Shove that pigs foot further in the fire

[TomGlos]

Hi Folks,

 

A fiddle player from southern England here, hoping for a bit of information from people who know.

 

There's a great fiddle tune called "Shove that pigs foot further in the fire" (or something like that.)

 

Played by some fine musicians here

[Nobody Special]

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Don't know about as a blacksmithing tool, but there's a prybar sometimes called a pigs foot. It's got a rounded end on it that looks like, well, a pig's foot. You can see a similar end on some of these.

[Nobody Special]

Also, listened to it yesterday. 'bout five different versions of it. Catchy tune. :D

[ThomasPowers]

Been smithing 33 years and never heard of a "pigs foot"  but could easily be a local usage particular to the area the tune originated.

[Dogsoldat]

I was flipping  thru something and came across weld setups.  Anyways there was a split weld  maybe it could look like a pigs foot, 

[yahoo2]

My guess is that it would be a local variation slang for pig iron.

 

The pigs would be broken away from the sow and heated in the forge then forged under the drop hammer into a rough wrought.

I am thinking its a timing thing, the next one must be hot enough to work just as the team finish working the one before it.

 

They were called pigs because the cast piece looked like a row of suckling piglets.

 

of course my record at guessing these sort of things is not that good.

[Frank Turley]

My guess is a mulling iron or as the novelist, Kenneth Roberts, called it, a loggerhead.

 

Off topic, blacksmiths make a form of fiddlehead scroll, which first appeared on earth as a fern. I was watching an early Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when the famed cellist, Pablo Casals, was featured. Casals finished a musical piece and was interviewed. Turns out that the cello was a Stradivari and the camera zeroed in on the fiddlehead scroll. All the chisel marks were in evidence on the scroll, yet all was to dimension! I concluded that they didn't have sandpaper at the time of its carving, not did they need it. Furthermore, it told me that my some of my ironwork could have honest and effective hammer marks so long as dimension and aesthetics were maintained.

[ironsmith]

interesting post Frank, thanks for sharing...

[forgemaster]

We make and sell 2 types of pigs feet, curved and straight, they are used for pulling dog spikes out (dog spikes hold the railway line to the wooden sleepers or "ties" for the people from USA).  Pigs feet are also sometimes called claw wedges.

 

Phil

[TomGlos]

Many thanks for thoughts and info folks, much appreciated.  Seems most convincing to say the pigs foot is being made in the forge, not a tool being used there, (not heated anyway.)

 

Fiddle tune names don't often make much sense, they're just a tag like a racehorse name, but this one's more obscure than most. Why did someone think, "I'll call that tune, 'Shove the pigs foot a little further in the fire.' !"

Cheers,

Tom

[ThomasPowers]

Please note that you can't heat cast iron in a forge and hammer it into wrought iron.  It has to be puddled or other method of removing the excess carbon from it.  Cast iron merely crumbles or splashes at forging temps.

 

Yahoo2---where did you get that piece of bad info from?

[yahoo2]

Please note that you can't heat cast iron in a forge and hammer it into wrought iron.  It has to be puddled or other method of removing the excess carbon from it.  Cast iron merely crumbles or splashes at forging temps.

 

Sorry Thomas, it was a very poorly put together post as I was rushing out the door. colloquially fire, burner, forge and furnace are swapped a lot in Aussie slang. it is hard to get out of the habit.

I was pontificating about points perhaps pertaining to post puddling procedure.

What happens in that period between finished puddling and starting to work the lump if you are in an industrial shop? I dont have any tools that are up to the job in my motley collection of gear. My logic was that bosses dont like people standing around waiting for the next piece, burning time and fuel. If you are standing back because of the heat the job is not getting done.

 

I was thinking more in terms of what would have been the main big industry that a folk song lyric would be aimed at. An iron works seemed like a good choice, with lots of apprentices getting told what to do.

 

Now that FM Phil has mentioned it, manufacturing gear for rail seems a likely candidate. Those wedges certainly look like pigs trotters.

[ThomasPowers]

Well generally you shingle the bloom directly from the furnace.  Sometimes they cut it in two first and then work the pieces either way you end up with a muck bar...

 

Those do look like trotters; I wonder if they were pickled before they were painted?

[forgemaster]

No pickling going on in our workshop except maybe before soldering.