Guys,,,,,,,Is this stuff "Blacksmithing" or "Metalworking"..........??

[SReynolds]

I was trained by two very different gentlemen. One is perhaps "old school" where only primitive hand tools are used. No welder/power hammer/electric drills/grinders/band-saw/you name it. You know, old schol stuff.

The other, also a very experienced/established "blacksmith", told me to use the "whatever-it-takes-method" to get it done........namely the above items mentioned.

So, accordring to the "old schooler" smith, I can be either a Blacksmith OR a metalworker aka fabricator aka welder.

My question..................is welding, employing a set of jigs and use of a grinder CHEATING AT BLACKSMITHING when you are still using a coal forge/anvil and hammer????????????

I feel like I'm letting real blacksmiths down and slapping the trade/art in the face.

Help in Ohio

[dablacksmith]

kinda personal thing but in my opinion it depends on what you make ... if your getting it hot and beating on it to shape its blacksmithing. If you are cutting drilling welding machineing it to shape your a fabricator. Bolth have there place ...

[HWooldridge]

The lines are so blurred that it's impossible to delineate. Is working at the anvil with a hand hammer and coal forge for 12 hours a day defined as 'blacksmithing'? If so, then I qualify - having been a production smith in the craft business for a few years (thousands of triangle bell dinner ringers and such trinkets). However, I also have several electric welders, a power hammer, a plasma arc, a lathe, a mill, etc. etc. - I guess owning those machines makes me a low down, cheatin' fabricator. There are also many hobbyists and professionals on this forum who produce high art with so-called power tools - by what name shall we call them?

I think we should all do what we can, to the best of our abilities, and forget about labels...they tend to put people into boxes. I have better things to worry about than someone who turns up a nose and sniffs because they are only using hand tools in a candle lit shop - and if I'm having a good day and the arthritis doesn't kick too much, I might be able to run circles around said person with those same tools. We should be careful who we challenge to a gunfight...

[brianbrazealblacksmith]

There is no such thing as cheating. What is, is. Forging is a technique, and so is welding, and so is grinding or machining to shape. The reason forging is spoken of as honest is because that the processes that it was made from can be seen or is self-evident by the surfaces that formed it unless it is ground to finish. Welding is the same and is a technique in its own right. Grinding or milling is also.
But when techniques are passed off as others and deliberately hidden, that is forgery.

[MLMartin]

In my mind a blacksmith forges Iron. A metal fabricator cuts bends and assembles metal to there shape. Pretty much every blacksmith under the sun will cold cut or file something at times, most will rivet things together. So I guess pretty much all blacksmiths are also fabricators. At the end of the day whats important to me is good disclosure.

If you make a historical reproduction and tell some one that it was made in a historical manner and you used a plasma cutter then I feel it would be a lie. If you explain to the person that you are reproducing a product and will use historical and modern methods then its all peachy.

[Timothy Miller]

I don't mind the labels welders and fabricators do essential work in our economy. They also do good work and build important things that like bridges ships and pipe lines. Blacksmiths forge metal hot and and weld in the forge, fabricators weld grind and cut. Words with precise meanings help people understand things accurately. Its not good or bad but words mean specific things. Personalty I think those who blur meanings of words should be challenged and corrected at every opportunity. Most of us are hybrid blacksmith fabricators. Many working smiths have sacrificed a lot to get to the point where they can forge full time and eat. They deserve the privilege of calling themselves smiths as they have earned it. I don't call my self a welder I can weld but I have never been certified. I run a lathe but I'm not a machinist. I do invoicing but no one would hirer me as a bookkeeper. One is not better than the other just different. I good welder is worth more than a bad blacksmith. Its really about how you want to spend your time. If you spent the majority of your time at the forge your a blacksmith even if you use a power hammer and an induction heater. If you spent the majority of your time welding your a welder. If you spend your time over a lathe your a machinist. If you do good work you should be proud. But don't screw around with the English language.

[brianbrazealblacksmith]

I just wanted to add that forging is a heat, a hold, and a hit. It does not matter if it is done with coal or induction, hand or a robotic arm, or your hand hammer or any means of power hammer, past or present.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

I would call a person that heats , and changes the cross section of the material through forging a blacksmith.

A person that cuts, and welds , preformed bar stock, etc, a fabricator.

[Nakedanvil - Grant Sarver]

I would call a person that heats , and changes the cross section of the material through forging a blacksmith.

A person that cuts, and welds , preformed bar stock, etc, a fabricator.

Yeah well, that's easy. It's all the "tween" stuff that causes the questions.

[Timothy Miller]

Yeah well, that's easy. It's all the "tween" stuff that causes the questions.

Like people who work with closed dies only they never lifted a hammer in their life. They just stick the thing in the machine and the part comes out.

[Dragons lair]

OK here is a thought. We have Induction,Gas, coal or charcoal. We have hand hammers. Air hammers and electric hammers.
1700s smith had what? Yeh I use O/A for heat sometimes. And TIG or MIG but I woun't tell ya its real hand forged. Also use
a CNC plasma and a vairable speed drill press. I think if ya offered a 200yr old smith a power hammer or a welder he would
take it and use it to make sompthing better faster and cheaper.
Ken.

[Timothy Miller]

OK here is a thought. We have Induction,Gas, coal or charcoal. We have hand hammers. Air hammers and electric hammers.
1700s smith had what? Yeh I use O/A for heat sometimes. And TIG or MIG but I woun't tell ya its real hand forged. Also use
a CNC plasma and a vairable speed drill press. I think if ya offered a 200yr old smith a power hammer or a welder he would
take it and use it to make sompthing better faster and cheaper.
Ken.

Well they did use all of those tools and that's how we got fabricators

[HWooldridge]

OK here is a thought. We have Induction,Gas, coal or charcoal. We have hand hammers. Air hammers and electric hammers. 1700s smith had what? Yeh I use O/A for heat sometimes. And TIG or MIG but I woun't tell ya its real hand forged. Also use a CNC plasma and a vairable speed drill press. I think if ya offered a 200yr old smith a power hammer or a welder he would take it and use it to make sompthing better faster and cheaper. Ken.

Agreed. Those poor guys you see in the old black and white photographs with a pile of horseshoes around them were the people who would have bought Little Giants in a heartbeat...

It's fair to mention that I have also had the reverse argument with people who do not typically forge things. I know a fellow with a welding and fab shop who is always telling me that he can buy Italian leaves or other forged elements cheaper than I can make them. However, he only has one hand hammer, an anvil and a gas forge in his shop - no other "blacksmith" or forging tools. It's real easy to buy from King's or Triple S but he can only get standard sizes and has to wait two weeks for delivery. In the meantime, I've already finished the job and gone on to the next one.

It boils down to what everyone has mentioned here - there ain't no easy definition... ;)

[freeman]

My question..................is welding, employing a set of jigs and use of a grinder CHEATING AT BLACKSMITHING when you are still using a coal forge/anvil and hammer???????????? I feel like I'm letting real blacksmiths down and slapping the trade/art in the face. Help in Ohio

tl;dr: You aren't letting me down. I don't care what you do as long as you're having fun, you don't get any on me and you don't leave divots in my anvil.

These kinds of questions have a tendency to pop up around activities where
1. people have a tendency to romanticize the activity
2. practitioners derive some (arguably inappropriate*) portion of their self-worth from said activity
3. available techniques have changed drastically in a short period of time
My favorite example of this would be rock climbing. The climbing community has been split along arch-traditionalist lines since the 70's, with no end in sight. Without going into a whole lot of back story, the argument boils down to using portable protection in natural rock features vs placing expansion bolts at regular intervals to protect the climber from a fall. At the extreme ends this means climbing hundreds, if not thousands, of feet off the ground with sub-standard protection assuming sheer holding power and safety are your only metric. Many climbers have lost their lives (due to equipment malfunction and other accidents) due to adherence to a staunch traditionalist ethic. Fortunately, as blacksmiths the worst we're likely to encounter is catching the stink-eye from another smith at a hammer-in if our "ethics" don't match and the work shows it.

One irony of this (and this is something blacksmithing has in common with climbing) is the overwhelming majority of the populace at large have no idea there's even an argument, much less an opinion on the subject. Given there are even smiths (and climbers) who don't much care about the traditionalist vs modernist debate, the total number of people on the planet that even care enough to have an opinion couldn't muster enough bodies to win a seat on my local school board, and that's assuming they all voted the same way.

I have met arch-traditionalists that claim it's inappropriate to use any techniques that are historically inaccurate, typically without providing a hard cut-off date. If welders are declared off-limits, then that date must be some arbitrary point before 1881, when the arc welder was invented. Power hammers seem to be considered safe, so our cutoff must be after 1837, when Scot James Nasmyth invented the steam hammer. But what about materials? Is It disingenuous to throw out modern fabrication techniques but embrace modern engineered alloys? Should we all be using wrought as our primary material?

As technology progresses, new tools and techniques have become available to every trade, metalworking included. Do we really believe that a smith working at a forge in 1885 wouldn't have used a mig welder if one was made available to him? Or a CNC milling machine for that matter? What about 3D sintered metal printing?

There are concrete examples of purpose-built machines enabling process automation and increasing efficiency in the realm of blacksmithing dating back to the mid 1700's and Thomas Jefferson's nail factory at Montecello. Fast forward a few hundred years and there isn't a one of us that can compete on accuracy, part count per hour, or overall efficiency with purpose-built robotics. Clearly then this isn't an argument about efficiency. What does that leave? Aesthetics. So it appears to me that at worst you could be accused of producing unaesthetic work if you do a bunch of welding. Aesthetic taste being profoundly personal, this is hardly a damning accusation.

Finally, since there is no objective definition of "Blacksmithing", no clearly defined rules, and no opponent the term "cheating" really can't be applied. "Cheating" implies some kind of unethical behavior taking place within the context of a contest of some kind.

* You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your <snip> khakis.

[SReynolds]

The topic becomes grey (as opposed to black and white) when an item is sold in a store or given away as a gift.

When said item is sold as "hand made in the blacksmith shop" and it is not 100% made in the blacksmith shop. In other words, if I hand forge a percentage of an item in the blacksmith shop, then take it to my garage and mig weld it/paint it, then sell it in the blacksmith shop as "hand made in the blacksmith shop."

I know of a business that does exactly that. When I asked how it was made, I was informed of the method and also informed that it is not a lie because a percentage of any one item IS, in reality, HAND FORGED in THAT blacksmith shop.The welds are smoothed over and reheated then hammered to blend the weld with the surrounding steel, aka hiding the weld.

I didn't think much of it at first, but now that I operate a blacksmith shop AND sell these items, I would like to be up front with people. I'm not so sure welding is hand made, but then I do it myself, not a robot. Also, drilling a hole with an electric drill press in a hand forged item as opposed to hot punching the same hole on the anvil.

Maybe I need to have items tagged as 90% made in the blacksmith shop? Or, 90% hand made?.......that sounds dumb.

[RLD]

I have 2 blacksmith shops. In one shop it is set in an 1890s historical setting. As the blacksmith in that setting I do not use tools invented after that time. In my shop at home I can use a welder, torch ,hand grinder, gas forge etc. etc.. I still manufacture the elements myself but incorperate the most economical means that i can to complete a job. Just as they did in past times. I am a blacksmith of today in my shop. Just my opinion.

[Drewed]

Like people who work with closed dies only they never lifted a hammer in their life. They just stick the thing in the machine and the part comes out.

That would be a press operator in my book...
Blacksmith - To smite the black metal. If you hit (smite) hot metal on an anvil, then you are a blacksmith. I think that if the "old time" smiths had torches, band saws, power hammers ( some did have trip hammers ) or any other "modern" tools, they would have used them.
Side note : At one demo, I had the head of the "cultural" department comment when she saw us unloading our gear, " Oh! You do it the old way." My response was," We are in the middle of a field, what did you think I was going to do? Bring a 2000' extension cord?" Then I proceed to pull out my cordless grinder. I did keep it hidden during the event however.

[Mainely,Bob]

Some would say that if you cause the work to be done by way of operating a lever (or treadle) or hitting a switch then you are not even a fabricator,you are a "machine operator". :ph34r:

[Francis Trez Cole]

Blacksmith OR a metalworker aka fabricator aka welder. as history shows blacksmiths have always adapted and embraced new technology. The power hammer has been around for the last 1000 years. i would think that the term metalworker aka fabricator aka welder fall into a different category like wheel wright of Farrier yes a blacksmith can draw from the advancements in technology. in England Farriers started there own guild in the 1600's

[pkrankow]

I saw some fancy iron scroll work on some very expensive clocks. My wife was rather impressed, but from 10 feet away it looked "wrong" and when I got just a little closer it was obvious why it looked wrong. Everything was plasma cut on a CNC machine! There were no individual components, all the edges were hard and sharp, the list is long what was "wrong". The salesperson said they were some of his best selling products in that price range. There was no argument that the frame was solid and well built, and to a different eye was aesthetically pleasing.

I don't recall how it was labeled. It really was well done, but I have become biased, it was fabricated from machine cut parts. It it was made to look fabricated instead of trying to fake being forged I would have liked it better.

Phil

[SReynolds]

Thanks guys. That has really helped me. I appreciate your time/replies.

....smith on!

[ThomasPowers]

"Old School" let's see: the earliest metal working power hammer I've found was before the year 1000! So to work before the power hammer you are forging real wrought iron using twin single action bellows and charcoal as the fuel, right? (the use of coal in blacksmithing was several centuries later)

Remember the normal state for a blacksmith shop throughout history is to have a *minimum* of 3 to 5 people other than the smith working in it! You would have apprentices, Journeymen, even day labour at times providing the power to do things and taking over a lot of the grunt work.

The "single guy" in the shop is more an artifact of the American Frontier and the long slow slide down of smithing as the factory took over. Trying to replicate smithing as it was "dying out" is not a very accurate way of doing "historical Smithing" for any but a few fairly recent decades.

An interesting look at smithing and technology is to see who *invented* the labour saving tools---John Deere was a blacksmith, as well as the fellow who invented visegrips. Read "Practical Blacksmithing", Richardson: a collection of articles from a blacksmithing magazine published in the 1880's and 1890's. It's full of people inventing and modifying tools to make their jobs *better*.

I call a powerhammer a "smart apprentice" as it does just what you tell it to!

I'd draw the line at "is what you see predominately the work of the smith" and of course dive back into the "workmanship of risk" vs "workmanship of certainty" arguments about "hand work"

(Now this is a bit odd as I have run my smithy basically with no power for 8 years and I do a lot of historical demo's even back to portraying a year 1000 smith. But I understand the history of the technologies in the craft.)

[Judson Yaggy]

May I bring up the importance of design intent? There is an inherent level of quality in a piece purposely designed to be hot forged with significant cross-sectional changes for either functional or ascetic reasons. This quality should be obvious to the trained eye. In my opinion people that strive to design and forge with that in mind INTEND to be "real" blacksmiths. It could be for artistic reasons or the requirements of making a tool that won't fail in use. You may be forging under a huge drop hammer for heavy industry or have one hammer and a 60# anvil, but if you understand how the metal moves and why then you are a real blacksmith. There are artistic shapes and functional characteristics available only (within reason) to blacksmiths. If you understand this and design your work with that in mind....

The confusion arises from what we do trying to make a living selling stuff to people that DON'T understand the quality of forged work. I suspect that even the most die hard of traditionalists would compromise if the only way of putting bread on the table was selling "metalwork" as defined above. I'm going to feed my family and pay my mortgage by whatever means needed, like it or not. But while I do that I'll teach my clients (and anyone else that will listen) about quality and design intent and the way of the blacksmith. That way a few more people in the world will have a clue about blacksmithing and how great it is.

[Timothy Miller]

Sadly ornamental ironwork has become a commodity to many people. The cheep knock offs have become what ironwork is supposed to look like in the public's eye. Hand forged is something else that is poorly understood and regarded as highly specialized. Many builders feel that ironwork should only cost so much (the price levels set by welders using made in china stampings and castings) and wont even really listen to you when you give your spiel. In the past iron work was used to impress and in some cases intimidate people, the more stylish, detailed and impressive the better. Now for many people its just a sign that you have some means and you don't want uninvited people on your drive way. Its funny though the same thing that happened to blacksmiths is starting to happen to ornamental fabricators they are being supplanted by mass produced fencing, gates and such. There are off shore fab shops that will build to your prints. There are 3D printers that can build parts up out of weld not very good yet but it will be soon. There are a whole slew of new technology coming our way that will make your head spin. Its probably possible to make a CNC power hammer with turret tooling. There are robot polishing machines that can polish complex shapes. I wonder one day if there will be a forum dedicated to traditional electric and oxy-fuel welding. With people showing off their 100 year old Miller 250 mig welders and hand grinders. Noobs will ask 6 times a week why they have weld porosity. We will have lengthy discussions of the merits of hand welding verses robo-nano electron beam fusion or some such thing.

[Mainely,Bob]

Wal-mart Ironwork anyone? It`s cheap enough you can afford to replace it every 5 years as fashion changes or it rusts out,whichever comes first. :rolleyes: