June 17, 20215 yr Ran across this and thought it interesting: Note that in one of the ones; it mentions 10 expert craftsmen as making the sword for presentation to General Eisenhower.
June 17, 20215 yr One of the things that really struck me was how the blacksmith didn't do any hammering himself and how exhausted the bent backed fellow who was pulling the strap to lift the drop hammer looked when he walked through the shot. It's enough to make a boy wish he blacksmithed they did it in the old days doesn't it? Frosty The Lucky.
June 17, 20215 yr Author Notice the large anvil with all the dovetail slots for tooling in it? (around 5:15+ are some good shots). I was actually liking the clip at: https://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-sword/query/sword as it included quenching in whale oil and tempering in molten lead and also mentioned the grinding and hilting of it. If you go to https://www.britishpathe.com/video and search on sword a number of different videos from different times show up. Doing a similar search on Blacksmith also yields some interesting clips especially from the 1930's!
June 17, 20215 yr Thomas, how do the techniques compare with those used by the sword maker you worked for? "By hammer and hand all arts do stand."
June 17, 20215 yr Author Much more "traditional" than what we did. (We did grinding on a Bader belt grinder, heat treat in a custom vertical electric furnace with inert atmosphere, used modern high tech alloys like A2 and D2, etc.)
June 20, 20215 yr With all the line shafts in the shop, I wonder why the drop hammer was run by hand by an old guy. Perhaps showmanship. There was a lady there as well. Interesting vid.
June 20, 20215 yr The fellow driving the drop hammer was pulling a belt that probably ran over a pully. When he pulled it made the belt grip the pully and lifted the hammer, when he let it go it lost traction and dropped. We ran sampling hammers on the drill with rope and a cathead, capstan is the more common name. The rope ran through a crown sheave at the top of the tower, down to a shackle on the safety hammer 140lb or 340lb. From the crown sheave back down to the helper's position and a turning cathead (capstan) two wraps of rope around the cathead and pulling 20lbs by hand lifted the hammer, let off and the hammer fell. The picture below is being used to lift rigging, NOT as a hammer lift. There are WAY too many wraps and it's the wrong kind of rope. The cathead used to get really hot and we trimmed burnt manila from the drill rope regularly. A synthetic would melt and stick meaning everybody on the crew except the operator would run for it. There is no way the strap being used in the video is wrapped around part of the line shaft, it would overlap and bind sending both ends on a ride to the shaft. When we were driving casing or samples, it looked almost exactly like the action in the video. Frosty The Lucky.
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