Is it ever going to get better?

[JHCC]

To quote the old New Yorker cartoon, "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it."

[anvil]

21 hours ago, Purple Bullet said:

will be even more valuable as this progresses

 

lol, 

i actually used this to make a point to a group of young Navigators once, standing in the door of my shop. If your predictions are valid, I'll either survive or not. If I don't, it wont matter and if i do, my skill set will be in great demand!

[ThomasPowers]

Of course I had a discussion with S.M Stirling once about the use of blacksmiths in his "Dies the Fire" series where I claimed that there was enough physical culture left after the "die-off" that any major apocalypse would cause; that it would take several generations before blacksmiths would be a major factor again----except for the replication of horse drawn agricultural equipment and most hobby smiths wouldn't be very good at that.  Shoot there are enough "real" swords scattered around that having clueless swordmakers trying to make using swords would not be a very viable option.  Raid the local Museums!  *Scroungers* are what they would need! 

(Of course many smiths are great scroungers and their skills at reuse and making do would be a help!)

[Frosty]

Mr. Stirling side stepped the scrounge anything you need argument nicely. In that universe, population centers were nightmare to survival centers starting with starving survivors with little or no survival skills and diseases including plague. Then in short order some of the first "organizations" are bandits, it IS easier to take what you need from others than scrounge, make or grow your own.

I've been in many if not most of the museums in Alaska, a day off on remote jobs makes museums very attractive entertainment. Swords, harpoons, spears, knives, etc? Hardly any, especially not swords, a couple military and a couple owned or carried by someone of historical significance or fame including a knife owned by Wyatt Earp in the Nome Museum.

You should've told him heat treating spring steel is danged easy to do on a solid fuel forge. Anyway, taking old vehicles apart for spring steel becomes a trade, converting them to tools and weapons a couple others. It's a great series by the way, I recently started listening to the audio version again. 

Being handy and rigging manual powered tools like grinders, drill presses, etc. is another valuable trade. Starting out collecting leaf spring, normalizing or annealing it so you can cut it with hack saws and grinding blades is EZ PZ for low skill flat landers. The ONLY place anvil time comes into play is IF forged sockets are used and that's pretty much a beginner level. 

Turning coil spring into blades requires more skill, especially single edged blades but not intermediate level by a long shot. 

In a post apocalypse world being a blacksmith would be valuable, might not make you king though. Might be something to keep secret, in ancient times blacksmiths were often enslaved as too valuable to be on their own. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

[JHCC]

That's an enthralling prospect.

[ThomasPowers]

I would suggest cutting leafspring hot rather than with a hacksaw blade as hot chisels can be simply made and even forged to an edge while saw blades have a limited use life and supply.  My point is that many PA books assume something like a 90% die off which leaves a LOT of physical culture around.  Also make a sword is a lot different than making a knife---at least if you are making a good one with the correct weight and vibration nodes.  A lot of unskilled bladesmiths would do better using a baseball bat than the swords they could forge.

Of course survival is very location dependent.  Where you are; winter heat is a big item; but you have easy access to a cold locker a lot of the year.  Where I am; I could get through a winter with no heat but the cookstove; but water is a big limiter, (luckily I know of a well a few feet from our property line...if it was on myside it would have a working windmill already!  In a PA world; well there is a windmill sales and service 2 miles from my house.)  For food; drying would be a major preservation method.  A solar cooker would sure lighten the wood load too.

This is all a moot question for me as starting about a month past the end of refrigeration my insulin supply would start degrading and soon I would be starving myself and looking for an iceflow to drift out on...I first ran into the diabetic's quandary in "Alas Babylon"  one of the first Post Nuclear War survival books and well thought out too; especially as it was published pre-1960!  (On the Beach predates it I believe; but it was more "business as usual until we all die of radiation poisoning".)  Why I was happy to sell off the hand cranked drill press and treadle grinders from the hoard.  Unfortunately we are too close to the interstate; that is: our house can be seen and so I'd have to haul all my shop equipment up into the local  mountains for safety.

[Purple Bullet]

3 hours ago, JHCC said:

That's an enthralling prospect.

We are all thralls to some extent. The most free people around can be found sometimes under bridges and overpasses. There are still a few in the wilds and remote islands as well. "Freedom isn't free" is true in more than one sense.

Thomas - Alas Babylon was great. I read it when I was in my teens. I was on a motorcycle trip a few years back and went through a small town in Florida that seemed familiar somehow. The river, the orange orchards, the mix of ranch style homes with colonial mansions. If it wasn't the town that Frank modeled Fort Repose after it could have been.

[Frosty]

Alas Babylon is a good one, there's another where one of the main characters had to decide whether to devote resources to making insulin or something else with wide significance for the survivors, antibiotics maybe? I'd probably last a couple few years before diabetes took me out, though the last couple I'd probably be blind crippled mess.

Were a present but healthy me in the PA situation I might make a knife if I couldn't loot kitchen drawers, or a big box for a nice folder. I'd be forging dart points and smallish spear heads. An atlatl is really easy to make, hard hitting and surprisingly easy to use accurately.

The only tools you need to make an atlatl is a sharpish stone, springy saplings, grass and a Coke bottle if you can knap stone. You can make a perfectly effective atlatl dart by sharpening the end of a sapling and tying a tuft of grass to the other end. Fire harden the pointy end is even better.

A knife to clean and prepare game would be nice but that Coke bottle can replace that too. 

If you get down to bare bones blacksmithing is pretty high tech, homonids did just fine for a couple million years without.

I would want to forge a proper spear point though, 10-12" x 4"+ wide leaf shaped blade socketed for a pretty heavy shaft. 9-10' oal thrusting spear with a good boar stop. I'd genuinely HATE to be hanging onto the end of a stout pole while 1,000lbs. (1,500lbs if you're on Kodiak island) of really MAD brown bear pin cushioned on the other end tried to kill me. As truly horrific as that'd be It'd sure be better than not having the spear.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[ThomasPowers]

"Lucifer's Hammer" Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1977 has one of the main characters make that decision. 

We have a family friend that while they were at NMT as a student, researched how to extract insulin from animal pancreases; as their "Just in Case the Worst Happens" plan was to grab my Wife and I and hightail it in the mountains.  I was very complimented but realized the amount of effort devoted to keeping a cranky old guy alive would be much better directed to direct survival.  (Besides being a talented Spinster; my Wife also has skills in cooking on a woodstove and other "pioneer" jobs.)   In LH the diabetic guy's main skills are *knowledge* and a collection of books on how to do stuff from a low tech basis, including "How Things Work" and the 1911? copy of Encyclopedia Britannica IIRC. I don't have the encyclopedia; but I do have "Practical Blacksmithing"!

"Alas Babylon", Pat Frank, does have a fairly good situation to deal with.  What I find interesting is that it discusses a lot of the basic issues to be found in other PA stories---break down of law and order, roving bandits, desperate addicts going cold turkey, failure of electricity, water, lack of medicines...However they make a fairly successful big step backward and keep their small town a going concern.  The big one they didn't know about back then was Nuclear Winter.

[Frosty]

I was sure it was a Pournelle, Niven collaboration but I get, "Lucifer's Hammer," "Mote in God's Eye" and "Footfall," confused. They all have a number of similarities, is there a, "Hairy Red," in all three or only two? Oh heck, Harry could've been a character in any number of their novels. It makes me wonder who one or both knew that was the model for Harry/Hairy.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Now you’ve got me thinking about PA possibilities for cultivating the botanical raw materials to help warm up those cold turkeys. 

[ThomasPowers]

I almost picked up a copy of "Ringworld" in Spanish from the free book pile at the Library---I stopped myself as I wanted someone else to enjoy it and we have a lot of folks with Spanish as their primary language!

John; you do realize that Prison's no longer have blacksmith shops in them, right?  (I have a book of photos of American Prisons just for the shots of very nicely equipped blacksmith shops in them.)  Of course you could move to a state with "recreational" possibilities...

[George N. M.]

Thomas, I have a copy of the 1912 Britannica (unmarred as it is by the popular illustrations) on CD but that would present retrieval issues.  Given the amount of data stored electronically these days a high priority for limited electricity might be data retrieval.

One thing that I found interesting in World War Z was the classification of folk into valuable people who had practical skills and knowledge and those who did not.  The valuable people were the first to be evacuated to safe areas.  The key skill would not being able to do X, e.g. blacksmithing, but the ability to be able to teach X to others.  So, Thomas, in a PA world you would be teaching folk how to blacksmith rather than swinging a hammer for as long as you could.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[JHCC]

Speaking of World War Z, here’s the “lobotomizer” my cousin commissioned for her husband as a surprise gift. 

(Total length = 36”)

[SLAG]

Mr. JHCC,

Has this wonderful instrument (the said "lobotomizer"), been put to good use yet?

Curious SLAG.

[JHCC]

Yes, it did exactly what May intended: it made Adam very happy. 

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

It kinda reminds me of an ulu with a really long handle, it looks nice JHCC

[JHCC]

Thanks, TW. It's display-only (mild steel blade with nothing remotely like a sharp edge), but I'm very happy with the look (especially since it was a good use for some vintage rebar).

[Frosty]

18 hours ago, JHCC said:

Now you’ve got me thinking about PA possibilities for cultivating the botanical raw materials to help warm up those cold turkeys. 

If you put the turkey in a reasonably well sealed container, in a non-PA world several layers of aluminum foil works, and bury it in the compost pile it will slow cook in a few hours, add an hour or so if it's frozen. No need to cultivate or botanicals for the purpose, collecting lawn clippings, leaves, horse manure, etc. in a large pile works a treat and once finished reacting it makes wonderful fertilizer and mulch in the garden, lawn, etc.

Frosty The Lucky.

[anvil]

A lot of good authors mentioned here. Ill include David Drake just because. 

Assuming a nuclear PA, we smiths will have another plus. The iron will be so hot, no forge is needed.

[JHCC]

That's a glowing recommendation!

[ThomasPowers]

Only for a while; I've been to the Trinity site and touched the rebar sticking out of the only nubbin left from the test and it wasn't hot---anymore!  (Since the test succeeded there wasn't much left of the test set-up; atom bombs are like that...)

[JHCC]

Maybe you just had a fever that day?

[ThomasPowers]

Hmm my hair did start falling out in the years afterwards...Although it would have to be a pretty good fever to get it up to forging temps...

[George N. M.]

Frosty, have you ever actually cooked in a compost pile?  In my experience compost piles get up to around 150 degrees F.  I'm not saying you can't cook in them, just that it would take a lot longer than a 350 degree oven.

A lot of feed lots and dairies compost their manure for use as a soil amendment.  A compost pile will digest just about anything.  I have known farmers to dispose of dead cows in a compost pile.  It takes awhile to get rid of the larger bones but it does work.  I have always thought that a compost pile would be a good plot element for one of the CSI shows and maybe it has already been done.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."