. 

 

 

 

 

[Quarry Dog]

according to dictionary.reference.com

"noun, plural dies for 1, 2, 4, dice for 3.

1. Machinery.

     a. any of various devices for cutting or forming material in a press or a stamping or forging machine."

  I don't know about y'all.  But I kinda like the thought of myself as a forging machine, albeit very imperfect and fleshy.  At the very least it's not a very far leap.  I see the word "die" in the context of smithing to be quite simply an applicable and quite acceptable placeholder for when you find that you don't know what exactly to call a particular tool meant to cause a desired spreading of the metal.  It fits the definition posted above.  There are dies in sheetmetal stretchers/shrinkers.   They even use the term in rock crushing plants, which barely fits with the dictionary, but that's what they call it.  The term is very openly defined.

  I've been smithing for about 3 years now, and the only specific parts of a hammer that I use in daily speech are handle, head, face, and pein.  I know a couple other bits of nomenclature, but I know there's a few I couldn't name if they were standing on my foot (at least not for polite conversation).  I also know that when I started, It took me a few months to competently use more than basic terms (still debateable as to whether I'm past that), and that was watching lots of videos, and reading lots of old books that I got for free (google books and the local/guild library), and hanging around every saturday with people who had literally been bangin' around since the 50's.  I didn't even know a hammer had a heel or a toe until 6 months in.  I just never had to use the terms, and I only know now because I found it in some random book.

  TLDR:  Cut people some slack.  Sometimes things need to be broken down "Barney Style".

  PS:  I think the horses on both sides of this fence are officially dead.

[Alan Evans]

@ Quarry Dog. I think you have summed up the discussion well. I am not too sure about the TLDR acronym though, or have I misunderstood it? According to wikipedia it means "Too Long, Didn't Read"…which seems a bit rude to the other participants in the thread.

I have always thought of this forum as the virtual equivalent of standing around at a blacksmith's do exchanging experiences and information with friends and colleagues. Some of my US blacksmith friends referred to it as "Tarrkicken"  (or that is what it sounded like to me ) Tyre kicking in English. If we don't ramble or  get sidetracked and just composed extremely short and succinct posts, it would not be much of a conversation. We wouldn't even have an excuse for a second beer  .

 This thread for instance has been useful for me to help modify my concept of the meaning of the word "die"; from a specific hollow formed tool and process in a machine, to one where it can arguably be justified to describe the fullering action/affect of a hand hammer profile on metal. I have mainly Charles to thank for that, and I for one am grateful he took the trouble to write long posts explaining his understanding and point of view. I had further to travel than those who use the word "die" as a short form of "open die".

As far as I am concerned the more opportunities we take to chat about the subtleties and nuances of the art and craft of smithing the better for our understanding. I for one hope the horses on either side of your fence are not dead, and that this is an open ended discussion which can always be revisited.

Alan

 

 

[gote]

The horse is perhaps not dead but it seems to be heading towards the stable.

The question was "why do some people call a hammer a die?"

It seems that they have misunderstood Mr B's attempt to explain what he is doing so successfully and believe that the correct word (or the word used by pros) for a 'rounding hammer' is 'die'.

My own conclusion of that, is that it is better to stick to generally accepted words and be very careful when explanating to avoid misunderstandings and confusion.

You will need to learn new words and new uses of words in all trades and arts. I think the newbee will accept this gladly but it is important to teach him the words that are generally understood/accepted in the trade/art. 

Blacksmithing is one of the arts where the eager newbe easily will see the master do or say something that is correct in a special situation and then believes that this is the only accepted way. Somewhere here it is said that if you ask two blacksmiths how to do something you will get five different answers. Problem is that some people will pick one of the five and stick to that with religious fervor.

Have a nice weekend

Göte