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I Forge Iron

What are old pickaxes made of?


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Wood working tools here used to be abundant with steeled edges.. 

Picks, mattocks, pickaxs, Axes not so much..  Adz, ship adz. slicks, chisels for wood..   Yup..  also had a few really nice US Navy adz.. Like new with factory paint still on them..  Have no idea where they ended up.. 

 Ohio used to be the Western territories or the wild west.. It wasn't till later that the real west was past ohio.. LOL.

I was also fairly surprised when I started to find High carbon steels used in Buggy tires..  But that happened here as well.. Geographic and what demographics played in heavily.. German Dutch etc, etc..   

Nearly ever farm here had an anvil but then where did they all go..  

Das, You can see the weld lines like shown in the other pictures.. Also a grind test for wrought iron and steel also a file test as many of the tips were fairly short and hardened all the way then tempered from the pole or socket.. 

The town I grew up in back in 1901 had 4 blacksmiths in the center of town with their own shops for a village of 1500 people 1 foundry,  woolen mill, and cloth mill.. ..  The main town common had another 3 with independent shops..    

One of the shops is still there and got turned into a machine shop and now is an Auto repair place..   It's a fairly large building..   In town there is also a Village Called Wheelwright.. :)   Guess what they used to make there..   5 villages and each had significant industry..  Old Furnace made cannon balls during the revolutionary war on a fairly small brook called Muddy Brook..   The old ironworks is of course gone but there is evidence.. 

New furnace was in my home town and was established from all accounts about 1812 or so.. 


Anyhow, my point being that there were many and industry based around towns that simply stopped production as not cost effective  etc, etc.   so were ushered out as newer methods of production were implemented..  

I think this played into what or when items were dispersed outwards towards the new lands.. The frontier was opening up.. 

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