Making iron pipe...2000 years ago

[gmshedd]

Dear sirs: I’m hoping not to waste your time, but I would like to know whether you think it would be possible for a blacksmith to make an iron pipe that is about 1 inch outside diameter (any inside diameter bigger than 1/4") and 5 feet long, using no modern tools?   The reason I ask is that glassblowers from the time of Christ are said to have used iron blowpipes.

[Glenn]

What do you refer to as modern tools?

[gmshedd]

Any tool that wouldn't have existed 2000 years ago.

[Steve Sells]

there was not a lot of iron around 2,000 years ago

[gmshedd]

The Iron Age began about 3000 years ago in the Middle East, so by the time of Christ, iron was well known.

[Glenn]

Look up the name Tubal-cain or Tubalcain

Tubal-cain was the "forger of all instruments of bronze and iron" (ESV) or an "instructor of every artificer in brass and iron" (KJV). Although this may mean he was a metalsmith, and is suggested that he may have been the very first artificer in brass and iron. T. C. Mitchell suggests that he "discovered the possibilities of cold forging native copper and meteoric iron. Reference wikipedia

As I recall from research he was the 5th great grandson of a fellow called Adam.

 

Again what tools are you excluding, for instance those with electric cords.

[ThomasPowers]

May I commend to your attention how they made gun barrels just 200 years ago by either lapping or spiraling the wrought iron and forge welding it together. Done using a charcoal fueled forge and a hammer and an anvil and real wrought iron it would meet the 2000 year criteria. (especially if you had bloomery produced wrought iron instead of the indirect process stuff that's only been around a bit over 500 years...)  Lots of examples to look at if you search on forging a gun barrel. I would hazard that the lap method would be quite sufficient for a tue pipe.

Note that in the early years iron could cost more than gold and and so not used a lot for basic tools; However the Roman Empire is rather characterized by their refining and use of iron in abundance....Look at Aluminum; it was a very precious metal when it first was discovered and now is a throwaway item.

(remember that forging using coal/coke was a high to late Middle Ages innovation, Gies & Gies "Cathedral Forge and Waterwheel"; also the London pattern anvil is a johnny come lately too.  There is an anvil in the roman Museum in Bath that was what I based my "early styled anvil" on: basically a cube of metal with a spike on the bottom to set it into a wooden base.)

 

[Steve Sells]

21 minutes ago, gmshedd said:

The Iron Age began about 3000 years ago in the Middle East, so by the time of Christ, iron was well known.

Platinum is well known today but there isnt a lot of that around now either. nor would someone make a pipe from it which was my point

 

[Daswulf]

Just in the thought of making an iron pipe, there was that video posted "somewhere" of the blacksmiths making the rifle barrels. If you don't worry about all the other steps after just making the tube then I don't see why not. 

[ThomasPowers]

So the answer to the original question is Yes.  (Unless you are planning to replicate it I might have suggest the question be phrased: could a blacksmith working at the time of Christ forge an iron pipe?)

I was just reading the Corning Glass Museum's "Glass of the Roman Empire" last week....

[Glenn]

49 minutes ago, gmshedd said:

would it be possible for a blacksmith to make an iron pipe that is about 1 inch outside diameter (any inside diameter bigger than 1/4") and 5 feet long,

For a blacksmith, is it possible, yes. 

 

Please site your reference to the iron blowpipe and the size of the blowpipe.

[gmshedd]

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

May I commend to your attention how they made gun barrels just 200 years ago by either lapping or spiraling the wrought iron and forge welding it together.

You are so right! I just finished watching the Colonial Williamsburg video on YouTube when you posted this. Thank you.

2 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

So the answer to the original question is Yes.  (Unless you are planning to replicate it I might have suggest the question be phrased: could a blacksmith working at the time of Christ forge an iron pipe?)

Yeah, I am a docent there and was doubting what people who specialize in glass had to say about iron blowpipes--that's why I came here, and I got my answer in less than an hour!. The earliest iron blowpipes (found at glassmaking sites in Spain) are from around the 4th century AD, so I was thinking it was a stretch to say that iron blowpipes had been universally adopted for glassblowing within a century of its invention in the mid first century BC. Furthermore, it seemed unlikely that people who already had pipes made out of lead, and, to a lesser extent, copper would bother making pipes out of iron. But now that I've seen the gunsmithing video I am no longer skeptical about whether a first century blacksmith could make a blowpipe.

Thanks to everyone for your replies. I now believe that 1st century AD blowpipes could have been made of iron.

BTW, the estimated iron production at the height of the Roman Empire was almost 83,000 metric tonnes, and they were apparently making iron in Britain in the first century AD (https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-roman-iron-industry-in-britain/9780752478593/)

[ThomasPowers]

Note that a copper blow pipe would be unusable as the heat conductivity is too high and you basically can't get a pipe long enough that you could work with and which wouldn't burn you.  Iron is nice that way; we often hold in our bare hands pieces less than 3' long that are at 1600 degF  on the other end.

[gmshedd]

Good point, although I suppose that if there wasn't any such thing as iron, some bright boy might have tried to use some ceramic insulators around the copper pipe, or a ceramic section in the middle, between two sections of copper pipe. However, copper melts below 2000F, so it would be very touchy to use in a glass furnace. Melted glass is commonly kept at 2100F these days to maintain a consistency like honey, although 1st century AD furnaces could have been very different. Modern blowpipes are low conductivity stainless, so they conduct even less heat than iron. Still, glassblowers use pipe coolers (water troughs) if they work on a piece long enough.

[ThomasPowers]

Yes I was thinking of wrapping cloth around the blow pipe and having someone pouring water on it all the time but it would still get in the way.

 

[SLAG]

Glass making/manipulating using blowpipes was first used 2,000 B.C.(E.).

It was used again in Europe around the beginning of the 1,500's around Venice Italy area.

Much of the details of manufacture were kept as trade secret for decades. But details of the many processing and chemical secrets leaked out, and spread.

Check out Murrine glass making and technique.

I remember seeing information about glass blowing use in about 600 B.C. (E.), but I do not recall where I read it.

I conjecture that the first blowpipes may have been made from fired clay. They would withstand the very hot temperatures of the glass maker furnace. Clay probably mixed with frit before firing.

Way hotter than most furnaces used for iron 'melting' and working.

Clay pipes could be conjoined to each other, end to end, to make a longer blow pipe.

SLAG.

Prior to the mid 1,800's glass windows were made by blowing a large globe of blown glass. It was then opened and flattened out. That's why glass of that era exhibits charming distortions.

Blacksmiths made gun barrels by the fire welded iron strip method until the advent of gun cotton propellants (sometimes with added nitroglycerin) era. Those smithed barrels could not survive the added pressure and blew up.

 

[gmshedd]

Very true. Thank whoever for the iron blowpipe! It may be interesting to those who work iron, that some of the tools a glassblower uses to shape glass are flammable--made of fruitwood (because it's close-grained) and even folded-up newspaper, although in both cases there is a lot of water involved too!

[SLAG]

Yes, soaked newspaper is used often when glass blowing. That is wet newspaper in direct contact with the semi-molten. glass.

I am urgently awaiting the expected future post(s) of Latticino, on this thread.

There is a very body of information, skills, and talent on this blacksmithing site, that you bumped into.

SLAG.

 

[gmshedd]

25 minutes ago, SLAG said:

Glass making/manipulating using blowpipes was first used 2,000 B.C.(E.).

Although there are quite a few glass artifacts from as long ago as the 15th century BCE, these were made by core-forming, fusing, casting, and mold-pressing. There are also some pieces of unworked-glass that predate 2000 BCE, but no worked objects that I'm aware of. The earliest blown glass artifacts (inflated by blowing through a tube) are widely accepted by glass history scholars to be from the 1st century BCE. They were actually formed by inflating the melted end of a glass tube, by blowing into the other end.

I agree with you that there were probably clay blowpipes in the earliest days of glassblowing, but the advantages of iron pipes are considerable, so when they became available, they would have been preferred. A group of glass-blowers tested the clay pipe hypothesis back in the 1990's and concluded that glassblowing with clay pipes was possible, but that they weren't very strong transverse to the long dimension of the pipe.

[SLAG]

Let us respectfully agree to disagree.

I did not contrast the advantages of clay blow pipes against iron ones. The use of smithed iron dates to about 1,100  or 1,200 B.C.E. (by the Hittites).And tempered iron to about 500 or 600 B.C.E.The use of blown glass predates that by more than almost a millennium.

Inclusions in the fired clay and reinforcement to the exterior pipe after firing were probably resorted to. (I am conjecturing this). But you are correct that iron pipes were vastly superior to clay pipes.

I would have to do a little research in my archives and the net, to write a more complete response. But I have to get back to work now. But will follow this thread. The Great Latticino could add invaluable comments. He is a blacksmith yes and he is also an engineer and worked the Corning company for more than a decade. (that is from information he posted a while ago.)

Mr. Shedd welcome to the fraternity, I hope that you will stay here. Blacksmithing is a wonderful endeavor suffused with an almost infinite and expanding body of knowledge and skill.

Regards,

SLAG.

Iron extraction and working was first done by the Hittites (in Europe).

 

 

[ThomasPowers]

I happened to have a section of a graphite rod from a steel melting arc furnace, 14" in diameter, 7" thick, (big furnace...it used 3 as it was 3 phase and they ran it late at night when the rates were cheaper---I had never seen a meter marked in kilo amps before!) Never did any EDM work that needed it so I finally gave it on to a young fellow doing torch work who was dating my Daughter.  I was told he was impressed and can use it for glass working.

Let us not forget the lovely iron dagger buried with king Tutankhamen in 1323 BCE 

[gmshedd]

15 minutes ago, SLAG said:

The use of smithed iron dates to about 1,100  or 1,200 B.C.E. (by the Hittites).And tempered iron to about 500 or 600 B.C.E.The use of blown glass predates that by more than almost a millennium.

Is there a book or a reference you can point to that has an example of blown glass from ~1500 BCE? The curators at the glass museum where I work would be very interested. The oldest pieces in our museum date to the 15th century BC, but the earliest blown-glass pieces we have are from the first century BC or AD (I'd have to look it up).

[SLAG]

King Tut's iron dagger was made from iron was derived from a meteorite. This was confirmed by some researchers last year.

Elemental analysis detected nickel, (among a few other exotic elements) in the metal.

The substance was called "sky metal" by many cultures situated world wide.

SLAG.

[ThomasPowers]

And your point?  I know a lot of people who forge meteorite.  I assume this was done for his knife otherwise the Widmanstätten patterns would show and analysis to show meteoritic origin would not be needed.

[gmshedd]

More incredible

3 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

I know a lot of people who forge meteorite.

More incredible to me than Tut's meteoric blade (other-worldly though it may be) were the hundreds of feet of copper pipe that were (supposedly) found in the tomb of King Sahure, the second King of Egypt's 5th Dynasty, who ruled from 2517 to 2505 B.C.

45 minutes ago, SLAG said:

he is also an engineer and worked the Corning company

Perhaps we crossed paths at Sullivan Park.