habu68 Posted December 15, 2006 Author Share Posted December 15, 2006 Gleanings from Westminster Abbey - Google Book Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 15, 2006 Author Share Posted December 15, 2006 Arts and crafts of the middle agesArts and Crafts in the Middle Ages: a... - Google Book Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 17, 2006 Author Share Posted December 17, 2006 a short fable, in which the balcksmith is the hero, of course:p Fairy Tales from All Nations - Google Book Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 17, 2006 Author Share Posted December 17, 2006 notice the foot note at the bottom of the page.Somono Bala of the Upper Niger: River People,... - Google Book Search :o Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 17, 2006 Author Share Posted December 17, 2006 The Blacksmith Chapter CXII The blacksmith availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after concluding his contributory work for Ahab's leg, but still retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulence did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart. And so it was. --Most miserable! ( page 480 ) A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every one now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate. Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama. He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin. He had been an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house and garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three blithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. But one night, under cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed old husband's hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stout Labor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's infants were rocked to slumber. Oh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a ( page 481 ) delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier to harvest. Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to flaxen curls! Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them -- Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee! Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sun-rise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 17, 2006 Author Share Posted December 17, 2006 The Forge Chapter CXIII With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the anvil --the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab. Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all; --look here, they burn; but thou--thou liv'st among them without a scorch. Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab, answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar. Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? --What wert thou making there? Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it. And can'st thou make it all smooth, again, blacksmith, after such hard usage as it had? I think so, sir. And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith? Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one. ( page 483 ) Look ye here, then, cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning with both hands on Perth's shoulders; look ye here -- here --can ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith, sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow;;if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam? Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one? aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the bone of my skull -- that is all wrinkles! But, away with child's play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here! jingling the leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There's the stuff, flinging the pouch upon the anvil. Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses. Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work. I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I'll blow the fire. When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. A flaw! rejecting the last one. Work that over again, Perth. This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside. ( page 484 ) What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for? muttered Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. That Parsee smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan. At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent face. Would'st thou brand me, Perth? wincing for a moment with the pain; have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then? Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale? For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them thyself, man. Here are my razors --the best of steel; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea. For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain not use them. Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup, nor pray till --but here --to work! Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near. No, no --no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb? holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were then tempered. Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli! deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood. Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and ( page 485 ) stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, good! and now for the seizings. At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope was traced half way along the pole's length, and firmly secured so, with intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope --like the Three Fates --remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted December 19, 2006 Share Posted December 19, 2006 Illustrated.http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15270/15270-h/15270-h.htm Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 20, 2006 Author Share Posted December 20, 2006 With good advice on the temprence of the smith both young and old.....Modern Blacksmithing, 1904 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 20, 2006 Author Share Posted December 20, 2006 With good advice on the temprence of the smith both young and old.....Modern Blacksmithing, 1904 MODERN BLACKSMITHING THE SMITH FOR centuries the blacksmith has been a prominent person, and it is natural he should have been, when we consider the variety of work he had to do. From the heavy axle and tire, down to the smallest rivet in the wagon, they were all made by the smith. Bells and bits as well as the ornamental parts of the harness, they were all made by the smith. From the crowbar and spade down to the butcher and pocket knife, they were all made by the smith. The carpenter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 20, 2006 Author Share Posted December 20, 2006 INCOMPETENCY Another reason the smith of to-day is not respected is his incompetency. When a young man has worked a few months in a shop, he will succeed in welding a toe calk on a horseshoe that sometimes will stay, and at once he begins to think he knows it all. There will always be some fool ready to flatter him, and the young man believes that he is now competent to start on his own hook. The result is, he hangs out his shingle, begins to practice horse-shoeing and general blacksmithing, and he knows nothing about either. Let me state here that horse-shoeing is a trade by itself, and so is blacksmithing. In the large cities there are blacksmiths who know nothing about horse-shoeing, as well as horse-shoers who know nothing about blacksmithing, except welding on toe calks, and in many instances even that is very poorly done. In small places it is different. There the blacksmith is both blacksmith and horse-shoer. Sometimes you will find a blacksmith that is a good horse-shoer, but you will never find a horse-shoer that is a good blacksmith. This is not generally understood. To many blacksmithing seems to mean only horse-shoeing, and our trade journals are not much better posted. Whenever a blacksmith is alluded to, or pictured you will always find a horse-shoe in connection with it. Yet there are thousands of blacksmiths that never made a horse-shoe in all their lives. Horse-shoeing has developed to be quite a trade, and if a man can learn it in a few years he will do well. I would not advise any young man to start out for himself with less than three or four years Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 20, 2006 Author Share Posted December 20, 2006 TAXATION WILL NEVER RAISE THE STANDARD OF A MECHANIC It deprives him of the means whereby to raise himself. Such a law will only create offices to grease the machinery for the political party in power. THE only thing that will ever elevate the standard of workmanship is education, education and nothing but education. Give us a law that will provide for a certain degree of education before a boy is allowed to serve as an apprentice; and that he will not be allowed to start out for himself until he has served the full term, both as an apprentice and journeyman. And if intemperate, no diploma shall be issued to him. I see now that I was right when I opposed this law. The horse-shoers of Minnesota are now kicking and cursing the examining board. The National Convention of horse-shoers which was held in Cincinnati passed resolutions which were ordered transmitted to the governor of Illinois, requesting that the board of examiners now authorized to grant licenses to horse-shoers in that State, be changed, as "The board has failed to accomplish the purpose for which it was instituted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 20, 2006 Author Share Posted December 20, 2006 Now that should start some fights. EDIT by Glenn We must take this in the 1904 context and understand that it if the opinion of the author John G. Holmstrom. The material is literature, an instructional manual of the time (1904) and not present day. The way of life and the world has changed since then. Let the discussion continue with this in mind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 22, 2006 Author Share Posted December 22, 2006 some of these are already in the list above.Downloadable Blacksmithing Books Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BT Posted December 23, 2006 Share Posted December 23, 2006 Not blacksmithing per se, but some good info here:NAVY-repairmans-manual-Contents.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter01.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter02.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter03.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter04.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter05.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter06.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter07.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter08.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter09.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter10.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter11.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter12.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter13.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter14.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Chapter15.pdfNAVY-repairmans-manual-Appendex.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 23, 2006 Author Share Posted December 23, 2006 Now that should start some fights. EDIT by Glenn We must take this in the 1904 context and understand that it if the opinion of the author John G. Holmstrom. The material is literature, an instructional manual of the time (1904) and not present day. The way of life and the world has changed since then. Let the discussion continue with this in mind. The above said with a BOG and Beer in hand :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 27, 2006 Author Share Posted December 27, 2006 A treatise on the progressive improvement &... - Google Book Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Hicks Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 habu Thanks for the fine Christmas Gift just found it Christmas day Im still reading but I think everyone should read #1 Forge-practice (elementary) #2 Hand-forging and Wrought-iron Ornamental Work #3 Practical Blacksmithing Good Stuff Manard Thanks Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 29, 2006 Author Share Posted December 29, 2006 The Practical Brass & Iron Founder's Guide: A... - Google Book Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 29, 2006 Author Share Posted December 29, 2006 Contains: an illustrated description of mechanical movements and devices used in constructive and operative machinery and the mechanical arts, being practically a mechanical dictionary, of the early known mechanical powers and detailing the various motions, appliances and inventions used in the mechanical arts to the present timeMechanical Movements, Powers and Devices:... - Google Book Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 30, 2006 Author Share Posted December 30, 2006 be sure to also Google the "Mastermyr find" Viking Blacksmithing make sure to look at all four pages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Hicks Posted December 30, 2006 Share Posted December 30, 2006 habu Ive found a few old books on Google that I would like to download but can not. Im sure they are out of print - the books you have posted are downloadable am I doing something wrong? One of the books Im talking about is Oxy-Acetylene Welding & Cutting by Burrows Can you help me? Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Hicks Posted December 30, 2006 Share Posted December 30, 2006 Sorry habu figured it out "Full view books " Duh Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 31, 2006 Author Share Posted December 31, 2006 Some books are full view and some are full view and are also downloadable. It seems to be related to their copyright or ownership status. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habu68 Posted December 31, 2006 Author Share Posted December 31, 2006 Henley's Encyclopaedia of Practical Engineering... - Google Book Search I found the section on angle iron of intrest. lots of drawings of equipment and jigs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kogatana Posted December 31, 2006 Share Posted December 31, 2006 By the way, I've asked Google books why I couldn't access to the books from Taiwan. They answered my mail in 36hrs and explained it is for copyrights reasons. Until they are sure the books are free of copyrights outside the US, they will not authorize their access. Ludo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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