Gobae

Just like many "blacksmithing histories", that ABA history glosses over the early beginnings of blacksmithing and jumps straight to the 18th century. I would assume this is because that's the time period the author was most familiar with. Of course everyone has their favorite and studied area and mine is the Iron Age Celts. With that in mind here are some resources that will give you information about Iron Age Europe at least. "Early Irish Ironworking" by B.G. Scott "Pagan Celtic Ireland" by Barry Raftery "The Celtic Sword" by Radomir Pleiner "Iron for the Eagles" by David Sim ISBN 0752419005 You may also consider contacting the curators of these living history museums since they have reproduction smithies dating back to 400BC. Aspan an der Zaya, Austria Castell Henllys, Wales Now, that should get you headed in the right direction for Mid-Late Iron Age European information. To get some different regions and time periods, here's a documentary made on African smelting/iron working, that claims this particular process dates back to 1000BC YouTube - Inagina: The Last House of Iron - PREVIEW Don't forget wootz production and use in India around 50BC. To go further back in time check out Egyptian grave goods. Some rulers were buried with iron artifacts dating back to 2400BC and earlier. I've never really bothered to study Egyptian history, so I've got virtually no resources there. But, I imagine that with some digging you should be able to locate someone who's written about it because it's some of the earliest iron working known to exist. Of course you'll want to check out what other cultures are doing (even for the same time period) to get the bigger picture. It'd be a mistake to research one or two geographical areas and extrapolate it out to all iron working civilizations. Iron working wasn't even close to being a uniformly advancing technology. Not only were some civilizations behind/ahead of others but some cultures tried "more advanced" processes and discarded them simply because they didn't have the material resources to make them work and instead developed other processes that did. Yes, it is a big topic that you should probably narrow down because there really is a lot of info out there. Oh, I almost forgot! Check out the "Arch Metals" Elist

Fantastic job for "first tries". I'm particularly impressed with the buckle!

Frosty - Haha, that's kinda ironic. I googled "patent search" and came up with the government site. Google's own site was even in the search results!

Alas, there is no patent number on the press (that I can find) and the patent database is not searchable by name if it predates 1975. :(

A couple of months ago I was given a Canedy Otto #2 hand cranked drill press. Over all it's in good shape and shouldn't be too much of a problem to get it up and running. General Shot The biggest issue is that some of the auto feed components are missing and I'd like to fabricate a replacement. Auto Feed Gears Near Flywheel Additionally, there's a "mystery part" whose purpose I can't determine. It's located below the feeder wheel and has multiple holes in it. Looks kinda like a drill index except the holes are the same size. "Mystery Part" Does anyone have a functioning version of this press that they could take photos of? Or does anyone have complete drawings showing the autofeed? Many thanks!

I got the quote back in July-August of 2008. But it wasn't from Michael, it was Lori Rasmuson (same company); Michael never returned my phone calls nor email. In our situation we get paid to demo at 2 county fairs and do 2-3 re-enactment demos (for free) for other non-profits. When I spoke with Lori their primary concerns were participation by the public, and whether the public was able to roam through the demo area. They had no problem that my wife and 2 other assistants would be involved with the demos. Finally, just to clarify our status with them - While we received a quote we never ended up purchasing insurance from them. As it turned out all the venues we participate at elected to cover us under their insurance policies; so we didn't need our own.

You don't need to be an ABANA member for them to work with you. They gave me quite a reasonable quote for doing public demos and re-enactments (yearly).

I could care less if the person has their location listed, I'm happy to answer any questions I can; most of the time it's not relevant to the answer anyway. The only exception is pretty much buy/sell situations.

Nice work! Getting things to sounds as good as they look can be a real challenge sometimes. Speaking of that barge.... I was a lockmaster on the Erie Canal; Lock 7 Niskayuna. Everything on the canal is 1914's vintage equipment and technology, and every zone has/had it's own blacksmith shop for making repairs. It was a blast.

Absolutely! Just because someone is blacksmithing doesn't mean they're doing any sort of period re-enactment. They should be able to wear whatever safety gear they deem necessary w/o people questioning it's historical correctness. We get historical correctness questions whenever we do demos. Of course those same people easily ignore that we're working under electric lights, use an electric drill press, modern tape measures, mark steel with a sharpie, wear 21st C clothes, and take a drink from bottled water.

Oh?! There's threads here on crowd control (I don't usually read this section). I'll have to go look for them. Cool! Thanks for the heads up.

True, but this is a "hands-free" method of keeping scale off the work WHILE you're forging. No stopping to reach for the brush or wire wheel. It's even faster than knocking it off by wrapping the piece on the anvil while working. Just prep the anvil and hammer with more water while you're waiting on your next heat.

An oxidizing fire does not help, a REDUCING fire will inhibit scale creation. In fact if you run a reducing fire, you'll see a nice hot piece of metal with no scale UNTIL you remove it from the fire and it comes in contact with the outside air. But that is greatly preferable to oxidizing in the fire AND out. :)

Because when working on blades you want to be very sure that scale is removed DURING forging so the scale does not become embedded in the blade while it's soft. Embedded scale means more work polishing with all those items you mentioned. Secondly, you're grossly overstating the risk of wet forging. I've done it before and the only additional precaution I felt necessary was safety glasses. And for those that wear them during regular forging they needn't do anything extra. That said, I typically prefer to just watch the fire and make sure I'm working in a reducing state and/or knocking the scale off with a quick rap as needed.

That's a cute device; I like it! The SCA has always had a sense of humor. Here's our Clan symbol. Since we re-enact a time period before "Celtic Knots*" were invented we use the older "curvilinear" art form popular with the Celts. *Celtic knotwork isn't actually Celtic; it was introduced in the Migration Era by Norse, Angles, Saxons, etc.

I made a dishing swage from a stump of oak using one of these: http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=926 Very aggressive and quick. The only caveat would be, that despite its looks it doesn't leave shavings of any sort, but lots of sawdust. So, good ventilation or a mask is most helpful.

Nice! I like that; nice, simple solution. Ultimately I hope to make myself a box like this

I carry my tools in, in my 5-6gal wooden slack tub/bucket. The anvil, bick, and bellows all come along independently, but at least all the hand tools are in one spot. This sound like something helpful that would be needed during the event. Do you unload it and then stash the bucket or do you keep it out discreetly?

Wasn't upset at all; it's probably best to stick with years anyway. After doing some quick double checking it looks like there's about 200 years of overlap with those two terms (depending on who you ask), which is the problem with them. Depending on the source "medieval/middle ages" seems to run from 400AD-1500AD and the "renaissance" from 1300AD-1600AD.

They date from 1425-1544. So regardless of whether they are considered "medieval" or "renaissance" they fall just prior to the OP's time period and may be germane to his research.

Here's a link to a ton of medieval illustrations of a wide variety of professions. Probably 30-40% are of one type of metalworking or another. The title text for the image are in German. http://homepage.univie.ac.at/rudolf.koch/mendel/mendel.htm

You know I was just thinking that maybe building a list this way might be doing it backwards. Does anyone know who the major mines selling softcoal are? (I know of Reading and Pocahontas) Contact THEM and ask them for a list of who sells their soft coal. This way you only have to get lists from 6-10 mines instead of looking for 100's of little sellers around the States.

Ah, you misread the metals. One is 5160 the other is Wrought Iron (WI), NOT W1.

Never mind folks. I just priced the HSS and it's far too expensive to use in this project.

I've got a billet of WI and 5160 I'm pattern welding; no problems there. However, I want weld a base of HSS (M2/M7) on as a cutting edge (this will be a woodturner's tool and HSS is the standard steel they use). Are the welding temps close enough to make this feasible? And/or are there other elements that make this a difficult process. Thanks!