History, prehistory, religion, and mythology
Mythology
Wayland's smithy in the centre,
Níðuð's daughter
Böðvildr to the left, and Níðuð's dead sons hidden to the right of the smithy. Between the girl and the smithy, Wayland can be seen in an eagle fetch flying away. From the
Ardre image stone VIII on
Gotland
In Hindu mythology,
Tvastar also known as Vishvakarma is the blacksmith of the
devas. The earliest references of
Tvastar can be found in the
Rigveda.
Hephaestus (Latin:
Vulcan) was the blacksmith of the
gods in
Greek and
Roman mythology. A supremely skilled artisan whose forge was a volcano, he constructed most of the weapons of the gods, as well as beautiful assistants for his smithy and a metal fishing-net of astonishing intricacy. He was the god of metalworking, fire, and craftsmen.
The
Anglo-Saxon Wayland Smith, known in
Old Norse as
Völundr, is a heroic blacksmith in Germanic mythology. The
Poetic Edda states that he forged beautiful gold rings with wonderful gems. He was captured by king
Níðuðr, who cruelly hamstringed him and imprisoned him on an island. Völundr eventually had his revenge by killing Níðuðr's sons and forging objects to the king from their skulls, teeth and eyes. He then seduced the king's daughter and escaped laughing on wings he himself had forged.
Ogun, the god of iron, is one of the pantheon of "orisa" traditionally worshipped by the Yoruba of Nigeria.
Before the Iron Age
Gold,
silver, and
copper all occur in nature in their
native states, as reasonably pure metals -
humans probably worked these metals first. These metals are all quite
malleable, and humans' initial development of hammering techniques was undoubtedly applied to these metals.
During the
Chalcolithic era and the
Bronze Age, humans in the Mideast learned how to
smelt,
melt,
cast,
rivet, and (to a limited extent)
forgecopper and bronze. Bronze is an
alloy of copper and approximately 10% to 20%
Tin. Bronze is superior to just copper, by being harder, being more resistant to corrosion, and by having a lower melting point (thereby requiring less fuel to melt and cast). Much of the copper used by the Mediterranean World came from the island of
Cyprus. Most of the tin came from the
Cornwall region of the island of
Great Britain, transported by sea-borne
Phoenician and
Greek traders.
Copper and bronze cannot be hardened by heat-treatment, they can only be hardened by work-hardening. To accomplish this, a piece of bronze is lightly hammered for a long period of time. The localized stress-cycling causes the necessary crystalline changes. The hardened bronze can then be ground to sharpen it to make edged tools.
Clocksmiths as recently as the 19th century used
work hardening techniques to harden the teeth of
brass gears and
ratchets. Tapping on just the teeth produced harder teeth, with superior wear-resistance. By contrast, the rest of the gear was left in a softer and tougher state, more capable of resisting cracking.
Bronze is sufficiently corrosion-resistant that
artifacts of bronze may last thousands of years relatively unscathed. Accordingly, museums frequently preserve more examples of Bronze Age metal-work than examples of artifacts from the much younger
Iron Age. Buried iron artifacts may completely
rust away in less than 100 years. Examples of ancient iron work still extant are very much the exception to the norm.
Iron Age
Concurrent with the advent of alphabetic characters in the
Iron Age, humans became aware of the metal
iron. In earlier ages, iron's qualities, in contrast to those of bronze, were not generally understood though. Iron
artifacts, composed of
meteoric iron, have the
chemical composition containing up to 40%
nickel. As this source of this iron is extremely rare and fortuitous, little development of smithing skills peculiar to iron can be assumed to have occurred. That we still possess any such artifacts of meteoric iron may be ascribed to the vagaries of climate, and the increased corrosion-resistance conferred on iron by the presence of nickel.
The Hittites of Anatolia first discovered or developed the smelting of iron ores around 1500 BC. They seem to have maintained a near monopoly on the knowledge of iron production for several hundred years, but when their empire collapsed during the Eastern Mediterranean upheavals around 1200 BC, the knowledge seems to have escaped in all directions.
In the
Iliad of
Homer (describing the
Trojan War and
Bronze Age Greek and Trojan warriors), most of the
armor and weapons (swords and spears) are stated to have been of bronze. Iron is not unknown, however, as
arrowheads are described as iron, and a "ball of iron" is listed as a prize awarded for winning a competition. The events described probably occurred around 1200 BC, but Homer is thought to have composed this epic poem around 700 BC; so exactitude must remain suspect.
When historical records resume after the 1200 BC upheavals and the ensuing
Greek Dark Age, iron work (and presumably blacksmiths) seem to have sprung like
Athena, fully-grown from the head of
Zeus. Very few artifacts remain, due to loss from corrosion, and re-use of iron as a valuable commodity. What information exists indicates that all of the basic operations of blacksmithing were in use as soon as the
Iron Age reached a particular locality. The scarcity of records and artifacts, and the rapidity of the switch from Bronze Age to Iron Age, is a reason to use evidence of bronze smithing to infer about the early development of blacksmithing.
Despite being subject to rust, iron replaced bronze as soon as iron-wielding hordes could invade Bronze Age societies and literally slice through their obsolete bronze defenses. Iron is a stronger and tougher metal than bronze, and iron ores are found nearly everywhere. Copper and Tin deposits, by contrast, are scattered and few, and expensive to exploit.
Iron is different from most other materials (including bronze), in that it does not immediately go from a solid to a liquid at its
melting point. H
2O is a solid (ice) at -1 C (31 F), and a liquid (water) at +1 C (33 F). Iron, by contrast, is definitely a solid at 800 °F (427 °C), but over the next 1,500 °F (820 °C) it becomes increasingly plastic and more "taffy-like" as its temperature increases. This extreme temperature range of variable solidity is the fundamental material property upon which blacksmithing practice depends.
Another major difference between bronze and iron fabrication techniques is that bronze
can be melted. The melting point of iron is much higher than that of bronze. In the western (Europe & the Mideast) tradition, the technology to make fires hot enough to melt iron did not arise until the 16th century, when smelting operations grew large enough to require overly large bellows. These produced blast-furnace temperatures high enough to melt partially refined ores, resulting in
cast iron. Thus cast iron frying pans and cookware did not become possible in Europe until 3000 years after the introduction of iron smelting. China, in a separate developmental tradition, was producing cast iron at least 1000 years before this.
Although iron is quite abundant, good quality steel remained rare and expensive until the industrial developments of
Bessemer process et al. in the 1850s. Close examination of blacksmith-made antique tools clearly shows where small pieces of steel were forge-welded into iron to provide the hardened steel cutting edges of tools (notably in axes, adzes, chisels, etc.). The re-use of quality steel is another reason for the lack of artifacts.
The
Romans (who ensured that their own weapons were made with good steel) noted (in the 4th century BC) that the
Celts of the Po River Valley had iron, but not good steel. The Romans record that during battle, their Celtic opponents could only swing their swords two or three times before having to step on their swords to straighten them.
Medieval period
A blacksmith
monk, from a medieval
French manuscript
Prior to the
industrial revolution, a "village
smithy" was a staple of every town. Factories and mass-production reduced the demand for blacksmith-made tools and hardware.
The original fuel for forge fires was
charcoal.
Coal did not begin to replace charcoal until the forests of first Britain (during the AD 17th century), and then the eastern United States of America (during the 19th century) were largely depleted. Coal
can be an inferior fuel for blacksmithing, because much of the world's coal is contaminated with
sulfur. Sulfur contamination of iron and steel make them "red short", so that at red heat they become "crumbly" instead of "plastic". Coal sold and purchased for blacksmithing should be largely free of sulfur.
European blacksmiths before and through the medieval era spent a great deal of time heating and hammering iron before forging it into finished articles. Although they were unaware of the chemical basis, they were aware that the quality of the iron was thus improved. From a scientific point of view, the reducing atmosphere of the forge was both removing
oxygen (rust), and soaking more
carbon into the iron, thereby developing increasingly higher grades of steel as the process was continued.
Industrial era
During the eighteenth century, agents for the
Sheffield cutlery industry scoured the country-side of Britain, offering new carriage springs for old. Springs must be made of hardened steel. At this time, the processes by which steel was produced resulted in an extremely variable product: quality was in no way ensured at the initial point of sale. Those springs which had survived cracking through hard use over the rough roads of the time, were proven to be of a better quality steel. Much of the fame of Sheffield cutlery (knives, shears, etc.) was due to these extreme lengths that the companies went to, in order to ensure that high-grade steel was used in their manufactures.
[citation needed]
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the US government included in their
treaties with many
Native American tribes, that the US would employ blacksmiths and
strikers at
Army forts, with the expressed purpose of providing Native Americans with iron tools and repair services.
[citation needed]
During the early to mid-nineteenth century both European armies
[7] as well as both the
U.S. Federal and
Confederate armies employed blacksmiths to shoe horses and repair equipment such as wagons, horse tack, and artillery equipment. These smiths primarily worked at a
traveling forge that when combined with a
limber, comprised wagons specifically designed and constructed as blacksmith shops on wheels to carry the essential equipment necessary for their work.
[8][9][10]
Samuel Colt neither invented nor perfected
interchangeable parts, but his insistence (and other industrialists at this time) that his
firearms be manufactured with this property, was another step towards the obsolescence of metal-working artisans and blacksmiths. (See also
Eli Whitney).
As demand for their products declined, many more blacksmiths augmented their incomes by taking in work shoeing
horses. A shoer-of-horses was historically known as a
farrier in English. With the introduction of
automobiles, the number of blacksmiths continued to decrease, many former blacksmiths becoming the initial generation of automobile
Mechanics. The nadir of blacksmithing in the United States was reached during the 1960s, when most of the former blacksmiths had left the trade, and few if any new people were entering the trade. By this time, most of the working blacksmiths were those performing
farrier work, so the term
blacksmith was effectively co-opted by the farrier trade.
