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Blacksmiths? You got that right! · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we
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0:48
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:51
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, You're welcome to the
0:59
Speaker 1: podcast Time Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan
1:02
Speaker 1: over there, and Jerry's out there somewhere, and this is
1:05
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. Did I tell you about my
1:08
Speaker 1: new hobby that started yesterday? I'll bet I can guess
1:13
Speaker 1: watching blacksmithing videos. Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing, man, Like, Um,
1:18
Speaker 1: I don't have any desire to blacksmith myself. Nope, I
1:21
Speaker 1: just like watching these videos. There's something really amazing about them. Yeah,
1:25
Speaker 1: there's one. I don't know if you watched. It's on YouTube.
1:29
Speaker 1: It's called Blacksmithing Forging a Bearded Axe. No, I didn't
1:33
Speaker 1: see that one. Oh god. It just reminds me of
1:37
Speaker 1: the the sort of the lulling of that show how
1:41
Speaker 1: it's made. But I watched this video and and most
1:44
Speaker 1: of them have some sped up stuff too, because blacksmithing
1:47
Speaker 1: takes so long that a thirty minute video, I mean
1:51
Speaker 1: half of it is in fast motion, so it just
1:52
Speaker 1: goes to show you and it's edited, and they always do.
1:55
Speaker 1: They always put it to yakety sax. But it's just crazy, though,
2:00
Speaker 1: when you see how long it takes to make this
2:04
Speaker 1: one axe, and then you think about outfitting armies. Yeah,
2:09
Speaker 1: it just feels like it was every other person a
2:12
Speaker 1: blacksmith and did they just do that? Yeah? I get
2:16
Speaker 1: the impression. There was a Walt Whitman poem about blacksmith's
2:19
Speaker 1: and he was basically like they were the most important
2:23
Speaker 1: people in any community. Everybody loved them. They owed no
2:27
Speaker 1: one anything because they never had any debts, because they
2:30
Speaker 1: were so vital that anything they did probably was worth
2:33
Speaker 1: ten times what anybody else could do for them. Um,
2:36
Speaker 1: and they seem to have been pretty amazing people on
2:40
Speaker 1: the whole. Yeah. I mean, and we'll talk about this more,
2:43
Speaker 1: but when you think about just nails, yeah, and how
2:46
Speaker 1: many nails built this country and the world, right, those
2:50
Speaker 1: nails had to be forged. Yeah. When you watch some
2:52
Speaker 1: of these Blacksmith videos and like you're saying, when you
2:54
Speaker 1: do see how long it takes to just make an
2:57
Speaker 1: average thing that you would like buy in a second
3:00
Speaker 1: these days, it really gives you an appreciation for just
3:04
Speaker 1: what a sea change the Industrial Revolution was where this
3:07
Speaker 1: was automated and made converted to mass production. It just
3:12
Speaker 1: could have never happened before, and it didn't happen before,
3:16
Speaker 1: but it was up to the lone blacksmith to equip
3:20
Speaker 1: their entire communities with all this stuff. Is pretty cool.
3:23
Speaker 1: So are we gonna do blacksmith history first or the
3:28
Speaker 1: metal history first? Um, We'll do blacksmith history first, I think, Okay,
3:34
Speaker 1: I guess we gotta look at the name because if
3:37
Speaker 1: you if you look at other smiths, they were a
3:41
Speaker 1: little more specific. They were called bron smith's, um blacksmiths,
3:45
Speaker 1: or not called iron smith's, even though they work with iron,
3:48
Speaker 1: and most of the other smiths were named for the
3:50
Speaker 1: metal that they work with. Silver smith. That's a good one. Yeah, God,
3:53
Speaker 1: good silver smith. It's worth their waiting. Gold silver. Don't
3:58
Speaker 1: bring up gold to those, Oh no, no, But black
4:01
Speaker 1: comes from well, we're not positive, but one explanation is
4:05
Speaker 1: blacksmith comes from the hammer scale or these scales. If
4:08
Speaker 1: you're watching these videos, you'll see when they're hammering the stuff,
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Speaker 1: these little tiny, chunky thin not chunky actually just little
4:16
Speaker 1: chunks of thin scales are falling off every time the
4:19
Speaker 1: hammer it. That's the hammer scale. And it is black,
4:22
Speaker 1: and your hands get all black and your face gets black.
4:24
Speaker 1: Or it might have just been because iron is black.
4:27
Speaker 1: Typically it's it's pretty dark. It's dark enough, especially wrought iron.
4:31
Speaker 1: It's it tends to be black. So that's where they think.
4:35
Speaker 1: One of those two reasons is where um blacksmith came from.
4:38
Speaker 1: And the name smith itself. We actually talk about this
4:41
Speaker 1: in our book that's coming out, you know. Um. In
4:44
Speaker 1: the episode on Keeping Up with the jones Is, we
4:47
Speaker 1: talked about mean the chapter yeah, yeah, the chapter I'm
4:51
Speaker 1: keeping um in our book, we talked about how keeping
4:54
Speaker 1: up with the Joneses could have very easily been keeping
4:57
Speaker 1: up with the Smiths, um, because the names are so prevalent,
5:01
Speaker 1: and in fact, smith is the most prevalent name in
5:04
Speaker 1: the United States, and it's all derived from blacksmiths. And
5:08
Speaker 1: just how many blacksmiths there were, because every community needed one, um.
5:12
Speaker 1: And then if you were in a large enough community,
5:14
Speaker 1: you had multiple blacksmiths all working because one blacksmith had
5:18
Speaker 1: to do all this work to supply this one community
5:20
Speaker 1: with all this stuff, um, and they could only keep
5:22
Speaker 1: up with a certain size community, you know. Yeah, and uh,
5:27
Speaker 1: if you had an on site thing that you were doing,
5:30
Speaker 1: you had a blacksmith with you. If you were out
5:32
Speaker 1: at war in battle, you had blacksmiths there because not
5:36
Speaker 1: only do they create these weapons and the armor, but
5:40
Speaker 1: they have to fix stuff. You know, after a big,
5:42
Speaker 1: long day of battle, you go in and trade in
5:44
Speaker 1: your sword and say fix this thing. And though smith
5:48
Speaker 1: he's gotta be working around the clock. Yeah, And they
5:51
Speaker 1: have like apprentices and help and all that kind of stuff.
5:54
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I mean, like the you get the
5:56
Speaker 1: impression that the community could come to a standstill when
5:59
Speaker 1: the the blacksmith was sick for a week or something. Yeah,
6:02
Speaker 1: and there were blacksmith's doing all kinds of work all
6:05
Speaker 1: over the place, so many that they eventually, um, and
6:08
Speaker 1: this makes sense, would become a little more specialized. And
6:11
Speaker 1: horses were a big deal back then. We still love
6:13
Speaker 1: horses today, but back then they did a lot more
6:15
Speaker 1: for humanity then just look pretty and run around in fields. Now, uh,
6:20
Speaker 1: so they had to make horse shoes, and it was
6:21
Speaker 1: a very specialized set of equipment for making horse shoes
6:25
Speaker 1: as opposed to just regular blacksmithing, So that was a
6:29
Speaker 1: very busy job. They were called farriers, and even when
6:32
Speaker 1: blacksmithing as a whole kind of went away, there were
6:35
Speaker 1: still farriers working. Because it's not like a shoe store
6:39
Speaker 1: where one size fits all. Well, shoe stores aren't one
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Speaker 1: size fits all, but it's very specific to your foot
6:45
Speaker 1: size or your hoof size as a horse, So you
6:48
Speaker 1: can't just throw any old shoe that's close enough on there.
6:50
Speaker 1: You gotta make them all a cart basically made the order.
6:55
Speaker 1: I think in the fashion world, what's it called bespoke.
7:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the opposite of pretaport. And so farriers
7:05
Speaker 1: continue to work for years and years and years, and
7:07
Speaker 1: I think there are people that still do fairier work today,
7:09
Speaker 1: aren't they? Sure? Sure, just to show off. Sure, but
7:14
Speaker 1: I guess you kind of spoiled the ending. Blacksmiths aren't
7:16
Speaker 1: really around much today because of of industrialization, but they
7:21
Speaker 1: were Inoklyn, New York. Yeah, they are for about two
7:25
Speaker 1: thousand years. They were extraordinarily important to society. Um. But
7:31
Speaker 1: you know, society was around for for a very long
7:33
Speaker 1: time before blacksmith came around. So there's this this really
7:36
Speaker 1: important window in the historical development of human society that blacksmiths,
7:43
Speaker 1: you know, existed in UM. Prior to that, you know,
7:46
Speaker 1: we had tools, but they were mostly made of stone. Uh.
7:50
Speaker 1: And then at some point somebody said, hey, if you
7:52
Speaker 1: put tin and copper together, you can come up with
7:54
Speaker 1: a stuff called bronze. And it's pretty great. You can
7:57
Speaker 1: make some pretty neat things with it. And one of
8:00
Speaker 1: the things about bronze is that it has a fairly
8:03
Speaker 1: low melting point, something like um hundred and forty two
8:08
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit degrees celsius, which you could get a hot
8:14
Speaker 1: camp fire to that that temperature to melt melt into
8:19
Speaker 1: molten liquid bronze, which means that you can create casts
8:24
Speaker 1: and molds, and you can pour that molten bronze into it,
8:27
Speaker 1: and as it cools, you've got a handy sword that
8:29
Speaker 1: you can make over and over and over again. So
8:31
Speaker 1: bronze fulfilled this purpose for tools for many thousands of years,
8:36
Speaker 1: so much of the um and and these metals were
8:38
Speaker 1: so important that we go back and call these historical
8:42
Speaker 1: ages by the name of the metal tools that were
8:45
Speaker 1: being produced. So you got the Bronze Age, and then
8:48
Speaker 1: that was eventually followed by the Iron Age. And one
8:50
Speaker 1: thing that stuck out to me, Chuck, I hadn't realized before,
8:54
Speaker 1: is that um you think of history is progressing, you know, constantly.
8:59
Speaker 1: But the Bronn's Age, even though it was followed by
9:01
Speaker 1: the Iron Age, the Iron Age marked a period of
9:05
Speaker 1: cultural decline where the Bronze Age, which had come previously,
9:08
Speaker 1: was a period of cultural blossoming. But for the first
9:12
Speaker 1: several centuries of the Iron Age, it was a step backwards.
9:15
Speaker 1: A lot of the classical or antiquity society is kind
9:19
Speaker 1: of crumbled at about the same time. They think possibly
9:22
Speaker 1: because of um climate change or mass droughts and starvation,
9:27
Speaker 1: kind of like the Maya. Yeah, so it's not like
9:30
Speaker 1: the iron cause that. But iron, like really good bronze
9:34
Speaker 1: is probably superior to iron in a lot of ways.
9:37
Speaker 1: I think iron is a little softer. Um, it might
9:40
Speaker 1: rust a little quicker. It depends on what kind of
9:42
Speaker 1: iron you have for sure, Right, But the iron that
9:45
Speaker 1: they were using basically they started using, and you know,
9:48
Speaker 1: there's not like a demarcation line. Then there is some overlap,
9:51
Speaker 1: and no one knows exactly when the big switch happened.
9:54
Speaker 1: But it was cheaper and it was more readily available
9:57
Speaker 1: than bronze was, so they just started iron basically in
10:01
Speaker 1: its surpassed bronze. Yeah. The Greek's pin a semi mythical
10:05
Speaker 1: group called the chala Bees who supposedly were absorbed by
10:09
Speaker 1: the Hittites in Anatolia and Turkey, and that they were
10:13
Speaker 1: the ones who figured out how to mine iron because
10:16
Speaker 1: originally there was iron stuff Like King Tut was found
10:19
Speaker 1: with the dagger made of iron, and it would have
10:23
Speaker 1: been even more highly prized than anything made of gold
10:27
Speaker 1: in his entire tomb, because iron was so rare at
10:31
Speaker 1: that time, because the only source of iron on Earth,
10:34
Speaker 1: as far as humans knew, came in the form of meteorites.
10:38
Speaker 1: So you have to find a meteorite above ground to
10:40
Speaker 1: find your deposit of iron. So making a dagger out
10:44
Speaker 1: of that would have been that would have been a
10:45
Speaker 1: very special dagger. And then eventually they say, the calibies
10:49
Speaker 1: figured out now there's actually iron like in rock in
10:52
Speaker 1: the earth, and people started figuring out that you could
10:55
Speaker 1: take that rock and heat it to some pretty high
10:58
Speaker 1: temperatures considering and hammer it, and you can hammer the
11:02
Speaker 1: other stuff out, the ore out or hammer the iron
11:06
Speaker 1: from the ore, and you have something approaching what what
11:09
Speaker 1: you would consider iron, something called bloom. Yeah, so they
11:12
Speaker 1: just couldn't get the fire hot enough basically at first
11:14
Speaker 1: to get to the iron point, but they could make
11:17
Speaker 1: out hot enough to get to the bloom and they
11:19
Speaker 1: would put it in an oven known as a bloomery
11:21
Speaker 1: and it would kind of just roast out those impurities.
11:24
Speaker 1: Um had iron had slag, which is sort of a
11:27
Speaker 1: glass like byproduct that you you know, it's so funny
11:30
Speaker 1: that you just hammer the stuff out, but bloom would
11:33
Speaker 1: eventually uh when they I mean it worked Okay, you
11:37
Speaker 1: could heat it up, you could hammer it and it
11:39
Speaker 1: would get a lot of the slag out, and it
11:42
Speaker 1: was It was useful enough for tools. But when the
11:46
Speaker 1: blast furnace came around, when you really got larger furnaces
11:49
Speaker 1: and hotter fires that incorporated bellows to really get that
11:53
Speaker 1: oxygen in there and get it super super hot. That
11:56
Speaker 1: eventually allowed them to get that ore to pig iron,
12:01
Speaker 1: and pig iron was a pretty big advancement because from
12:05
Speaker 1: pig iron you could hammer that slag out to eventually
12:09
Speaker 1: get to wrought iron. Right, Um, I want to give
12:12
Speaker 1: a shout out to Harold the Smith h a r
12:14
Speaker 1: a l d. He wrote an intro to iron smelting
12:18
Speaker 1: that talks all about making bloom himself with pictures. It's
12:20
Speaker 1: pretty cool, it's sure. And the Abster helped us with
12:23
Speaker 1: this one, right yeah, big time. Thank you grabs stir Um.
12:27
Speaker 1: But with pig iron, that was like it was, like
12:29
Speaker 1: you said, like a pretty big change in that, like
12:31
Speaker 1: you could suddenly make much purer iron because we had
12:34
Speaker 1: a much hotter um furnace that we were working with
12:38
Speaker 1: and the thing about pig iron is in very much
12:41
Speaker 1: the same way as bloom. You've got to hammer out
12:43
Speaker 1: those impurities. And so to make pig iron into wrought iron,
12:49
Speaker 1: you would take this pig iron, which is pretty impure,
12:51
Speaker 1: heated up and hammer it with a sledge hammer over
12:55
Speaker 1: and over again. Heated hammer, heated hammer, very much the
12:58
Speaker 1: same process as bloom, but this at higher temperatures and
13:01
Speaker 1: producing a much pure iron, and then eventually you would
13:04
Speaker 1: have wrought iron. Um And they say that, they say
13:08
Speaker 1: figured out how to use water hammers like water powered hammers,
13:12
Speaker 1: in part because of the plague of the thirteenth century.
13:16
Speaker 1: It killed so many people that they didn't have the
13:19
Speaker 1: human power any longer that they needed to hammer pig iron.
13:23
Speaker 1: So it made people devise um water hammers. Yeah, water hammers,
13:28
Speaker 1: steam hammers. Um. You know, if you look at these
13:31
Speaker 1: videos today, these these people in their in their shops
13:34
Speaker 1: and their sheds they have behind their house have it
13:38
Speaker 1: looks like hydraulics. I guess that are pounding this stuff.
13:41
Speaker 1: And at first when I saw that, I was disappointed.
13:43
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, man, but that's just the big
13:46
Speaker 1: initial work, Like there's still tons of hammer work by hand.
13:51
Speaker 1: Um because there are many many there's a lot more
13:54
Speaker 1: to it than that initial hammering right to get to
13:57
Speaker 1: the wrought iron stage. But I was at first I
13:59
Speaker 1: was kind of like, man, what they don't use They
14:01
Speaker 1: don't like swing a hammer anymore? Right now? No? No, there,
14:05
Speaker 1: there's just right. It's called work smarter, not harder. But
14:09
Speaker 1: there are traditionalists who are like, no, you want to
14:12
Speaker 1: use a hammer. Um. But so the different types of
14:16
Speaker 1: irons that that humans have come up with over the
14:19
Speaker 1: over the ages, and this is a really important point
14:22
Speaker 1: I think we should point out here, Chuck, Like the
14:24
Speaker 1: blacksmithing um and all of the information and knowledge and
14:29
Speaker 1: like ways of working with different types of iron, different
14:32
Speaker 1: techniques and actually coming up with different types of iron.
14:35
Speaker 1: All of that started with those people who figured out
14:39
Speaker 1: that you could take rock from the earth and hammer
14:40
Speaker 1: the iron out of it, and just more and more
14:43
Speaker 1: people over the ages as it spread and continue to
14:47
Speaker 1: be around for hundreds and thousands of years um. All
14:50
Speaker 1: the people working with with metal contributed to that body
14:53
Speaker 1: of knowledge, and so that's I think one of the
14:56
Speaker 1: things that's so appealing about blacksmithing is that it is
15:00
Speaker 1: a genuine human technology that was created by humanity, you know,
15:09
Speaker 1: not just like a couple of people who had a
15:11
Speaker 1: really good idea. It was this this group of humans,
15:14
Speaker 1: countless humans, all working together over thousands of years, contributing
15:18
Speaker 1: to one another's knowledge. You create this body of knowledge,
15:21
Speaker 1: and I think that's what makes it so neat to me,
15:24
Speaker 1: so cool, and and like such a brute way of
15:27
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, those the finesse comes in for sure,
15:31
Speaker 1: and maybe that's what I like about it is both
15:33
Speaker 1: like it's swinging the heavy hammer, but it's also doing
15:36
Speaker 1: this really beautiful finesse work later on in the project.
15:39
Speaker 1: Really cool. So if we're gonna well, maybe let's take
15:42
Speaker 1: a break and then talk about the types of iron.
15:44
Speaker 1: How about that. Let's oh, all right, we promise you
16:16
Speaker 1: talk of iron types. There's iron maiden. Sure, there's um
16:23
Speaker 1: take your iron supplement. That's right, there's really just iron maiden. Yeah,
16:28
Speaker 1: I guess that's all. That's all you need to know.
16:32
Speaker 1: Iron types. They're based on the carbon content of the iron.
16:35
Speaker 1: So if you hear wrought iron, you might just think
16:39
Speaker 1: that's like the cool thing that your your stair case
16:43
Speaker 1: spindles are made out of. They are not made of
16:45
Speaker 1: wrought they have frought iron anymore, at least they used
16:48
Speaker 1: to be back in the day. But this is also
16:50
Speaker 1: called bar iron. It's about point eight I'm sorry, point
16:55
Speaker 1: or less carbon. And this is sort of from what
17:00
Speaker 1: I saw um back in the day. Just the main
17:04
Speaker 1: iron that they would mainly use for the most part,
17:08
Speaker 1: the wrought iron. Yeah, um. And the difference, the big
17:12
Speaker 1: difference between wrought iron and steel is that wrought iron
17:16
Speaker 1: has um silicates in it that kind of ends up
17:19
Speaker 1: as like these fibrous filaments that get hammered into order
17:25
Speaker 1: basically by the blacksmith um from pig iron, which which
17:31
Speaker 1: gives it a certain structure. With steel steel um. Like
17:35
Speaker 1: you said, all types of iron are basically based on
17:37
Speaker 1: their carbon content. Steel has a much higher carbon content
17:40
Speaker 1: than wrought iron does, and so it doesn't need to
17:43
Speaker 1: be hammered like wrought iron does because it doesn't have
17:45
Speaker 1: these iron silicates that need to be arranged just so
17:48
Speaker 1: or else it will make it brittle. Um. Instead, because
17:52
Speaker 1: of this carbon um in it, it forms this kind
17:56
Speaker 1: of crystalline structure in the iron that makes it horror
18:00
Speaker 1: and durable. UM way way harder and more durable than
18:04
Speaker 1: wrought iron. The problem is is because that that durability
18:07
Speaker 1: and the strength and hardness, um, it makes it more
18:10
Speaker 1: difficult for a blacksmith to work with down the line
18:13
Speaker 1: than it has wrought iron. But it's also a much
18:16
Speaker 1: more effective, say, battle acts than a wrought iron battle acts. Yeah,
18:20
Speaker 1: and like you said, it's not what we use on
18:22
Speaker 1: our staircase. Isn't wrought iron these days, it's not wrought iron.
18:25
Speaker 1: And the production of that and like a big way
18:27
Speaker 1: went out in you know, the century pretty much altogether
18:31
Speaker 1: went out with disco. Gosh, I wish it lesson to
18:34
Speaker 1: the seventies. So one thing we should say also to
18:38
Speaker 1: Chuck is we tend to think of steel is like
18:40
Speaker 1: a modern invention. Steel was perfected in in the modern times.
18:44
Speaker 1: It was like basically the thing that kicked off the
18:46
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, if I remember from our Robber Barons episode.
18:49
Speaker 1: But that's not to say that people weren't experimenting with
18:52
Speaker 1: steel long before that. It was just the scientific understanding
18:57
Speaker 1: of it was lacking in dead that was replaced by
19:01
Speaker 1: an intuitive understanding among blacksmiths of you know, what fuel did,
19:06
Speaker 1: what to steal what to iron to make it stronger.
19:08
Speaker 1: They weren't saying like Oh, if I use charcoal or coke,
19:11
Speaker 1: it's gonna make this a um a better steel than say,
19:15
Speaker 1: you know, um coal or something like that. That's right.
19:19
Speaker 1: Then you've also got cast iron. If you have a
19:22
Speaker 1: a nice cast iron collection in your kitchen, it's gonna
19:25
Speaker 1: be two percent carbon or more. It's very brittle, so
19:28
Speaker 1: you're not gonna hammer cast iron. Uh. It is formed
19:31
Speaker 1: into shape by casting it. That's why it's called cast iron.
19:34
Speaker 1: And use a mold while it's molten and poured in there,
19:37
Speaker 1: and it's a great thing to cook with. Yeah, And
19:39
Speaker 1: we would have never been able to make anything out
19:41
Speaker 1: of cast iron until those those bellows were introduced to
19:44
Speaker 1: the forge to to really bring that temperature up because
19:48
Speaker 1: at a very high melting point. Yeah, if you're gonna
19:50
Speaker 1: pour it, it's got to be super super hot. And
19:52
Speaker 1: we'll get to these temperatures in the different kinds of
19:55
Speaker 1: hot later on, which is very interesting stuff. Yeah. So
19:58
Speaker 1: we've got like the black that's a are working with this.
20:01
Speaker 1: They're figuring out that if you add like carbon or
20:04
Speaker 1: if you do this like if you if you um
20:07
Speaker 1: heat the iron to a certain temperature, um, it's and
20:11
Speaker 1: and then take it off and hammer it and then
20:13
Speaker 1: let it cool on its own. It's going to form
20:15
Speaker 1: one type of finished product if you um do something
20:19
Speaker 1: that's called quenching it, which is cooling it down in
20:21
Speaker 1: a bucket of water and usually mineral oil these days,
20:24
Speaker 1: it's going to cool differently, so it's structure is going
20:27
Speaker 1: to form differently. Um. And again they didn't they were
20:30
Speaker 1: passing this knowledge on, but they weren't using terms necessarily
20:32
Speaker 1: that we were using. What's interesting to me is we
20:35
Speaker 1: use terms that they came up with, like quenching and
20:38
Speaker 1: slag and scale and that kind of stuff like those
20:41
Speaker 1: are all still very much around and it makes sense
20:44
Speaker 1: still even after having made the transition to industrialization, they
20:48
Speaker 1: still use words very much like that, if not those
20:50
Speaker 1: same words. Now do you mean quenching is in how
20:53
Speaker 1: a human might quench their own thirst? Um? Kind of
20:57
Speaker 1: kind of, But rather than turning up a bucket of
21:01
Speaker 1: water and mineral oil, you would plunge the iron, the
21:04
Speaker 1: hot iron, into that bucket of mineral oil and water.
21:07
Speaker 1: That's right, very cool stuff. Are you making a joke
21:12
Speaker 1: that I just missed a reference? Okay, No, I didn't know.
21:16
Speaker 1: I didn't know if you were saying the etymology of
21:18
Speaker 1: the word quench was from smith ing. Oh maybe, and
21:22
Speaker 1: that when we quench our thirst it's taken from that.
21:24
Speaker 1: Maybe it's possible, I mean smite. They think that the
21:29
Speaker 1: words smite and smith are from the same word, right,
21:33
Speaker 1: because smite means very biblical meaning or not meaning. But
21:36
Speaker 1: these are a lot in Bible times. To to hit
21:39
Speaker 1: something right, or yeah, to strike it to to to
21:42
Speaker 1: smite something's right, and that's what a smith does. Should
21:45
Speaker 1: we talk about tools? I think so. One of the
21:47
Speaker 1: cool things about blacksmith is that they when you get good,
21:51
Speaker 1: you just start making your own tools, man, and then
21:54
Speaker 1: neat tools to make tools. Yeah, you gotta start somewhere
21:57
Speaker 1: though though even yeah, you gotta lay down to little
22:00
Speaker 1: tot of money first. But I saw I saw this
22:02
Speaker 1: one blog post by a blacksmith who's like, look, if
22:04
Speaker 1: you're just starting out, just you know, get the bare
22:07
Speaker 1: minimum stuff, get some used things. See if you like
22:09
Speaker 1: it first, and then eventually when you get good you
22:11
Speaker 1: can invest a little money. Then you can just start
22:13
Speaker 1: making your own stuff, right, which is very cool. I
22:16
Speaker 1: did see there was one YouTube video that was like
22:17
Speaker 1: how to how to get going for less than a
22:19
Speaker 1: hundred bucks, some very basic stuff. So if you're gonna
22:23
Speaker 1: be a smithy, you're gonna need some things. It might
22:26
Speaker 1: be less than a hundred dollars to start. You're gonna
22:28
Speaker 1: need a forge, which is the heat. Um, there are
22:33
Speaker 1: different kinds, you know that the one that I saw
22:35
Speaker 1: the acts this is sort of a UM I don't
22:37
Speaker 1: know if it's old timy, but it was actually using
22:40
Speaker 1: coal and that's very appealing to the eye. If you're
22:43
Speaker 1: watching on YouTube, it seems like the backyard smithy these
22:47
Speaker 1: days uses a gas powered oven, a gas powered forge
22:52
Speaker 1: where they using coal or charcoal, because there's a big difference.
22:55
Speaker 1: It was coal. Okay, I didn't know much about charcoal
22:59
Speaker 1: until this. We'll talk about it later, but it seems
23:01
Speaker 1: like these days the gas powered ford just kind of
23:05
Speaker 1: what you use. They're not very big. It's sort of
23:07
Speaker 1: like a double size of a breadbox. Because when you're
23:11
Speaker 1: making something, you're not making you're not building a car
23:15
Speaker 1: out of iron. You're making a tool. You're making a
23:17
Speaker 1: a dagger or an axe head. Like they're all kind
23:20
Speaker 1: of small, something you can just sort of stick in there. Um,
23:24
Speaker 1: you're gonna have your anvil, very key, very key piece
23:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a lot of other tools, um for
23:31
Speaker 1: like the more finesse work um grinders and files and
23:35
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and you're gonna have a nice collection
23:37
Speaker 1: of hammers. Of course, yeah, you definitely. There's different hammers
23:41
Speaker 1: for different things. And like we said, you know, hammering
23:44
Speaker 1: pig iron and noraw iron. People don't do that these days,
23:46
Speaker 1: so you're not using a sledge hammer and so using
23:48
Speaker 1: like a little more finesse and precision to um to
23:52
Speaker 1: kind of strike what's called the workpiece. Whatever you're working
23:55
Speaker 1: on is called the workpiece. Um. That's one thing that
23:57
Speaker 1: really stood out to me watching some of these blacksmith
24:00
Speaker 1: videos is like these guys do not miss. At least
24:02
Speaker 1: if you're at the level where you're doing close ups
24:04
Speaker 1: of your work um on video and posting them to YouTube,
24:08
Speaker 1: you don't. Your your hammer is not missing. It's going
24:11
Speaker 1: exactly where you want it to every time, which is
24:13
Speaker 1: pretty cool too, it is. But I also, and this
24:15
Speaker 1: is not to not the smithy's it seems like a
24:18
Speaker 1: bit of a forgiving craft and art um so where
24:23
Speaker 1: you can sort of like if something didn't if you
24:26
Speaker 1: did strike it and it kind of did something you
24:28
Speaker 1: didn't quite like you can change that, right, you can
24:31
Speaker 1: restrike it, you can reheat it. Um. Yeah, I'm sure
24:34
Speaker 1: there's a lot of trial and error involved when you're
24:35
Speaker 1: first getting started, you know. First, Yeah, I'm sure too,
24:38
Speaker 1: and then you know, as you keep advancing, you're figuring
24:40
Speaker 1: out new techniques and all that kind of thing. But
24:43
Speaker 1: like you're saying, the anvil is it's um, it's pretty neat.
24:46
Speaker 1: Like I didn't realize all the different parts to it.
24:48
Speaker 1: Like anybody who's seen a Wily Coyote cartoon can recognize
24:51
Speaker 1: an anvil until you probably draw one from memory and
24:54
Speaker 1: you'd probably be pretty close. And that's a pretty accurate
24:58
Speaker 1: image of what an anvil does. But all the little
25:00
Speaker 1: different details from like the point on the front to
25:03
Speaker 1: the feet of it, um, all of those serve this, um,
25:06
Speaker 1: this kind of group of purposes that come up pretty
25:09
Speaker 1: frequently in blacksmithing. Yeah, so the anvil is super heavy. Uh,
25:14
Speaker 1: it is very hard. Obviously, you don't want the anvil
25:17
Speaker 1: itself to be dented or start falling apart when you're
25:21
Speaker 1: swinging this heavy hammer on metal, on this thing or
25:24
Speaker 1: on iron, and uh so you also want it so
25:28
Speaker 1: it doesn't like just absorb. The hammer blows too, so
25:30
Speaker 1: it's got to be the right amount of hardness. Can't
25:33
Speaker 1: be breaking, can't be shattering. Um, you've got a horn
25:37
Speaker 1: on the front. You talked about the pointy thing. Yeah,
25:40
Speaker 1: that's what's on the front of it. And usually in
25:42
Speaker 1: all the anvils I saw when I looked them up
25:44
Speaker 1: to buy one just to have, although they were way
25:47
Speaker 1: too expensive. Um, it's got a little dip right before
25:52
Speaker 1: the horn where the horn juts out. So the horn
25:54
Speaker 1: is that. Yeah, the horn is an exactly level with
25:58
Speaker 1: the regular base of the anvil. It's down just a
26:00
Speaker 1: bit and that, and it's not by accident, that's very much.
26:04
Speaker 1: One of the big uses of the horn is that
26:06
Speaker 1: little step down. Yeah, that's That's one of the neat
26:08
Speaker 1: things about anvils is like each little detail has a purpose,
26:12
Speaker 1: a larger purpose that's hidden until you understand what you're
26:15
Speaker 1: looking at or what it does. What about those holes.
26:17
Speaker 1: There's like two holes in every anvil pretty much. One's
26:20
Speaker 1: round in one square, and the round one is called
26:23
Speaker 1: a Pritchel hole, and it is basically a hole so
26:26
Speaker 1: that you can punch holes into, um, whatever workpiece you're
26:30
Speaker 1: working on. Um, I saw that if you're punching a hole,
26:34
Speaker 1: you actually want to punch it on the face of
26:35
Speaker 1: the anvil, which is the top. You punch it on
26:38
Speaker 1: one side almost all the way through, flip it over,
26:40
Speaker 1: punch it on the other side almost all the way through,
26:42
Speaker 1: and then you move it to the pretel hole and
26:44
Speaker 1: then that's when you widen it to the shape you want.
26:47
Speaker 1: So it just allows you to punch a hole all
26:50
Speaker 1: the way through without harming the face of your anvil. Really, um,
26:53
Speaker 1: that was one of my favorite parts of the video
26:55
Speaker 1: I saw because that was where the ax head hole went,
27:00
Speaker 1: where you would you know, put the axe handle. Oh
27:02
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, So I was like, how you gonna do that?
27:04
Speaker 1: And just to see it happen in front of your eyes,
27:06
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty awesome. And then what's the
27:08
Speaker 1: other whole, the hardy hole? Yeah, the hardy hole is
27:11
Speaker 1: actually square with the d yes h A R D Y. Yes,
27:17
Speaker 1: it's it's not hearty because it's very tough, although it
27:19
Speaker 1: is very tough, but it is a square hole, which
27:22
Speaker 1: sounds kind of intuitive, but it's not. And you can
27:25
Speaker 1: put tools in there that allow you, like you might
27:29
Speaker 1: stick something in there and then use that to then
27:33
Speaker 1: bend the hot iron around to make different binds and
27:37
Speaker 1: cuts and shapes and things. Yeah. I saw this one
27:39
Speaker 1: tool and a couple of different videos that fit into
27:42
Speaker 1: the hardy hole. The hardy hole is almost like a
27:44
Speaker 1: drumal tool, right, So like there's all these different things
27:46
Speaker 1: you can put in that that square hole that hold
27:50
Speaker 1: in place UM. But the difference between them is what
27:53
Speaker 1: what tool is attached to that square peg? That's right,
27:55
Speaker 1: square peg, square square peg. UM. And one of the
28:00
Speaker 1: ones that I saw it looked like a tuning fork.
28:01
Speaker 1: It's like two rods that are very close together and
28:04
Speaker 1: you could put like um, a hot um workpiece in
28:08
Speaker 1: between them and then you know, bend it so you
28:11
Speaker 1: can make like an s hook. It's used for like
28:13
Speaker 1: very tight creating very tight curves in the workpiece. It's
28:17
Speaker 1: very very cool. Yeah, you gotta have your tongues. And
28:21
Speaker 1: I think we should have mentioned to the anvil um
28:23
Speaker 1: it's not it doesn't have a sharp edge. Like the
28:26
Speaker 1: edge all the way around the main work base of
28:28
Speaker 1: the anvil is a little bit round. Because you know,
28:31
Speaker 1: if you've got something super sharp and you're hammering away,
28:34
Speaker 1: it's going to make little creases in the iron. You
28:36
Speaker 1: know what, I think the step is the sharpest edge
28:39
Speaker 1: of the whole thing, between the horn and the face
28:41
Speaker 1: the top of it. Yeah, I think that's where you
28:44
Speaker 1: need it to be sharp. One other thing I saw
28:46
Speaker 1: that UM that I thought was really interesting is um,
28:49
Speaker 1: when you buy an anvil, you want to actually fit
28:52
Speaker 1: it to a block of wood. And traditionally people will
28:56
Speaker 1: use like a good tree stump of wood that doesn't
28:58
Speaker 1: split very easily, and like may and you you fasten
29:01
Speaker 1: it to that would that tree stump, and then you
29:05
Speaker 1: bury the tree stump whenever you can, about three feet
29:08
Speaker 1: into the ground, so that Um, the anvil becomes part
29:13
Speaker 1: of the tree stump, becomes part of the ground, so
29:15
Speaker 1: it distributes that extra energy that that gets lost rather
29:19
Speaker 1: than back up at you down into the ground where
29:21
Speaker 1: it's absorbed, which I just find absolutely fascinating. But you
29:24
Speaker 1: you make it so well fastened to the stump that
29:27
Speaker 1: the stump the anvil become basically one. Yeah, It's like
29:31
Speaker 1: the anvil is essentially connected to the earth at that point.
29:33
Speaker 1: It's so nice. Just just man, just keep thinking of
29:39
Speaker 1: thor and led Zeppelin, all the things. JR. Tolkien. Um
29:45
Speaker 1: the smithy you gotta have those tongs. And these are
29:48
Speaker 1: not like grilled tongs that you have on your back porch.
29:51
Speaker 1: These are those big thick metal uh iron. They look
29:55
Speaker 1: like like like gussied up nail clippers almost, And that's
30:00
Speaker 1: what you're gonna used to put stuff in the in
30:02
Speaker 1: the forage and that fire pull it out. Um. It's
30:06
Speaker 1: funny here it says that pretty much no one wears gloves.
30:10
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. I saw plenty of videos with
30:12
Speaker 1: people wearing gloves both, and I saw some where they did.
30:15
Speaker 1: And I guess sometimes if you're working really near the heat,
30:19
Speaker 1: you might want your gloves on, but you might also
30:20
Speaker 1: want to have the hand feel during that finesse work. Yeah,
30:25
Speaker 1: because and I think it's worth saying one more time
30:27
Speaker 1: that that that um forge where the fire is, it's
30:30
Speaker 1: I mean, it is very small. I saw as little
30:32
Speaker 1: as like a six by six inch um like little
30:35
Speaker 1: area of extraordinarily intense heat. So it's a small area
30:39
Speaker 1: of heat, but the heat that is there is so
30:41
Speaker 1: hot it can turn iron white hot. So yeah, you
30:46
Speaker 1: want to not get too close to it. And even
30:48
Speaker 1: when you're wearing tongs, it's smart to wear gloves from
30:50
Speaker 1: what I saw, yeah, and we we never really talked
30:52
Speaker 1: much about the fuel UM and I said, these days
30:55
Speaker 1: they power it with gas mainly UM. Back in the day,
30:58
Speaker 1: back in the day, they would use charcoal. That was
31:01
Speaker 1: the first thing. And charcoal apparently, if you're, you know,
31:04
Speaker 1: going to be a Brooklyn hipster, you want to work
31:07
Speaker 1: with charcoal because that is the superior product and the
31:09
Speaker 1: superior superior fuel. But it's really messy, very wasteful. It's
31:14
Speaker 1: very wasteful, it's expensive a lot of it takes a
31:17
Speaker 1: lot of wood to make charcoal. So then coal comes
31:21
Speaker 1: rolling around, and there was a lot of coal and
31:23
Speaker 1: it was super cheap and they had to kind of
31:26
Speaker 1: rebuild their forges. But coal, even though it has some
31:29
Speaker 1: impurities like sulfur and stuff in there, they basically kind
31:32
Speaker 1: of made the big switch to coal at a certain
31:34
Speaker 1: point in time. Yeah. And and even better is if
31:37
Speaker 1: you can get your hands on coke UM, which is
31:40
Speaker 1: a derivative of coal, just like charcoal is a derivative
31:44
Speaker 1: of wood. It's just wood with the sap and the
31:46
Speaker 1: water burned out, so it's a really energy dense form
31:49
Speaker 1: of it. Coke is the same thing with coal. It's
31:51
Speaker 1: got the impurities generally burned out, so it's a pure energy,
31:54
Speaker 1: dense form of of coal um. But both of them
31:58
Speaker 1: play a really important role and that they produce really
32:01
Speaker 1: high temperatures, but they also introduce a lot of that
32:04
Speaker 1: carbon that gets absorbed into the iron at those high temperatures,
32:08
Speaker 1: which produces better, harder, stronger steel. Can you cook with
32:11
Speaker 1: that stuff? Can you cook with coke? Cook with coke?
32:15
Speaker 1: I don't know, come out of cook I don't know.
32:19
Speaker 1: That's one thing that I saw on one of these
32:21
Speaker 1: blog posts about different types of fuel. I think it
32:24
Speaker 1: was like the Nobs, but they spell out the word BS,
32:27
Speaker 1: which I'm not gonna stay here got because they're they're blacksmiths. Um.
32:31
Speaker 1: They the Nobs guide to different kinds of fuel. They said,
32:35
Speaker 1: one of the things he considers what kind of environmental
32:38
Speaker 1: impact is your fuel having? So that's a good question.
32:41
Speaker 1: If you're like, I'm not sure I should be cooking
32:43
Speaker 1: with this, don't forget. You're going to be in a small,
32:46
Speaker 1: enclosed room that's your blacksmith shop with that same stuff,
32:50
Speaker 1: and you probably have a pretty high efficiency chimney, but
32:52
Speaker 1: some of it's still coming back. So that's definitely a
32:54
Speaker 1: consideration to think of your own health and the health
32:57
Speaker 1: of Mother Earth, who is absorbing the blows from your anvil.
33:00
Speaker 1: That's right, you do need good ventilation in your workshop.
33:03
Speaker 1: I protection. Uh. Sometimes if you really want to kick
33:07
Speaker 1: at old school, you might have one of those leather aprons,
33:09
Speaker 1: like a leather face. And then your quench. You know
33:12
Speaker 1: we talked about um quenching. It's called a quench or
33:16
Speaker 1: a quench bucket, and that is the bucket with the
33:18
Speaker 1: water and like you said, sometimes mineral oil these days,
33:21
Speaker 1: where you'll plunge it in there, just like on TV
33:24
Speaker 1: and in movies when it makes that great steamy sound
33:28
Speaker 1: and the steam rises everywhere. Then they pulled out a
33:31
Speaker 1: beautiful battle axe or long sword. Yeah, apparently the So
33:37
Speaker 1: it's not that surprising when you consider samurai. But the
33:39
Speaker 1: Japanese are really really good at creating high carbon steel blades.
33:45
Speaker 1: And there's one guy named Goro g O r O
33:48
Speaker 1: who is like well widely considered the greatest Japanese swordsmith
33:52
Speaker 1: of all time from back in the thirteenth century. So
33:55
Speaker 1: he can throw together at katana, no problem, no problem.
34:00
Speaker 1: Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we're gonna
34:03
Speaker 1: take a break in, talk a little bit about and
34:05
Speaker 1: get quite a bit wrong, probably about techniques. Right after this,
34:28
Speaker 1: Oh all right, let the parade of misinformation begin. You know,
34:43
Speaker 1: these worry me more than other episodes that we do
34:46
Speaker 1: when it's something very technical and very specific, because these
34:49
Speaker 1: guys make battle axes. Yeah, and it's anytime it's a
34:52
Speaker 1: very specific craft or something that you haven't done, like
34:55
Speaker 1: we haven't done. You can research it and watch videos
34:59
Speaker 1: and do your best, but it until you've actually done it,
35:02
Speaker 1: you can't get it percent right. So I will say though,
35:05
Speaker 1: the videos help tremendous if like this is even remotely
35:09
Speaker 1: interesting to you, and hopefully it is if you're you
35:12
Speaker 1: know this many minutes thirty three minutes or so into
35:15
Speaker 1: this podcast. That that is, go watch some videos. There's
35:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of them on there, and I think you're
35:20
Speaker 1: gonna be like, Okay, I get what they were saying. Now,
35:23
Speaker 1: Oh that makes sense. Forging a bearded battle Uh, forging
35:25
Speaker 1: a bearded X that's the one. I've got one black
35:29
Speaker 1: bear forge, this giant man, the giant beard and a
35:34
Speaker 1: tiny little leather capable yeah he he um. The video
35:40
Speaker 1: I watched is called scarf theory and making chain, which
35:42
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a minute. But it's just amazing.
35:47
Speaker 1: It's so cool. And like you said, I don't want
35:49
Speaker 1: to do it. I want to have a friend that
35:51
Speaker 1: does it. I want to come over to their house
35:55
Speaker 1: and watch them do it. Like let's see if we
35:57
Speaker 1: can get John Hodgman into it. Hodgeman also, he's got
36:02
Speaker 1: very strong forearms. He does freakishly like Popeye. All right,
36:07
Speaker 1: So here's some of the techniques. What you're doing if
36:09
Speaker 1: you're a smithy is you are shaping hot metal. That's
36:12
Speaker 1: what it comes down to. And this is where the
36:15
Speaker 1: temperature of the metal comes becomes really important because certain
36:22
Speaker 1: metals have to be at certain temperatures to do certain things.
36:25
Speaker 1: These days, like I said, if you've got your your
36:27
Speaker 1: gas powered forge, you can set that baby on whatever
36:31
Speaker 1: to exact temperature you want. And it's not quite as
36:36
Speaker 1: um it's still very impressive. But back in the day
36:39
Speaker 1: when they were using coal and charcoal, there was I
36:40
Speaker 1: feel like much more intuition and trial and error and
36:45
Speaker 1: actually looking at the color the color temperature, because the
36:49
Speaker 1: metal will turn different colors at different temperatures. So there's
36:53
Speaker 1: white hot, orange, hot, yellow, hot, red, hot, different kinds
36:56
Speaker 1: of gradients of orange and yellow and white too. There's
37:00
Speaker 1: glowing white, which is the hottest. It's just those aren't
37:03
Speaker 1: just expressions. People say, no, And that's again that's the
37:06
Speaker 1: anomology etymology of of um of blacksmith lingo. Basically that
37:13
Speaker 1: has made it into yeah, like those abs of yours
37:19
Speaker 1: are white hot. Oh no, wait, that was a different,
37:22
Speaker 1: different episode. That's right, so um. And but apparently blue
37:26
Speaker 1: white hot is the hottest of all, but you don't
37:29
Speaker 1: typically see that in blacksmithing. White hot is about as
37:32
Speaker 1: hot as you get. And how hot is white hot?
37:35
Speaker 1: White hot from what I saw was fifty degrees fahrenheight,
37:39
Speaker 1: which is super high and celsius. Okay, yellow I think
37:44
Speaker 1: is just below that. Yeah, and then you've got orange, right,
37:49
Speaker 1: and then you've got lamo red hot, which is which
37:52
Speaker 1: is only degrees seven and sixty celsius. And you can't
37:57
Speaker 1: do anything with red hot. You can do some very
38:00
Speaker 1: like very limited stuff. But at that point the iron
38:03
Speaker 1: is is I mean, it will probably bend a little bit.
38:06
Speaker 1: I saw um, good old black Bear Forge was making
38:09
Speaker 1: some chain with what looked to be red hot um
38:13
Speaker 1: iron at the time, and he was bending it pretty good.
38:15
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm not the best judge of color.
38:18
Speaker 1: He was making chain. Yes, I'm just gonna I'm not
38:22
Speaker 1: gonna wait any longer. This guy made a chain, a
38:25
Speaker 1: length of chain perfect. Each length was exactly the size
38:29
Speaker 1: of the last. He was making them like in threes,
38:32
Speaker 1: and then connecting those threes to other threes, and he
38:35
Speaker 1: was using the horn. Chuck, are you climax or something? No,
38:41
Speaker 1: it's just so satisfying. It It touches these uh parts
38:45
Speaker 1: of my body. You know, it's not sexual at all. Right,
38:48
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Oh, I know what you're saying.
38:49
Speaker 1: It's um, it's it's I know exactly what you mean. Alough,
38:52
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. You never know what might happen. Right,
38:55
Speaker 1: But this guy, so, you know the horn of the anvil, right,
38:59
Speaker 1: he would make like he would He would bend the
39:01
Speaker 1: chain initially on kind of like a thick about the
39:04
Speaker 1: middle part of the horn, and then he would bend
39:06
Speaker 1: it even further, moving in a little up the horn.
39:08
Speaker 1: And this guy just so expertly put it exactly where
39:10
Speaker 1: he needed it to be. Um. I think one of
39:13
Speaker 1: the things I like about black Bear Forge guy is
39:15
Speaker 1: that he doesn't seem the least bit pretentious. I'm pretty
39:19
Speaker 1: sure he lives in Minnesota. Uh he's he's not wearing
39:22
Speaker 1: his little leather cap ironically like he just he seems
39:25
Speaker 1: very helpful. He was born in the videos to help. Yeah,
39:28
Speaker 1: I think he might be right, and with a white beard.
39:32
Speaker 1: He was born with a white beard as well. Well.
39:35
Speaker 1: When you watch this bearded axe thing, what this guy
39:38
Speaker 1: does is he starts with a block of iron and
39:42
Speaker 1: then eventually makes an axe head. But he's hammering this
39:45
Speaker 1: thing out. He's using this little rolling tool and hammering
39:49
Speaker 1: that as he's kind of rolling it forward and it's
39:51
Speaker 1: almost like kind of reminded me of baking, like the
39:54
Speaker 1: way you would use a rolling pin to smooth out
39:56
Speaker 1: dough and then when it came time to actually make
39:59
Speaker 1: the the sharp part. I guess what he was doing
40:03
Speaker 1: was forge welding. And we're kind of jumping around, but
40:05
Speaker 1: this is one of the techniques and it's also called
40:08
Speaker 1: fire welding, and that's when you combine different grades of
40:11
Speaker 1: iron and steel and you're joining these things together and
40:15
Speaker 1: multiple shapes together. I think that's what was going on
40:18
Speaker 1: because what he did, he had this axe head and
40:21
Speaker 1: the sharp part he split, and I was like, well, dude,
40:25
Speaker 1: what kind of an axe is at that's crazy looking.
40:27
Speaker 1: I thought he messed up. But then he puts some
40:30
Speaker 1: other kind of metal in between and would use this
40:33
Speaker 1: and what I gathered, it's, uh, whereas it flux? Is
40:37
Speaker 1: that what it is? Flux? Yeah, like sandy did. Look well,
40:41
Speaker 1: it was in a bottle and it looked like a
40:43
Speaker 1: little sandy chemical, so I guess that's what it was.
40:45
Speaker 1: And he would heat it up and then spray this
40:47
Speaker 1: stuff on it and hammer it together. Heat it up,
40:50
Speaker 1: spray some of this in, hammer it until that metal
40:53
Speaker 1: becomes one and the really, you know, the super specific
40:56
Speaker 1: metal that he needed for the sharp axe blade was
41:00
Speaker 1: melded with the rest of that iron, so you couldn't
41:03
Speaker 1: even tell. It was just like they became one with
41:05
Speaker 1: one another. He was probably real reinforcing the axe head
41:09
Speaker 1: with a stronger um, a stronger type of iron, totally
41:15
Speaker 1: slightly different carbon content, and then the outside was a
41:18
Speaker 1: harder kind so it resisted surface deformities. But the interior
41:23
Speaker 1: stuff was was strength, was strong, so it resisted breaking. Probably,
41:28
Speaker 1: But he was making these two one I saw a
41:31
Speaker 1: black bear force do the same thing with the chains
41:34
Speaker 1: he was he was using a scarf weld where you
41:37
Speaker 1: make um one end angled and then you make the
41:40
Speaker 1: other end that it's going to join to angled in
41:42
Speaker 1: the opposite direction, so they kind of fit tightly together.
41:45
Speaker 1: And then he would heat it up and hammer it
41:47
Speaker 1: together and it just became one. But he used um
41:50
Speaker 1: flux as well, and from what I could tell, when
41:53
Speaker 1: you use flux like sand or borax, I think is
41:56
Speaker 1: is something you can use um it prevents that joint
41:59
Speaker 1: from exidizing, which makes it a stronger, a stronger joint,
42:04
Speaker 1: a stronger seam, rather than kind of a compromise team. Yeah,
42:08
Speaker 1: And it was also interesting to see how this guy
42:11
Speaker 1: would sometimes that block was out for quite a long
42:14
Speaker 1: time of hammering and shaping and hammering and shaping, and
42:18
Speaker 1: then it looked like when he got into the little
42:19
Speaker 1: more detailed work, as it became an axe head, he
42:22
Speaker 1: would he would put it in the fire and he
42:24
Speaker 1: would turn around very quickly and start hammering. You could
42:27
Speaker 1: tell he wanted to do it very fast, and he
42:29
Speaker 1: would hammer it for like ten seconds and then put
42:31
Speaker 1: it right back in the fire and then pull it
42:33
Speaker 1: out and hammer it really fast for ten seconds. So
42:35
Speaker 1: whatever he was doing at that point required a super
42:38
Speaker 1: super super hot piece of what do you call it,
42:41
Speaker 1: ground piece workpiece? Yeah, but I mean so most most blacksmiths,
42:47
Speaker 1: you'll notice in their shops, they set the forge and
42:49
Speaker 1: the envelop within just twisting distance, like you're standing in
42:53
Speaker 1: one place, moving from one to the other, so that
42:55
Speaker 1: you can lose as little heat as possible when you
42:57
Speaker 1: transfer it off the fire. You don't walk across your shop.
43:01
Speaker 1: You don't stop and make a sandwich or anything. There's
43:04
Speaker 1: also drawing, which is drawing that metal out into a longer,
43:08
Speaker 1: thinner shape. You might be shaping something into a rod
43:13
Speaker 1: or a block into a blade like I saw, and
43:16
Speaker 1: that's sort of, um, it's sort of lengthening it without
43:20
Speaker 1: flattening it out right, because you can also flatten it.
43:23
Speaker 1: That's another thing that's called peening. Yeah. Um. There's also upsetting,
43:27
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of drawing, where you shorten the
43:31
Speaker 1: length of iron or steel by hammering it. And that's
43:35
Speaker 1: what happens when you make a nail. What you want
43:38
Speaker 1: to talk about making nails here? Yeah, I mean we
43:41
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned earlier, you know, the the foundation. I mean,
43:44
Speaker 1: there were things that were built with dovetail joints and
43:48
Speaker 1: corn cobs to keep log logs together, and there were
43:52
Speaker 1: technologies like that. But if you really want to talk
43:54
Speaker 1: about the building of of the world, you gotta talk
43:58
Speaker 1: about iron nails and how many millions and tens and
44:03
Speaker 1: millions of iron nails that were made in the world
44:07
Speaker 1: by hand by people. Yeah, I mean before industrialization. They
44:12
Speaker 1: were all made by hand. And it's apparently harder to
44:15
Speaker 1: make them than you would think. I watched the video
44:18
Speaker 1: by a blacksmith named Nick Kimball on Instructibles and I
44:22
Speaker 1: guess his brother writes for instructibles and interviewed him and
44:25
Speaker 1: he's like a blacksmith at one of the colonial model farms.
44:29
Speaker 1: I think maybe Mount Vernon. They didn't say, um, that's so.
44:35
Speaker 1: He looks like it too. He looks like a cool dude. Um.
44:38
Speaker 1: But he he showed how to make a nail and
44:41
Speaker 1: he says he can make one a minute. And this
44:43
Speaker 1: guy is an advanced blacksmith, Like he has a job
44:46
Speaker 1: as a blacksmith. That's how advanced this guy is in
44:48
Speaker 1: the twenty one century. And he can make he can
44:51
Speaker 1: make one a minute. Apparently blacksmiths of your could make
44:55
Speaker 1: ten to a dozen of him a minute. Um. And
44:58
Speaker 1: it's very involved, like it's you would you actually have
45:01
Speaker 1: to make the tool first to make to make the nails.
45:04
Speaker 1: So you take an iron bar, flatten that, punch a
45:06
Speaker 1: hole in it using your pretchel hole in a punch,
45:09
Speaker 1: and then you take um nail rod little strips of
45:13
Speaker 1: of the iron that's gonna be nails. UM, heat it up, UM,
45:18
Speaker 1: hammer shoulder into it on the edge of the anvil
45:21
Speaker 1: so that there's like a it's it's narrower at the
45:25
Speaker 1: in the for the bulk of it, and then up
45:27
Speaker 1: top it just kind of is a little wider in boxy.
45:30
Speaker 1: And then you put it into the hole of the
45:32
Speaker 1: tool that you made, and then you heat it up
45:34
Speaker 1: and you hammer the head a bunch of times to
45:37
Speaker 1: flatten it. That's what you have to do to make
45:39
Speaker 1: one single nail. And some blacksmiths in the days of
45:42
Speaker 1: yore could make a dozen of those in a minute,
45:45
Speaker 1: that's how good they were at it. Unbelievable. I would
45:49
Speaker 1: have charged so much for nails, it would have been astronomical.
45:54
Speaker 1: I would have been like, no, I will you know, like,
45:57
Speaker 1: let's make you some chainmail instead. What do you need
45:59
Speaker 1: nails for let's do something cool. And they see, you know,
46:02
Speaker 1: I need to build a second story in my house,
46:04
Speaker 1: I'd be like, all right, it's gonna cost you the
46:07
Speaker 1: Josh nail. Yeah, the Josh Clark special because it would
46:11
Speaker 1: not be fun to make nails for sure. No, but
46:14
Speaker 1: boy they made a lot of them. Um. There are
46:16
Speaker 1: also some other techniques. There's bending we've kind of already
46:19
Speaker 1: talked about when you're creating curves and things. If you've
46:24
Speaker 1: mentioned the staircase irons, how they're how they're twisted around.
46:29
Speaker 1: That is done with a square bar, which is a
46:32
Speaker 1: bar with a square hole in it, and that's placed
46:35
Speaker 1: over a square rod of hot iron, and then you
46:39
Speaker 1: turn that square you basically sort of like that drimmal
46:41
Speaker 1: you were talking about. You stick that hot thing into
46:45
Speaker 1: the hole and you twisted around you create those little twists. Yeah.
46:49
Speaker 1: I mean every time it's a blacksmith tradition. You say
46:52
Speaker 1: a walla, you got anything else? I don't have anything else.
46:58
Speaker 1: It's just an we got stuff not quite right. But
47:01
Speaker 1: hopefully the smithy's hopefully our enthusiasm won them over. Yeah,
47:06
Speaker 1: let's hope so. Um ignorance, Uh, the there and also
47:11
Speaker 1: there's like a ton that we didn't talk about. It's
47:13
Speaker 1: a really I mean, this is a countless human, thousands
47:17
Speaker 1: of year long body of knowledge and we just tried
47:20
Speaker 1: to do them forty five minutes, uh and failed at that.
47:23
Speaker 1: But um, there there's a lot to it. So if
47:26
Speaker 1: you're interested in it, go go check it out. At
47:28
Speaker 1: the very least, go watch some videos. And since I
47:30
Speaker 1: said go watch some videos, everybody, it's time for a
47:32
Speaker 1: listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this Olympic torch bearer. Okay,
47:39
Speaker 1: hey guys. I was a torch bearer for the Winter
47:42
Speaker 1: Olympics and it was a lot of fun. The amount
47:44
Speaker 1: of logistical coordination that went into it was incredible. I
47:47
Speaker 1: was told four months in advance when down to the
47:50
Speaker 1: minute I'd be carrying the lit torch, and it wasn't
47:53
Speaker 1: off by more than a few Actually, a guy came
47:55
Speaker 1: to our hotel with a bunch of toys, vehicles and
47:57
Speaker 1: action figures and modeled exactly what would happen. That's so cool.
48:02
Speaker 1: I had to be reminded by my handlers to ensure
48:05
Speaker 1: that I kept it very high, um, high enough so
48:07
Speaker 1: as to not light my hat on fire. Uh. The
48:11
Speaker 1: torch is pretty light, but fairly top heavy. I'm sure
48:13
Speaker 1: we were wearing mittens to make it impossible for any
48:16
Speaker 1: of us to make any finger gestures, even accidentally. It
48:19
Speaker 1: could be seen by the world on the live feed.
48:22
Speaker 1: Did you think about that one term you didn't use
48:24
Speaker 1: that I thought you'd appreciate. When one torch bearer passes
48:26
Speaker 1: the flame to another, it's called the torch kiss. We
48:29
Speaker 1: went through training and practiced just this part on the street.
48:33
Speaker 1: We did a little dance after we kissed, and then
48:35
Speaker 1: I and whoever just finished got back on the bus.
48:38
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, a guy took my torch and extinguished
48:40
Speaker 1: it right afterward, and since it was still hot, they
48:42
Speaker 1: stored it in a rack on the bus. When we
48:45
Speaker 1: got back to the starting point, they removed the fuel
48:47
Speaker 1: cell and gave it back to me. And that is
48:50
Speaker 1: from Matt Jones. We had quite a nice little exchange
48:53
Speaker 1: about this. He said he did get it through work,
48:55
Speaker 1: but he was not a C level executive. Uh, he
48:58
Speaker 1: won it through a drawing it is worth. Oh, that's
49:01
Speaker 1: that's totally great. That's great. He might as well have
49:05
Speaker 1: gotten it from contributing to society. As great as that is. Man,
49:09
Speaker 1: I gotta thanks for that, Matt. Also, I knew it
49:11
Speaker 1: was called the Kiss. I thought I said it was
49:13
Speaker 1: the Kiss. And if I left that out, that drives
49:16
Speaker 1: me crazy. Man. When there's a fact that I know
49:19
Speaker 1: that I failed to put into the podcast that somebody
49:22
Speaker 1: then comes and said, you left out that's really awesome fact.
49:25
Speaker 1: And I just dropped to my knees like the Liberty
49:27
Speaker 1: mutual guy in the elevator and go, no, you know
49:30
Speaker 1: how much that bothers me when that happens to me?
49:32
Speaker 1: How much? None? Man, It's like it'll ruin my week.
49:37
Speaker 1: My weeks just toast now thanks to Matt. There's the
49:39
Speaker 1: difference between you and I. Well, if you want to
49:43
Speaker 1: ruin my week and have a neutral effect on Chuck's week,
49:46
Speaker 1: maybe even make it more positive, Um, you can email us.
49:49
Speaker 1: Go ahead and type it out after that, wrap it
49:53
Speaker 1: up after that, spend it on the bottom, and then
49:55
Speaker 1: send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
50:01
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50:09
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