This article is part of
Wilderness Way
VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3.
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Primitive Blacksmithing
by Ed Cotten
The history of blacksmithing goes back to the beginning of time. By the age of Tutakhaman, steel was available for sale, and only the rich could afford to purchase it. Iron alloy were believed to have been worked even before man learned to mine iron ore from the ground and start smelting it. Nickel iron alloys were available from the countless meteorites striking the earth over the centuries.
Throughout the ages, man first used metal, including iron. It was forced into different shapes, a process known as forging. Copper, silver, and gold could be worked into shapes with a rock or a piece of hard wood, but not so with iron. Iron is too hard to beat into a shape.
The iron becomes work-hardened when it is struck repeatedly, will become brittle and crack. Annealing, a process of heating and slow cooling, will prevent this. This work is very slow, because the iron needs to be cooled as it is worked. It is easier and faster to work the iron hot.
One of the exceptions of working the iron hot was making European armor. Most of it was worked cold after annealing. The metal was a mixture of an alloy of iron and sand known as wrought iron.
Wrought iron is not iron that has been hammered to make it look old. The iron ore was smelted in a furnace with charcoal at relatively low temperatures. The wood ash acts as a flux to lower the melting point of the ore. After cooking the iron for hours, it separates from the lighter materials in the ore (sand, dirt, etc.), and forms a loose glob (known as a bloom) in the furnace. This mass is mostly iron, but it is not pure. It is then removed from the furnace, heated to a welding temperature, and hammered into a solid block of iron. It still contains sand (and whatever else was in the ore that would not burn off), because it was not heated enough to melt and puddle. When it is welded, these impurities become incorporated into the iron. In order to refine the iron, the skelp (the forged raw iron) must be heated, drawn out, folded, and re-welded. As this is done, the particles of sand in the iron melt and become fibrous, tough, and easy to weld.
It is a known fact of life that wherever you are on this earth, there are signs of man being there before you, and wherever man has been, he loses or discards things that are of no value to him anymore. This may be a disturbing thought to most people, but for learning the art of being a blacksmith, it is good for our purpose. If you can find anything made of iron, you can make tools. As a student of primitive ways, knowledge of iron working becomes a survival technique.
Blacksmithing involves fire, air, earth, and water. The original ore came from the earth; clay is used to hold the fire; and water is used to shape the clay, as well as to control the fire and harden the steel.
Fire is very important because iron is too hard to work cold. To get the fire hot enough to heat iron (1650 degrees F), extra air must be supplied to the fire. The tool that supplies the air and controls the fire is called a forge.
There are many ways to make a forge. The early Egyptians used two or three reeds tipped with a clay end piece in a shallow depression in the ground. A fire was built, and several men stood around blowing into the fire until the iron or other metal was hot enough to work.
In the forests of Indonesia, sculptors that needed carving tools hung a pipe from a tree limb. They capped the bottom, and cut a small hole near the capped end. Using hardwood, they soon had a fire hot enough to work steel into carving knives. Using the draft effect of a chimney, extra air was supplied to the fire, increasing the temperature. The pipe became a forge.
The forge is actually a two-part tool-a fire pot and an air supply. The fire pot can be anything from a hole in the ground to a box lined with firebrick and clay or a ceramic fiber. A wooden box containing clay with a depression or hole in the middle was commonly used for many centuries.
The blower is another matter. The tubes are probably the most simple. They will give you a big headache from all of the blowing.
A couple of goat skins sealed at the leg openings, a pipe tied into the neck, and sticks fastened across a split between the hind legs with loops makes a simple bellows. See Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Another example of a bellows that can be made is called a concertina bellows. The construction is simple. You will need a wood fire to heat the iron to a working temperature, and two air blowers to make a continuous blast
The Chinese air pump is a double-ended cylinder made of bamboo, metal, clay, or wood. Valves at each end allow air intake, and pipes at each end connect to a valve chamber and a blow tube. This allows a single piston to produce a continuous air blast. The piston is made to fit loosely, and feathers or other materials make a gasket to insure against air leakage. See Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The Japanese sword forge consists of two clay walls about 10 inches apart and two or three feet long. The cylinder blower rushes a blast of air into the center of one side into a charcoal fire. This forge is simple and efficient; it is used to make the Samurai swords. See Figure 3.
Figure 3.
A European double bellows can be built fairly simply. This blower furnishes a constant blast of air. It is roughly a tear drop shape with hinges at the small end. There are three wooden panels. The top and bottom panels are movable. The center panel is ridged with a check valve. The two chambers are sealed with leather or canvas; the lower chamber compresses air and forces it into the upper chamber. The upper chamber connects to the blast tube, and this tube connects to the fire pot.
One of the members of a local blacksmith group built a small forge with a 1' x 2' double chamber bellows (the usual size is 3' x 5'). Using small twigs in the forge, he welded small pieces of iron together (mild steel melts at about 2500 degrees F). When two pieces of metal are welded, they must melt to fuse together.
A fan type blower could be made much like a squirrel cage fan or the cast iron blowers made in the last century. Pieces of wood and sheet metal or hard leather could be fashioned together using large and small pulleys and a belt to increase the rpm's from a hand crank.
The anvil is the heart of blacksmithing, because that is where the shaping is done. (The anvil is a great big chunk of iron a blacksmith hits with a hammer in the movies.) The simplest anvil to use would be a rock, but a railroad spike set into a stump would be even better. Almost any iron can be used, and you would probably be surprised at the great work that can be done with a small piece of railroad track.
The top of the line anvil is the London pattern. It has a horn on one end and a heel on the other; a face on top; a waist in the middle; and feet on the bottom. There is a pritchel hole beside the hardy hole located on the heel. This anvil was developed over a period of four or five hundred years to solve many of the problems that a blacksmith may run into.
The tools that go along with the primitive forge and the anvil are the hammers, punches, and the bending and cutting tools.
The hammer is probably the most fundamental tool that you will use. Just as with the anvil, a rock works very well. However, most any kind of iron would be more efficient. Even without a handle, a bar or rod (square or round) can perform several functions of more advanced hammers. An engineer's hammer causes iron to flow in two directions, because the striking surface is narrow and long. A rod performs the same way as this kind of hammer. The end, if cut off squarely, acts as a normal hammer face. A bar also acts much like a hammer face.
Some type of chisel is needed to cut the metal. This can be as simple as tapering an end on a bar and hardening it. A punch is made the same way. With these two tools and a hammer, you can make most of the tools you will need, tongs included.
Once you learn to make tools, anything is possible; one thing builds upon another.
