Blacksmith Tooling History: Rating our era.

[ThomasPowers]

Bronze was in many ways a superior metal than early iron; what makes iron great was it was found all over the place!

Back in the bronze age people from the Mediterranean were actually going to Cornwall England for Tin to make bronze---not an easy trip with the technology of the day! However iron could be mined and smelted all over the Mediterranean, Europe, Central Asia, Asia, etc

[Mainely,Bob]

Well the wide spread adoption of the water wheel was really the precursor to the Industrial Revolution. The consequences of the digital age will be huge, no doubt about it. It will probably overshadow all the changes that have gone before. It's already had a big impact on the steel industry but it hasn't really hit smithing yet. At least not enough to be considered a revolution. All these changes are in the last few hundred years and part of an era of rapid and accelerating change so they sorta belong together.

I have no argument with the significance of the innovations you listed but I guess what I am asking is, between the dawn of the Iron age and the Industrial Revolution, what profound changes occurred in the craft?

I would have to say one thing that has had a huge impact on the smithing between the iron age and the industrial revolution has been the development of petroleum derived products.
Prior to the widespread mining and use of coal/coke smiths and foundry workers relied mainly on the production and use of charcoal to get the work done.Coal played a large part in allowing larger scale work to be done in more places.
After coal the use of natural gas and oil also changed smithing.Oil both as a fuel and as a more effective lubricant as well as a quenching agent.Oil also brought forth the widespread use of hydraulics and played a major part in developement of compressed air and pneumatic tools.Both hydraulics and pneumatics are less labor intensive and more stable than steam and that`s why they eventually replaced steam as a means of powering machinery.

[ThomasPowers]

I'd drop the quenching agent as vegetable and fish oils were widely used for quenching way before petroleum oils and I don't think that petroleum derrived oils were any better until fairly modern times.

(For some wild quenchants "Sources for the History of the Science of Steel" has a listing of renaissance suggestions including worm water and radish juice that were supposed to be superior in use)

[archiphile]

Yeah, I said I didn't know what it meant, didn't you beleive me?

No sure, I got that you did not understand what that meant. That was part of my reason for getting my knickers in a twist. I go ballistic when I see a realtor us the term in connection with a house built in the 1970s. I was really just trying to illustrate the difference. That is also why I have the name Archiphile, meaning crazy about architecture, as it will soon be my profession.

[Timothy Miller]

Cheep abundant quality steel, the rise of use of cast iron, small mobile electric motors that can be attached to any machine drop hammers all did their part.

[ThomasPowers]

Not to mention that "colonial" depends on where in the world you are at! I've had discussions with colleagues in Jakarta Indonesia who considered their "colonial" period to have ended within living memory. (And I live near a town that was named in 1598 a bit earlier than the johnny come latelies in Jamestown in 1607!)

[Frosty]

Oetzi was carrying a bronze hand ax and depending on who's radiological dating you credit was mummified somewhere between 3,300bce to 5,300bce.

Copper from SE Alaska was traded as far south as mesoAmerica as chemical analysis has shown during Aztec, Toltec, Teotec and earlier times. As was Yooper copper.

Copper and other nonferret alloys have been around a long time as have the ferret ones, they're just more unstable and shorter lasting.

Frosty the Lucky.

[Frank Turley]

Maybe we can pare this down a little. Alan Watts was a philosopher within my living memory, and as I recall, he once attended a coctail party where he encountered a woman of his acquaintance. During the course of their conversation, she told him that in her Buddhist studies, she was having trouble "living in the present." He replied somewhat in dismay, "But surely at this very moment in time, you ARE in the present." The woman had a zen-like epiphany and seemed to have conquered the elusive concept.

So Kraythe, where you are in history is RIGHT NOW. "History," as an academic discipline, is a mere human construction.

http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of Blacksmith Schools

[Bentiron1946]

"He asked what era of Blacksmihing I do."...........Folk would ask me that too. I just gave them the reserve office salute, a shrugged of my shoulders. I didn't do any era of smithing, I used it as a method to achieve what I wanted to accomplish in my art. I couldn't make what I want any other way. The question had no relevance to what I was doing. One fellow was very insistent that I give him an answer, I told him he was an idiot and to get out of my studio. I'm not a play actor of any period, I don't dress up for the American Colonial Period, Spanish Colonial Period, Civil War Period, Cowboys and Indians nor any other such thing, I made art. How many of us strive to be associated with a particular period of history? Not many, so we are contemporary smiths or contemporary hobbyist smiths, of this period in time, not the past, now.

[Mainely,Bob]

" I don't dress up for the American Colonial Period, Spanish Colonial Period, Civil War Period, Cowboys and Indians nor any other such thing, I made art. How many of us strive to be associated with a particular period of history? Not many, so we are contemporary smiths or contemporary hobbyist smiths, of this period in time, not the past, now.

I guess what you`re saying is that you are a blacksmith,period! :D

[ThomasPowers]

Frosty, a bit off "along with Ötzi's copper axe which is 99.7% pure copper," (it was originally thought to be bronze due to corrosion)

My wife went with me to a meeting in Northern Italy just to visit Ötzi's museum---or as I like to put it---as soon as we got to Italy my wife ran off with an older man---about 5000 years older...then she hits me!

As for "portrayals" well I do Y0K, Y1K, Y2k and places in between! I'll have and adobe forge blown with two single action bellows burning charcoal at the "Bethlehem Town" a local church puts on in December and I'll be using a propane forge tomorrow in my shop and getting the coal forges sited. I'd use an induction forge if I had one!

[Francis Trez Cole]

yes and arrowheads were form the woodland period

[maddog]

"He asked what era of Blacksmihing I do."...........Folk would ask me that too. I just gave them the reserve office salute, a shrugged of my shoulders. I didn't do any era of smithing, I used it as a method to achieve what I wanted to accomplish in my art. I couldn't make what I want any other way. The question had no relevance to what I was doing. One fellow was very insistent that I give him an answer, I told him he was an idiot and to get out of my studio. I'm not a play actor of any period, I don't dress up for the American Colonial Period, Spanish Colonial Period, Civil War Period, Cowboys and Indians nor any other such thing, I made art. How many of us strive to be associated with a particular period of history? Not many, so we are contemporary smiths or contemporary hobbyist smiths, of this period in time, not the past, now.

Well said. Thank you. We live and work in modern times. There is nothing about blacksmithing that says it has to be frozen in some bygone era. People who do try to conform to some historical period are practising a specialty, like the weavers or carpenters in SCA.

[Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver]

Yeah, it is interesting, no one asks that sort of thing of a carpenter or mason.

[Ian]

I've really enjoyed reading this discussion

I too have had a lot of people who come by the forge ask what 'period' I work in. To the point that my stock answer is now "from about 10am till 5pm, Wednesdays to Sundays"
After that I will at least usually go on to say that if you could bring ANY metal worker from the past into my shop he would be able to recognise most of the tools I use.
In my own view it was the introduction of water power, firstly in liquid and then in steam form that allowed the introduction of labour saving machinery into the blacksmiths shop, all of which had a huge impact on what could be produced and at what rate, but the essential process of heating it and beating it hasn't changed at all.
I love the fact that I can produce work as my ancestors would have done using the tools that they would have had available but I equally love the fact that there are tools I have now to use that they didn't. For me it is the creation of the piece itself that is important, far more so than what I use to produce it

[ianinsa]

I too have really enjoyed following this thread,
I recon one of the greatest leaps in blacksmithing came with the ability of 'the blacksmith' to read.
Many of us have equipment that metal workers of old would recognise.
However say they were given an induction heater in the box with instructions, chinglish or otherwise. Those that could read would probably figure it out much quicker that those that could not.
The ability to read should not be underestimated. I recently retired one of our workers that could neither read nor write this guy was a skilled and capable worker but his 'handicap' really added a burden to his life, it severely stunted his ability to 'grow'.Sadly I think that about 30 years ago he believed/decided that he was too old to learn and thereafter despite encouragement he just would/could not learn to read. Fortunately due to globalisation equipment now comes with symbols ie. rabbit and tortoise but if the numeric didgits are indecipherable life is tricky to say the least.Just my $0.02 worth.
Ian

[Frosty]

Frosty, a bit off "along with Ötzi's copper axe which is 99.7% pure copper," (it was originally thought to be bronze due to corrosion)

My wife went with me to a meeting in Northern Italy just to visit Ötzi's museum---or as I like to put it---as soon as we got to Italy my wife ran off with an older man---about 5000 years older...then she hits me!

Thanks Thomas, I should've double checked my info before replying. Please consider my comments about Oetzi's axe withdrawn as incorrect.

Frosty the Lucky.