# Selects: Blacksmiths? You got that right!

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 5 Sep 2026, 50 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/bf0e1069-4fc9-452d-b033-b4ba00f31ce1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Blacksmiths? You got that right. Learn all about this age old occupation in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hi guys, it's Josh, and for this week's Select, I'm
[0:04] Speaker 1: going with our 2020 episode on blacksmiths. Growing up, there
[0:09] Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of smithing going on around me. Pretty
[0:12] Speaker 1: much zero smithing, actually. So I wasn't very familiar with
[0:16] Speaker 1: this topic. But I found very quickly that I really
[0:20] Speaker 1: enjoyed researching it and talking about it, too. And I
[0:23] Speaker 1: came to admire all the blacksmiths. on the videos that
[0:27] Speaker 1: I watched. It's just kind of mesmerizing. And if you
[0:31] Speaker 1: think about it, there are many things that people do
[0:33] Speaker 1: today that are essentially unchanged over the last few thousand years,
[0:39] Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. So I hope you like listening
[0:41] Speaker 1: to this one as much as I liked researching it.
[0:51] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
[1:00] Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
[1:03] Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's out there somewhere,
[1:06] Speaker 1: and this is Stuff You Should Know.
[1:09] Speaker 2: Did I tell you about my new hobby that started yesterday?
[1:11] Speaker 1: I'll bet I can guess.
[1:15] Speaker 2: Watching blacksmithing videos.
[1:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say the same thing, man. Like,
[1:20] Speaker 1: I don't have any desire to blacksmith myself.
[1:22] Speaker 2: Nope.
[1:23] Speaker 1: I just like watching these videos. There's something really amazing
[1:26] Speaker 1: about them.
[1:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one. I don't know if you watched. It's
[1:30] Speaker 2: on YouTube. It's called Blacksmithing Forging a Bearded Axe.
[1:34] Speaker 1: No, I didn't see that one. Oh, God.
[1:38] Speaker 2: It just reminds me of the sort of the lulling
[1:42] Speaker 2: of that show, how it's made. But I watched this video,
[1:45] Speaker 2: and most of them have some sped up stuff, too,
[1:48] Speaker 2: because blacksmithing takes so long that a 30-minute video, I mean,
[1:53] Speaker 2: half of it is in fast motion, so it just
[1:54] Speaker 2: goes to show you, and it's edited.
[1:56] Speaker 1: And they always put it to Yakety Sachs.
[2:00] Speaker 2: But it's just crazy, though, when you see how long
[2:04] Speaker 2: it takes to make this one axe. And then you
[2:08] Speaker 2: think about outfitting armies. Yeah. It just feels like it
[2:13] Speaker 2: was every other person a blacksmith. And did they just
[2:15] Speaker 2: do that 24-7?
[2:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the impression there is a Walt Whitman
[2:20] Speaker 1: poem about blacksmiths. And he's basically like they were the
[2:24] Speaker 1: most important people in any community. Everybody loved them. They
[2:28] Speaker 1: owed no one anything because they never had any debts
[2:31] Speaker 1: because they were so vital that anything they did probably
[2:35] Speaker 1: was worth 10 times what anybody else could do for them.
[2:39] Speaker 1: They seem to have been pretty amazing people on the whole.
[2:43] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, and we'll talk about this more, but
[2:45] Speaker 2: when you think about just nails. Yeah. And how many
[2:48] Speaker 2: nails built this country and the world.
[2:51] Speaker 1: Right.
[2:51] Speaker 2: Those nails had to be forged.
[2:53] Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, when you watch some of these blacksmith videos,
[2:55] Speaker 1: and like you're saying, when you do see how long
[2:58] Speaker 1: it takes to just make an average thing that you
[3:00] Speaker 1: would like buy in a second these days, it really
[3:04] Speaker 1: gives you an appreciation for just what a sea change
[3:07] Speaker 1: the industrial revolution was.
[3:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing.
[3:09] Speaker 1: To where this was automated and made, converted to mass production.
[3:14] Speaker 1: It just could have never happened before. And it didn't
[3:17] Speaker 1: happen before, but it was up to the lone blacksmith to...
[3:21] Speaker 1: equip their entire communities with all this stuff. It's pretty cool.
[3:25] Speaker 2: So are we going to do blacksmith history first or
[3:30] Speaker 2: the metal history first?
[3:33] Speaker 1: We'll do blacksmith history first, I think. Okay.
[3:36] Speaker 2: I guess we've got to look at the name because
[3:39] Speaker 2: if you look at other smiths, they were all a
[3:43] Speaker 2: little more specific. They were called bronze smiths. Blacksmiths are
[3:47] Speaker 2: not called iron smiths. No.
[3:48] Speaker 1: No.
[3:49] Speaker 2: Even though they work with iron, and most of the
[3:51] Speaker 2: other smiths were named for the metal that they work with.
[3:53] Speaker 1: Silversmith, that's a good one.
[3:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, God, good silversmith.
[3:56] Speaker 1: Sure.
[3:57] Speaker 2: It's worth their weight, and it's gold.
[3:58] Speaker 1: Silver. Don't bring up gold to those guys.
[4:01] Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. But black comes from, well, we're not positive,
[4:05] Speaker 2: but one explanation is blacksmith comes from the hammer scale,
[4:09] Speaker 2: or these scales. If you're watching these videos, you'll see
[4:12] Speaker 2: when they're hammering this stuff, these little tiny, chunky scales, thin,
[4:16] Speaker 2: not chunky actually, just little chunks of thin scales are
[4:19] Speaker 2: falling off every time they hammer it. That's the hammer scale.
[4:23] Speaker 2: And it is black, and your hands get all black,
[4:25] Speaker 2: and your face gets black. Or it might have just
[4:27] Speaker 2: been because iron is black.
[4:29] Speaker 1: Typically, yeah, it's pretty dark. It's dark enough. Especially wrought iron,
[4:33] Speaker 1: it tends to be black. So that's why they think
[4:37] Speaker 1: one of those two reasons is where blacksmith came from.
[4:40] Speaker 1: And the name Smith itself, we actually talk about this
[4:43] Speaker 1: in our book that's coming out, you know, In the
[4:46] Speaker 1: episode on keeping up with the Joneses.
[4:48] Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
[4:49] Speaker 1: We talked about. You mean the chapter?
[4:51] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
[4:52] Speaker 1: The chapter. In our book, we talk about how keeping
[4:56] Speaker 1: up with the Joneses could have very easily been keeping
[4:59] Speaker 1: up with the Smiths because the two names are so prevalent.
[5:03] Speaker 1: And in fact, Smith is the most prevalent name in
[5:06] Speaker 1: the United States. And it's all derived from blacksmiths and
[5:10] Speaker 1: just how many blacksmiths there were because every community needed one.
[5:14] Speaker 1: And then if you were in a large enough community,
[5:16] Speaker 1: you had multiple blacksmiths all working. Because one blacksmith had
[5:20] Speaker 1: to do all this work to supply this one community
[5:22] Speaker 1: with all this stuff. And they could only keep up
[5:25] Speaker 1: with a certain size community, you know?
[5:27] Speaker 2: Yeah. And if you had an on-site thing that you
[5:31] Speaker 2: were doing, you had a blacksmith with you. If you
[5:34] Speaker 2: were out at war in battle, you had blacksmiths there
[5:37] Speaker 2: because not only do they create these weapons and the armor,
[5:41] Speaker 2: but they have to fix stuff. You know, after a big,
[5:44] Speaker 2: long day of battle, you go in and trade in
[5:46] Speaker 2: your sword and say, fix this thing.
[5:48] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[5:49] Speaker 2: And those smithies got to be working around the clock.
[5:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, and they have, like, apprentices and help and all
[5:55] Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But, yeah, I mean, like, you
[5:57] Speaker 1: get the impression that the community could come to a
[6:00] Speaker 1: standstill when the blacksmith was sick for a week or something.
[6:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were blacksmiths doing all kinds of work
[6:07] Speaker 2: all over the place, so many that they eventually, and
[6:10] Speaker 2: this makes sense, would become a little more specialized.
[6:12] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
[6:12] Speaker 2: And horses were a big deal back then. We still
[6:15] Speaker 2: love horses today, but back then they did a lot
[6:17] Speaker 2: more for humanity. They just look pretty and run around
[6:20] Speaker 2: in fields now. So they had to make horseshoes, and
[6:23] Speaker 2: it was a very specialized set of equipment for making
[6:27] Speaker 2: horseshoes as opposed to just regular blacksmithing. So that was
[6:31] Speaker 2: a very busy job. They were called farriers. And even
[6:34] Speaker 2: when blacksmithing as a whole kind of went away, there
[6:37] Speaker 2: were still farriers working because— It's not like a shoe
[6:41] Speaker 2: store where one size fits all. Well, shoe stores aren't
[6:43] Speaker 2: one size fits all, but it's very specific to your
[6:47] Speaker 2: foot size or your hoof size as a horse.
[6:50] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[6:50] Speaker 2: So you can't just throw any old shoe that's close
[6:52] Speaker 2: enough on there. You got to make them a la carte, basically,
[6:56] Speaker 2: made to order, I think, in the fashion world. What's
[6:58] Speaker 2: it called?
[7:00] Speaker 1: Pret-a-porter?
[7:00] Speaker 2: Bespoke.
[7:02] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. That's the opposite of pret-a-porter.
[7:05] Speaker 2: And so farriers continue to work for years and years
[7:08] Speaker 2: and years, and I think they're are people that still
[7:10] Speaker 2: do farrier work today, aren't they?
[7:12] Speaker 1: Sure. Sure. Just to show off.
[7:14] Speaker 2: Right. Sure.
[7:15] Speaker 1: But I guess you kind of spoiled the ending. Blacksmiths
[7:18] Speaker 1: aren't really around much today because of industrialization. But they were.
[7:23] Speaker 2: They're around now. They're in Brooklyn, New York. I guarantee it.
[7:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. For about 2000 years, they were extraordinarily
[7:30] Speaker 1: important to society. But, you know, society was around for
[7:35] Speaker 1: a very long time before blacksmiths came around. So there's
[7:37] Speaker 1: this this really important window in the historical development of
[7:42] Speaker 1: of human society that blacksmiths you know existed in um
[7:47] Speaker 1: prior to that you know we had tools but they
[7:50] Speaker 1: were mostly made of stone and then at some point
[7:53] Speaker 1: somebody said hey if you put tin and copper together
[7:56] Speaker 1: you can come up with this stuff called bronze and
[7:58] Speaker 1: it's pretty great you can make some pretty neat things
[8:00] Speaker 1: with it and one of the things about bronze is
[8:04] Speaker 1: that it has a fairly low melting point something like
[8:07] Speaker 1: um 1,742 degrees Fahrenheit, 950 degrees Celsius, which you could
[8:15] Speaker 1: get a hot campfire to that temperature to melt, melt
[8:21] Speaker 1: into molten liquid bronze, which means that you can create
[8:25] Speaker 1: casts and molds and you can pour that molten bronze
[8:28] Speaker 1: into it. And as it cools, you've got a handy
[8:30] Speaker 1: sword that you can make over and over and over again.
[8:33] Speaker 1: So bronze fulfilled this purpose for tools for many thousands
[8:37] Speaker 1: of years. So much so that— and these metals were so
[8:40] Speaker 1: important that we go back and call these historical ages
[8:45] Speaker 1: by the name of the metal tools that were being produced.
[8:48] Speaker 1: So you get the Bronze Age, and then that was
[8:50] Speaker 1: eventually followed by the Iron Age. And one thing that
[8:53] Speaker 1: stuck out to me, Chuck, I hadn't realized before, is
[8:56] Speaker 1: that you think of history as progressing, you know, constantly. Yeah.
[9:01] Speaker 1: But the Bronze Age, even though it was followed by
[9:03] Speaker 1: the Iron Age, the Iron Age marked a period of
[9:07] Speaker 1: cultural decline. where the Bronze Age, which had come previously,
[9:10] Speaker 1: was a period of cultural blossoming. But for the first
[9:14] Speaker 1: several centuries of the Iron Age, it was a step backwards.
[9:17] Speaker 1: A lot of the classical or antiquity societies kind of
[9:21] Speaker 1: crumbled at about the same time. They think possibly because
[9:24] Speaker 1: of climate change or mass droughts and starvation, kind of
[9:29] Speaker 1: like the Maya.
[9:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not like the iron caused that, but iron,
[9:34] Speaker 2: like really good bronze is, probably superior to iron in
[9:38] Speaker 2: a lot of ways. I think iron is a little softer.
[9:41] Speaker 2: It might rust a little quicker.
[9:43] Speaker 1: It depends on what kind of iron you have, for sure. Right.
[9:46] Speaker 2: But the iron that they were using, basically, they started using, and,
[9:50] Speaker 2: you know, there's not like a demarcation line. Then there
[9:52] Speaker 2: is some overlap, and no one knows exactly when the
[9:55] Speaker 2: big switch happened. But it was cheaper, and it was
[9:58] Speaker 2: more readily available than bronze.
[10:00] Speaker 1: Was.
[10:00] Speaker 2: So they just started using iron, basically, and it surpassed bronze.
[10:04] Speaker 1: Yeah, the Greeks pin a semi-mythical group called the Chalabes,
[10:09] Speaker 1: who supposedly were absorbed by the Hittites in Anatolia and Turkey,
[10:14] Speaker 1: and that they were the ones who figured out how
[10:16] Speaker 1: to mine iron. Because originally there was iron stuff, like
[10:20] Speaker 1: King Tut was found with a dagger made of iron.
[10:24] Speaker 1: And it would have been even more highly prized than
[10:27] Speaker 1: anything made of gold in his entire tomb because iron
[10:31] Speaker 1: was so rare at that time. Yeah. Because the only
[10:35] Speaker 1: source of iron on Earth, as far as humans knew,
[10:38] Speaker 1: came in the form of meteorites.
[10:39] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[10:40] Speaker 1: So you had to find a meteorite above ground to
[10:42] Speaker 1: find your deposit of iron. Yeah, totally. making a dagger
[10:46] Speaker 1: out of that would have been, that would have been
[10:47] Speaker 1: a very special dagger. And then eventually they say, the
[10:51] Speaker 1: Calabese figured out, no, there's actually iron like in rock
[10:54] Speaker 1: in the earth. And people started figuring out that you
[10:57] Speaker 1: could take that rock and heat it to some pretty
[11:00] Speaker 1: high temperatures considering and then hammer it. And you can
[11:03] Speaker 1: hammer the other stuff out, the ore out or hammer
[11:07] Speaker 1: the iron from the ore. And you have something approaching
[11:10] Speaker 1: what you would consider iron, something called bloom.
[11:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, so they just couldn't get the fire hot enough
[11:16] Speaker 2: basically at first to get to the iron point.
[11:18] Speaker 1: Right.
[11:18] Speaker 2: But they could make it hot enough to get to
[11:20] Speaker 2: the bloom, and they would put it in an oven
[11:23] Speaker 2: known as a bloomery, and it would kind of just
[11:24] Speaker 2: roast out those impurities. It had iron, it had slag,
[11:28] Speaker 2: which is sort of a glass-like byproduct that you, you know,
[11:32] Speaker 2: it's so funny that you can just hammer this stuff out.
[11:34] Speaker 2: But bloom would eventually, when they, I mean, it worked okay.
[11:39] Speaker 2: You could heat it up, you could hammer it, and
[11:41] Speaker 2: it would get a lot of the slag out And
[11:44] Speaker 2: it was useful enough for tools. But when the blast
[11:48] Speaker 2: furnace came around, when you really got larger furnaces and
[11:52] Speaker 2: hotter fires that incorporated bellows to really get that oxygen
[11:55] Speaker 2: in there and get it super, super hot, that eventually
[11:59] Speaker 2: allowed them to get that ore to pig iron. And
[12:03] Speaker 2: pig iron was a pretty big advancement because from pig iron,
[12:08] Speaker 2: you could hammer that slag out to eventually get to
[12:11] Speaker 2: wrought iron.
[12:12] Speaker 1: Right. I want to give a shout out to Harold DeSmith, H-A-R-A-L-D.
[12:18] Speaker 1: He wrote an intro to iron smelting that talks all
[12:20] Speaker 1: about making bloom himself with pictures. It's pretty cool. It's
[12:23] Speaker 1: worth checking out for sure.
[12:24] Speaker 2: And the Grabster helped us with this one, right?
[12:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, big time. Thank you, Grabster. But with pig iron,
[12:30] Speaker 1: that was like a, it was like you said, like
[12:32] Speaker 1: a pretty big change in that, like you could suddenly
[12:34] Speaker 1: make much purer iron because we had a much hotter
[12:38] Speaker 1: furnace that we were working with. And the thing about
[12:41] Speaker 1: pig iron is, In very much the same way as bloom,
[12:44] Speaker 1: you've got to hammer out those impurities. And so to
[12:48] Speaker 1: make pig iron into wrought iron, you would take this
[12:52] Speaker 1: pig iron, which is pretty impure, heat it up and
[12:55] Speaker 1: hammer it with a sledgehammer over and over again. Heat it,
[12:58] Speaker 1: hammer it, heat it, hammer it. Very much the same
[13:00] Speaker 1: process as bloom, but at higher temperatures and producing a
[13:03] Speaker 1: much purer iron. And then eventually you would have wrought iron.
[13:08] Speaker 1: And they say that they figured out how to use
[13:11] Speaker 1: water hammers, like water-powered hammers. In part because of the
[13:16] Speaker 1: plague of the 13th century, it killed so many people
[13:20] Speaker 1: that they didn't have the human power any longer that
[13:24] Speaker 1: they needed to hammer pig iron. So it made people
[13:27] Speaker 1: devise water hammers.
[13:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, water hammers, steam hammers. You know, if you look
[13:33] Speaker 2: at these videos today, these people and their and their
[13:36] Speaker 2: shops and their sheds that they have behind their house have,
[13:39] Speaker 2: it looks like hydraulics, I guess, that are pounding this stuff.
[13:43] Speaker 2: And at first when I saw that, I was disappointed.
[13:45] Speaker 2: I was like, oh, man. But that's just the big
[13:48] Speaker 2: initial work. Like there's still tons of hammer work by
[13:52] Speaker 2: hand because there are many, many, there's a lot more
[13:56] Speaker 2: to it than that initial hammering to get to the
[13:59] Speaker 2: wrought iron stage. But I was, at first I was
[14:01] Speaker 2: kind of like, oh, man, what? They don't like swing
[14:04] Speaker 2: a hammer anymore?
[14:05] Speaker 1: Right, no. No, there's definitely— It's very smart.
[14:08] Speaker 2: They don't need to swing a hammer.
[14:09] Speaker 1: Right. It's called work smarter, not harder. But there are
[14:12] Speaker 1: traditionalists who are like, no, I want to use a hammer.
[14:16] Speaker 1: But so the different types of irons that humans have
[14:20] Speaker 1: come up with over the ages— and this is a really
[14:23] Speaker 1: important point I think we should point out here, Chuck.
[14:25] Speaker 1: Like blacksmithing— And all of the information and knowledge and
[14:31] Speaker 1: like ways of working with different types of iron, different
[14:34] Speaker 1: techniques and actually coming up with different types of iron.
[14:37] Speaker 1: All of that started with those people who figured out
[14:41] Speaker 1: that you could take rock from the earth and hammer
[14:42] Speaker 1: the iron out of it.
[14:43] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[14:44] Speaker 1: And just more and more people over the ages as
[14:47] Speaker 1: it spread and continued to be around for hundreds and
[14:50] Speaker 1: thousands of years. All the people working with metal contributed
[14:55] Speaker 1: to that body of knowledge. And so that's, I think,
[14:58] Speaker 1: one of the things that's so appealing about blacksmithing is
[15:01] Speaker 1: that it is a genuine human technology that was created
[15:08] Speaker 1: by humanity. You know, not just like a couple of
[15:12] Speaker 1: people who had a really good idea. It was this
[15:15] Speaker 1: group of humans, countless humans all working together over thousands
[15:19] Speaker 1: of years, contributing to one another's knowledge to create this
[15:22] Speaker 1: body of knowledge. And I think that's what makes it
[15:25] Speaker 1: so neat to me.
[15:26] Speaker 2: So cool. And like such a brute way of doing it.
[15:30] Speaker 2: You know, the finesse comes in for sure. And maybe
[15:33] Speaker 2: that's what I like about it is both. Like it's
[15:36] Speaker 2: swinging the heavy hammer. But it's also doing this really
[15:38] Speaker 2: beautiful finesse work later on in the project.
[15:41] Speaker 1: Right.
[15:41] Speaker 2: Really cool. So if we're going to– well, maybe let's
[15:44] Speaker 2: take a break and then talk about the types of iron.
[15:46] Speaker 2: How about that?
[15:46] Speaker 1: Let's. All right.
[16:18] Speaker 2: We promised you talk of iron types. There's Iron Maiden.
[16:22] Speaker 1: Sure. There's Take Your Iron Supplement. That's right. What else?
[16:29] Speaker 2: There's really just Iron Maiden.
[16:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so.
[16:31] Speaker 2: That's all. That's all you need to know. Iron types,
[16:34] Speaker 2: they're based on the carbon content of the iron. So-
[16:38] Speaker 2: If you hear wrought iron, you might just think that's
[16:41] Speaker 2: like the cool thing that your staircase spindles are made
[16:46] Speaker 2: out of.
[16:46] Speaker 1: They are not made of wrought iron.
[16:47] Speaker 2: They aren't made out of wrought iron anymore, at least.
[16:49] Speaker 2: They used to be back in the day.
[16:51] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[16:51] Speaker 2: But this is also called bar iron. It's about 0.08%
[16:54] Speaker 2: or less carbon. And this is sort of, from what
[16:56] Speaker 2: I saw back in the day, just the main— iron
[17:07] Speaker 2: that they would mainly use for the most part.
[17:10] Speaker 1: The wrought iron?
[17:11] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[17:11] Speaker 1: Yeah. And the difference, the big difference between wrought iron
[17:15] Speaker 1: and steel is that wrought iron has silicates in it
[17:20] Speaker 1: that kind of ends up as like these fibrous filaments
[17:24] Speaker 1: that get hammered into order, basically, by the blacksmith from
[17:31] Speaker 1: pig iron, which gives it a certain structure. With steel... Steel,
[17:36] Speaker 1: like you said, all types of iron are basically based
[17:38] Speaker 1: on their carbon content. Steel has a much higher carbon
[17:41] Speaker 1: content than wrought iron does. And so it doesn't need
[17:45] Speaker 1: to be hammered like wrought iron does because it doesn't
[17:47] Speaker 1: have these iron silicates that need to be arranged just
[17:50] Speaker 1: so or else it'll make it brittle. Instead, because of
[17:54] Speaker 1: this carbon in it, it forms this kind of crystalline
[17:59] Speaker 1: structure in the iron that makes it hard and durable material.
[18:04] Speaker 1: way harder and more durable than wrought iron. The problem is,
[18:08] Speaker 1: is because that durability and the strength and hardness, it
[18:12] Speaker 1: makes it more difficult for a blacksmith to work with
[18:14] Speaker 1: down the line than it does wrought iron. But it's
[18:17] Speaker 1: also a much more effective, say, battle axe than a
[18:20] Speaker 1: wrought iron battle axe.
[18:22] Speaker 2: Yeah. And like you said, it's not what we use
[18:24] Speaker 2: on our staircases and wrought iron these days. It's not
[18:26] Speaker 2: wrought iron and the production of that in like a
[18:29] Speaker 2: big way went out in, you know, the 20th century
[18:32] Speaker 2: pretty much altogether.
[18:33] Speaker 1: Went out with disco.
[18:35] Speaker 2: Oh, gosh, I wish it lasted until the 70s.
[18:37] Speaker 1: So one thing we should say also, Chuck, is we
[18:40] Speaker 1: tend to think of steel as like a modern invention.
[18:43] Speaker 1: Steel was perfected in the modern times. It was like
[18:46] Speaker 1: basically the thing that kicked off the Industrial Revolution, if
[18:49] Speaker 1: I remember from our robber barons episode. But that's not
[18:52] Speaker 1: to say that people weren't experimenting with steel long before that.
[18:57] Speaker 1: It was just the scientific understanding of it was lacking. Instead,
[19:02] Speaker 1: that was replaced by an intuitive understanding among blacksmiths of,
[19:06] Speaker 1: you know, what fuel did what to iron to make
[19:10] Speaker 1: it stronger. They weren't saying like, oh, if I use
[19:12] Speaker 1: charcoal or coke, it's going to make this a better
[19:16] Speaker 1: steel than say, you know, coal or something like that.
[19:20] Speaker 2: That's right. Then you've also got cast iron. If you
[19:22] Speaker 2: have a nice cast iron collection in your kitchen, it's
[19:27] Speaker 2: going to be 2% carbon or more It's very brittle,
[19:30] Speaker 2: so you're not going to hammer cast iron.
[19:31] Speaker 1: No.
[19:32] Speaker 2: It is formed into shape by casting it. That's why
[19:35] Speaker 2: it's called cast iron. And use a mold while it's
[19:37] Speaker 2: molten and pour it in there. And it's a great
[19:40] Speaker 2: thing to cook with.
[19:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, and we would have never been able to make
[19:43] Speaker 1: anything out of cast iron until those bellows were introduced
[19:46] Speaker 1: to the forge to really bring that temperature up. Yeah, yeah.
[19:50] Speaker 1: has a very high melting point.
[19:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're going to pour it, it's got to
[19:53] Speaker 2: be super, super hot. And we'll get to these temperatures
[19:55] Speaker 2: and the different kinds of hot later on, which is
[19:58] Speaker 2: very interesting stuff.
[19:59] Speaker 1: Yeah. So we've got, like, the blacksmiths are working with this.
[20:03] Speaker 1: They're figuring out that if you add, like, carbon or
[20:06] Speaker 1: if you do this, like, if you... Heat the iron
[20:10] Speaker 1: to a certain temperature and then take it off and
[20:14] Speaker 1: hammer it and then let it cool on its own.
[20:16] Speaker 1: It's going to form one type of finished product. If
[20:19] Speaker 1: you do something that's called quenching it, which is cooling
[20:23] Speaker 1: it down in a bucket of water and usually mineral
[20:25] Speaker 1: oil these days, it's going to cool differently. So its
[20:28] Speaker 1: structure is going to form differently. And again, they didn't,
[20:31] Speaker 1: they were passing this knowledge on, but they weren't using
[20:34] Speaker 1: terms necessarily that we were using. What's interesting to me
[20:37] Speaker 1: is we use terms that they came up with, like
[20:39] Speaker 1: quenching and slag and scale and that kind of stuff.
[20:43] Speaker 1: Like those are all still very much around and it
[20:45] Speaker 1: makes sense still. Even after having made the transition to industrialization,
[20:50] Speaker 1: they still use words very much like that, if not
[20:52] Speaker 1: those same words.
[20:54] Speaker 2: Now, do you mean quenching as in how a human
[20:56] Speaker 2: might quench their own thirst?
[20:58] Speaker 1: Kind of. Kind of, but rather than turning up a
[21:02] Speaker 1: bucket of water and mineral oil, you would plunge the iron,
[21:06] Speaker 1: the hot iron, into that bucket of mineral oil and water.
[21:09] Speaker 2: That's right. Very cool stuff.
[21:12] Speaker 1: Were you making a joke that I just missed? A reference? No. Okay.
[21:18] Speaker 2: No, I didn't know if you were saying the etymology
[21:20] Speaker 2: of the word quench was from smithing.
[21:22] Speaker 1: Oh, maybe.
[21:23] Speaker 2: And that when we quench our thirst, it's taken from that.
[21:26] Speaker 1: Maybe. It's possible. All right. I mean, smite, they think
[21:31] Speaker 1: that the words smite and smith are from the same word.
[21:34] Speaker 2: Right, because smite means very biblical meaning, or not meaning,
[21:38] Speaker 2: but they use a lot in Bible times to hit something, right?
[21:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, to strike it, to smite something.
[21:44] Speaker 2: That's right, and that's what a smith does.
[21:46] Speaker 1: Smithies.
[21:47] Speaker 2: Should we talk about tools?
[21:48] Speaker 1: I think so. One of the cool things about blacksmiths
[21:51] Speaker 1: is that when you get good, you just start making
[21:54] Speaker 1: your own tools. Oh, man. Isn't that neat?
[21:56] Speaker 2: Tools to make tools. You got to start somewhere, though.
[22:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to lay down a little bit of
[22:02] Speaker 1: money first. But I saw this one blog post by
[22:05] Speaker 1: a blacksmith who's like, look, if you're just starting out,
[22:07] Speaker 1: just get the bare minimum stuff. Get some used things.
[22:10] Speaker 1: See if you like it first. And then eventually when
[22:12] Speaker 1: you get good, you can invest a little money. And
[22:14] Speaker 1: then you can just start making your own stuff.
[22:16] Speaker 2: Right, which is very cool. I did see there was
[22:18] Speaker 2: one YouTube video that was like how to get going
[22:20] Speaker 2: for less than $ 100.
[22:21] Speaker 1: Oh, I'll bet, yeah.
[22:22] Speaker 2: Some very basic stuff.
[22:23] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[22:24] Speaker 2: So if you're going to be a smithy, you're going
[22:26] Speaker 2: to need some things. It might be less than $ 100
[22:29] Speaker 2: to start. You're going to need a forge, which is
[22:33] Speaker 2: the heat. There are different kinds. You know, the one
[22:36] Speaker 2: that I saw, the axe, this is sort of a,
[22:38] Speaker 2: I don't know if it's old-timey, but it was actually
[22:41] Speaker 2: using coal. And that's very appealing to the eye if
[22:45] Speaker 2: you're watching on YouTube. It seems like the backyard smithy
[22:48] Speaker 2: these days uses a gas-powered oven, a gas powered forge.
[22:54] Speaker 1: Were they using coal or charcoal? Because there's a big difference.
[22:57] Speaker 2: It was coal.
[22:58] Speaker 1: Okay. I didn't know much about charcoal until this. We'll
[23:01] Speaker 1: talk about it later.
[23:03] Speaker 2: But it seems like these days the gas powered forge
[23:06] Speaker 2: is kind of what you use. They're not very big.
[23:08] Speaker 2: It's sort of like a double size of a bread
[23:12] Speaker 2: box because when you're making something, you're not making, you're
[23:16] Speaker 2: not building a car out of iron. You're making a tool.
[23:18] Speaker 2: You're making a a dagger or an axe head, like
[23:21] Speaker 2: they're all kind of small, something you can just sort
[23:24] Speaker 2: of stick in there. You're going to have your anvil.
[23:28] Speaker 2: Very key, very key piece. Yeah. You're going to have
[23:31] Speaker 2: a lot of other tools for like the more finesse work,
[23:36] Speaker 2: grinders and files and stuff like that. And you're going
[23:38] Speaker 2: to have a nice collection of hammers, of course.
[23:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, you definitely, there's different hammers for different things. And
[23:44] Speaker 1: like we said, you know, Hammering pig iron into wrought iron,
[23:47] Speaker 1: people don't do that these days. So you're not using
[23:49] Speaker 1: a sledgehammer. And so you're using like a little more
[23:51] Speaker 1: finesse and precision to kind of strike what's called the workpiece.
[23:56] Speaker 1: Whatever you're working on is called the workpiece. That's one
[23:59] Speaker 1: thing that really stood out to me watching some of
[24:01] Speaker 1: these blacksmith videos is like these guys do not miss.
[24:04] Speaker 1: At least if you're at the level where you're doing
[24:06] Speaker 1: close-ups of your work on video and posting them to YouTube,
[24:11] Speaker 1: your hammer is not missing. It's going exactly where you
[24:13] Speaker 1: want it to every time, which is pretty cool too. Yeah.
[24:16] Speaker 2: It is, but I also, and this is not to
[24:18] Speaker 2: knock the Smithies, it seems like a bit of a
[24:20] Speaker 2: forgiving craft and art.
[24:23] Speaker 1: Sure.
[24:25] Speaker 2: So where you can sort of like if something didn't,
[24:28] Speaker 2: if you did strike in it and it kind of
[24:29] Speaker 2: did something you didn't quite like, you can change that.
[24:32] Speaker 1: Right.
[24:32] Speaker 2: You can restrike it. You can reheat it.
[24:35] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[24:36] Speaker 2: I'm sure there's a lot of trial and error involved
[24:37] Speaker 2: when you're first getting started, you know.
[24:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure too. And then, you know, as you
[24:41] Speaker 1: keep advancing, you're figuring out new techniques and all that
[24:44] Speaker 1: kind of thing. But like you were saying, the anvil,
[24:46] Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. I didn't realize all the different parts
[24:49] Speaker 1: to it. Anybody who's seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon
[24:52] Speaker 1: can recognize an anvil and probably draw one from memory.
[24:56] Speaker 1: And you'd probably be pretty close. And that's a pretty
[24:59] Speaker 1: accurate image of what an anvil does. But all the
[25:02] Speaker 1: little different details from the point on the front to
[25:05] Speaker 1: the feet of it, all of those serve this kind
[25:08] Speaker 1: of group of purposes that come up pretty frequently in blacksmithing.
[25:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, so the anvil is super heavy. It is very hard, obviously.
[25:18] Speaker 2: You don't want the anvil itself to be dented or
[25:22] Speaker 2: start falling apart when you're swinging this heavy hammer on
[25:25] Speaker 2: metal on this thing or on iron. And so you
[25:29] Speaker 2: also want it so it doesn't, like, just absorb the
[25:31] Speaker 2: hammer blows too. So it's got to be the right
[25:33] Speaker 2: amount of hardness. It can't be breaking. It can't be shattering.
[25:37] Speaker 2: You've got a horn on the front. You talked about
[25:40] Speaker 2: the pointy thing.
[25:42] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[25:42] Speaker 2: That's what's on the front of it. And usually in
[25:44] Speaker 2: all the anvils I saw when I looked them up
[25:46] Speaker 2: to buy one just to have, although they were way
[25:49] Speaker 2: too expensive, it's got a little dip right before the
[25:54] Speaker 2: horn where the horn juts out. So the horn isn't
[25:58] Speaker 2: exactly level with the regular base of the anvil. It's
[26:01] Speaker 2: down just a bit. And it's not by accident. That's
[26:04] Speaker 2: very much one of the big uses of the horn
[26:07] Speaker 2: is that little step down.
[26:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the neat things about anvils is
[26:11] Speaker 1: like each little detail has a purpose, a larger purpose
[26:14] Speaker 1: that's hidden until you understand what you're looking at or
[26:17] Speaker 1: what it does.
[26:18] Speaker 2: What about those holes?
[26:19] Speaker 1: There's like two holes in every anvil pretty much. One's
[26:22] Speaker 1: round and one's square. And the round one is called
[26:25] Speaker 1: a pritchel hole. And it is basically a hole so
[26:28] Speaker 1: that you can punch holes into whatever workpiece you're working on.
[26:34] Speaker 1: I saw that if you're punching a hole, you actually
[26:36] Speaker 1: want to punch it on the face of the anvil,
[26:38] Speaker 1: which is the top. Punch it on one side, almost
[26:41] Speaker 1: all the way through. Flip it over, punch it on
[26:43] Speaker 1: the other side, almost all the way through. And then
[26:45] Speaker 1: you move it to the pritchel hole. And then that's
[26:47] Speaker 1: when you widen it to the shape you want. So
[26:49] Speaker 1: it just allows you to punch a hole all the
[26:52] Speaker 1: way through without harming the face of your anvil, really.
[26:55] Speaker 2: Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts of the
[26:57] Speaker 2: video I saw because that was where the axe head
[27:01] Speaker 2: hole went where you would, you know, put the axe handle.
[27:04] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[27:05] Speaker 2: So I was like, how are you going to do that?
[27:06] Speaker 2: And just to see it happen in front of your eyes,
[27:08] Speaker 2: it was pretty awesome.
[27:10] Speaker 1: And then what's the other hole, the hardy hole?
[27:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, the hardy hole is actually square.
[27:15] Speaker 1: With the D?
[27:16] Speaker 2: Yes, H-A-R-D-Y.
[27:18] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[27:19] Speaker 2: Yes, it's not hardy because it's very tough, although it
[27:21] Speaker 2: is very tough. Sure. But it is a square hole,
[27:24] Speaker 2: which sounds counterintuitive, but it's not. And you can put
[27:28] Speaker 2: tools in there that allow you, like you might stick
[27:32] Speaker 2: something in there and then use that to then bend the,
[27:36] Speaker 2: the hot iron around to make different bends and cuts
[27:39] Speaker 2: and shapes and things.
[27:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw this one tool in a couple of
[27:42] Speaker 1: different videos that fit into the hardy hole. The hardy
[27:45] Speaker 1: hole is almost like a Dremel tool, right? So like
[27:47] Speaker 1: there's all these different things you can put in that
[27:49] Speaker 1: square hole that hold it in place. But the difference
[27:54] Speaker 1: between them is what tool is attached to that square peg.
[27:57] Speaker 2: That's right.
[27:58] Speaker 1: Square peg, square, square peg. That's right. And one of
[28:01] Speaker 1: the ones that I saw looked like a tuning fork.
[28:03] Speaker 1: It's like two rods that are very close together.
[28:05] Speaker 2: I saw that.
[28:06] Speaker 1: And you could put like a hot workpiece in between
[28:10] Speaker 1: them and then, you know, bend it so you can
[28:13] Speaker 1: make like an S hook. It's used for like very tight,
[28:16] Speaker 1: creating very tight curves in the workpiece.
[28:19] Speaker 2: Yes. Very, very cool.
[28:21] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[28:21] Speaker 2: You got to have your tongs. Oh, and I think
[28:23] Speaker 2: we should have mentioned, too, the anvil, it doesn't have
[28:26] Speaker 2: a sharp edge. Like the edge all the way around
[28:29] Speaker 2: the main work base of the anvil is a little
[28:31] Speaker 2: bit round because, you know, if you've got something super
[28:34] Speaker 2: sharp and you're hammering away, it's going to make little
[28:37] Speaker 2: creases in the iron. You don't want that.
[28:38] Speaker 1: I think the step is the sharpest edge of the
[28:41] Speaker 1: whole thing between the horn and the face, the top
[28:44] Speaker 1: of it.
[28:44] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's where you need it to be sharp.
[28:47] Speaker 1: One other thing I saw that I thought was really
[28:50] Speaker 1: interesting is when you buy an anvil, you want to
[28:53] Speaker 1: actually fit it to a block of wood. And traditionally,
[28:57] Speaker 1: people will use like a good tree stump of wood
[28:59] Speaker 1: that doesn't split very easily. And like, man, you fasten
[29:03] Speaker 1: it to that wood, that tree stump, and then you
[29:07] Speaker 1: bury the tree stump whenever you can about three feet
[29:10] Speaker 1: into the ground. So that the anvil becomes part of
[29:15] Speaker 1: the tree stump, becomes part of the ground. Yeah. So
[29:17] Speaker 1: it distributes that extra energy that gets lost rather than
[29:21] Speaker 1: back up at you down into the ground where it's absorbed,
[29:24] Speaker 1: which I just find absolutely fascinating. But you make it
[29:27] Speaker 1: so well fastened to the stump that the stump and
[29:30] Speaker 1: the anvil become basically one.
[29:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the anvil is essentially connected to the
[29:35] Speaker 2: earth at that point.
[29:36] Speaker 1: So nice. This just, man. I just keep thinking of
[29:41] Speaker 1: Thor and Led Zeppelin.
[29:42] Speaker 2: I know all the things J.R.R.
[29:45] Speaker 3: Tolkien yeah the smithy you gotta have those tongs and
[29:49] Speaker 3: these are not like grill tongs that you have on
[29:51] Speaker 3: your back porch these are those big thick metal.
[29:56] Speaker 2: Iron they look like like like Gussied up nail clippers almost.
[30:02] Speaker 2: And that's what you're going to use to put stuff
[30:04] Speaker 2: in the forge and that fire and pull it out.
[30:07] Speaker 2: It's funny here. Ed says that pretty much no one
[30:10] Speaker 2: wears gloves. I didn't see that. I saw plenty of
[30:13] Speaker 2: videos with people wearing gloves.
[30:15] Speaker 1: I saw both.
[30:16] Speaker 2: And I saw some where they didn't. I guess sometimes
[30:19] Speaker 2: if you're working really near the heat, you might want
[30:21] Speaker 2: your gloves on, but you might also want to have
[30:23] Speaker 2: the hand feel during that finesse work.
[30:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, because, and I think it's worth saying one more
[30:28] Speaker 1: time that, that, that, um, forge where the fire is, it's,
[30:32] Speaker 1: I mean, it is very small. I saw as little
[30:34] Speaker 1: as like a six by six inch, um, like little
[30:37] Speaker 1: area of extraordinarily intense heat. So it's a small area
[30:41] Speaker 1: of heat, but the heat that is there is so hot,
[30:44] Speaker 1: it can turn iron white hot. So yeah, you want
[30:49] Speaker 1: to not get too close to it. And even when
[30:50] Speaker 1: you're wearing tongs, it's smart to wear gloves from what
[30:52] Speaker 1: I saw. Yeah.
[30:53] Speaker 2: We, we never really talked much about the fuel, um,
[30:56] Speaker 2: Like I said, these days they power it with gas mainly.
[30:59] Speaker 2: Back in the day, they would use charcoal. That was
[31:03] Speaker 2: the first thing. And charcoal, apparently, if you're going to
[31:06] Speaker 2: be a Brooklyn hipster, you want to work with charcoal
[31:09] Speaker 2: because that is the superior product and the superior fuel.
[31:13] Speaker 2: But it's really messy.
[31:15] Speaker 1: Very wasteful.
[31:16] Speaker 2: It's very wasteful. It's expensive. It takes a lot of
[31:19] Speaker 2: wood to make charcoal. So then coal comes rolling around.
[31:24] Speaker 2: And there was a lot of coal, and it was
[31:25] Speaker 2: super cheap. And they had to kind of rebuild their forges.
[31:29] Speaker 2: But coal, even though it has some impurities like sulfur
[31:32] Speaker 2: and stuff in there, they basically kind of made the
[31:35] Speaker 2: big switch to coal at a certain point in time.
[31:37] Speaker 1: Yeah. And even better is if you can get your
[31:39] Speaker 1: hands on coke, which is a derivative of coal, just
[31:44] Speaker 1: like charcoal is a derivative of wood. It's just wood
[31:47] Speaker 1: with the sap and the water burned out. So it's
[31:49] Speaker 1: a really energy dense form of it. Coke is the
[31:52] Speaker 1: same thing with coal. It's got the impurities generally burned out.
[31:55] Speaker 1: So it's an pure energy-dense form of coal. But both
[32:00] Speaker 1: of them play a really important role in that they
[32:03] Speaker 1: produce really high temperatures, but they also introduce a lot
[32:06] Speaker 1: of that carbon that gets absorbed into the iron at
[32:09] Speaker 1: those high temperatures, which produces better, harder, stronger steel.
[32:13] Speaker 2: Can you cook with that stuff? Can you cook with Coke?
[32:15] Speaker 1: Cook with Coke? I don't know.
[32:18] Speaker 2: Like in a Kamada, like egg-type cooker?
[32:21] Speaker 1: I don't know. That's one thing that I saw in
[32:23] Speaker 1: one of these blog posts about different types of fuel.
[32:26] Speaker 1: I think it was like the no BS, but they
[32:28] Speaker 1: spell out the word BS, which I'm not going to
[32:29] Speaker 1: say here. Because they're blacksmiths. The no BS guide to
[32:36] Speaker 1: different kinds of fuel. They said one of the things
[32:38] Speaker 1: to consider is what kind of environmental impact is your
[32:41] Speaker 1: fuel having? Right. So that's a good question. If you're like,
[32:44] Speaker 1: I'm not sure I should be cooking with this. Don't forget,
[32:46] Speaker 1: you're going to be in a small enclosed room that's
[32:49] Speaker 1: your blacksmith shop. with that same stuff. And you probably
[32:52] Speaker 1: have a pretty high-efficiency chimney, but some of it's still
[32:55] Speaker 1: coming back. So that's definitely a consideration to think of,
[32:57] Speaker 1: your own health and the health of Mother Earth, who
[33:00] Speaker 1: is absorbing the blows from your anvil.
[33:02] Speaker 2: That's right. You do need good ventilation in your workshop,
[33:05] Speaker 2: eye protection. Sometimes if you really want to kick it
[33:09] Speaker 2: old school, you might have one of those leather aprons,
[33:11] Speaker 2: like a leather face. And then your quench. You know,
[33:14] Speaker 2: we talked about quenching. It's called a quench or a
[33:18] Speaker 2: quench bucket. And that is the bucket with the water and,
[33:21] Speaker 2: like you said, sometimes mineral oil these days where you'll
[33:24] Speaker 2: plunge it in there just like on TV and in
[33:26] Speaker 2: movies when it makes that great steamy sound and the
[33:30] Speaker 2: steam rises everywhere and they pull out a beautiful battle
[33:34] Speaker 2: axe or long sword.
[33:36] Speaker 1: Yeah. Apparently, so it's not that surprising when you consider samurai,
[33:41] Speaker 1: but the Japanese were really, really good at creating high
[33:44] Speaker 1: carbon steel blades. Yeah. And there's one guy named Goro, G-O-R-O,
[33:50] Speaker 1: who is like, well, widely considered the greatest Japanese swordsmith
[33:54] Speaker 1: of all time from back in the 13th century.
[33:56] Speaker 2: So he can throw together a katana, no problem?
[33:59] Speaker 1: No problem.
[34:02] Speaker 2: Should we take a break?
[34:04] Speaker 1: Yeah. All right.
[34:04] Speaker 2: We're going to take a break and talk a little
[34:06] Speaker 2: bit about and get quite a bit wrong probably about
[34:09] Speaker 2: techniques right after this.
[34:32] Speaker 1: Know.
[34:33] Speaker 2: Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know.
[34:41] Speaker 1: All right. Let the parade of misinformation begin.
[34:45] Speaker 2: You know, these worry me more than other episodes that
[34:48] Speaker 2: we do when it's something very technical and very specific.
[34:51] Speaker 1: Because these guys make battle axes. Yeah.
[34:54] Speaker 2: And anytime it's a very specific craft or something that
[34:56] Speaker 2: you haven't done, like we haven't done, you can research
[34:59] Speaker 2: it and watch videos and do your best. But Until
[35:02] Speaker 2: you've actually done it, you can't get it 100% right.
[35:05] Speaker 1: I will say, though, the videos help tremendously.
[35:09] Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
[35:09] Speaker 1: If, like, this is even remotely interesting to you, and
[35:12] Speaker 1: hopefully it is if you're, you know, this many minutes,
[35:15] Speaker 1: 33 minutes or so into this podcast that it is,
[35:19] Speaker 1: go watch some videos. There's a bunch of them on there,
[35:22] Speaker 1: and I think you're going to be like, oh, okay,
[35:23] Speaker 1: I get what they were saying there. Oh, that makes sense.
[35:25] Speaker 2: Forging a bearded axe. That's the one.
[35:29] Speaker 1: I've got one, Black Bear Forge.
[35:32] Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
[35:32] Speaker 1: This giant man with a giant beard and a tiny
[35:36] Speaker 1: little leather cap.
[35:37] Speaker 2: And his name is Black Bear Forge?
[35:38] Speaker 1: Which is adorable, yeah. The video I watched is called
[35:42] Speaker 1: Scarf Theory and Making Chain, which we'll talk about that
[35:45] Speaker 1: in a minute. But it's just amazing.
[35:49] Speaker 2: So cool. And like you said, I don't want to
[35:51] Speaker 2: do it. I want to have a friend that does it.
[35:54] Speaker 2: I want to come over to their house and watch
[35:57] Speaker 2: them do it.
[35:58] Speaker 1: Like, let's see if we can get John Hodgman into it. Yeah, Hodgman.
[36:03] Speaker 2: Although, he's got very strong forearms.
[36:05] Speaker 1: He does, freakishly, like Popeye.
[36:09] Speaker 2: All right, so here's some of the techniques. What you're
[36:11] Speaker 2: doing if you're a smithy is you are shaping hot metal.
[36:14] Speaker 2: That's what it comes down to. And this is where
[36:17] Speaker 2: the temperature of the metal becomes really important because certain
[36:24] Speaker 2: metals have to be at certain temperatures to do certain things.
[36:27] Speaker 2: These days, like I said, if you've got your gas-powered forge,
[36:31] Speaker 2: you can set that baby on whatever exact temperature you want.
[36:35] Speaker 2: And it's not quite as– it's still very impressive. But
[36:40] Speaker 2: back in the day when they were using coal and charcoal,
[36:42] Speaker 2: there was, I feel like, much more intuition and trial
[36:46] Speaker 2: and error and actually looking at the color temperature because
[36:50] Speaker 2: the metal will turn different colors at different temperatures.
[36:54] Speaker 1: Right. So there's white hot, orange hot, yellow hot, red hot,
[36:58] Speaker 1: different kinds of gradients of orange and yellow and white too.
[37:02] Speaker 1: There's glowing white, which is the hottest.
[37:04] Speaker 2: Those aren't just expressions people say. No.
[37:07] Speaker 1: And that's, again, that's the etymology of blacksmith lingo, basically,
[37:15] Speaker 1: that has made it into.
[37:16] Speaker 2: White hot.
[37:17] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[37:19] Speaker 2: Red hot.
[37:20] Speaker 1: Those abs of yours are white hot. Oh, wait, that
[37:23] Speaker 1: was a different episode. Yeah, that's right. But apparently blue-white-hot
[37:29] Speaker 1: is the hottest of all, but you don't typically see
[37:32] Speaker 1: that in blacksmithing. White-hot is about as hot as you get.
[37:35] Speaker 2: And how hot is white-hot?
[37:37] Speaker 1: White-hot, from what I saw, is 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit, which
[37:41] Speaker 1: is super high in Celsius.
[37:44] Speaker 2: Okay. Yellow, I think, is just below that. Yeah. And
[37:48] Speaker 2: then you've got orange. Right. And then you've got lame-o red-hot,
[37:53] Speaker 2: which is only 1,400 degrees.
[37:56] Speaker 1: 760 Celsius.
[37:57] Speaker 2: And you can't do anything with red-hot.
[38:00] Speaker 1: That's actually not true. You can do some very limited stuff.
[38:04] Speaker 1: But at that point, the iron is, I mean, it'll
[38:06] Speaker 1: probably bend a little bit. I saw good old Black
[38:10] Speaker 1: Bear Forge was making some chain with what looked to
[38:13] Speaker 1: be red-hot iron at the time. And he was bending
[38:17] Speaker 1: it pretty good. But, I mean, I'm not the best
[38:19] Speaker 1: judge of color.
[38:20] Speaker 2: He was making chain?
[38:22] Speaker 1: Yes. I'm just going to, I'm not going to wait
[38:24] Speaker 1: any longer. This guy made a chain, a length of chain. Perfect.
[38:30] Speaker 1: Each length was exactly the size of the last. Oh, God.
[38:33] Speaker 1: He was making them like in threes and then connecting
[38:35] Speaker 1: those threes to other threes. And he was using the horse. Chuck,
[38:39] Speaker 1: are you about to.
[38:40] Speaker 2: Climax or something? No, it's just so satisfying. It touches
[38:45] Speaker 2: these parts of my body. You know, it's not sexual
[38:48] Speaker 2: at all.
[38:49] Speaker 1: Right.
[38:50] Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying?
[38:51] Speaker 1: Oh, I know what you're saying. I know exactly what
[38:54] Speaker 1: you mean.
[38:54] Speaker 2: Although I haven't seen it. You never know what might happen.
[38:56] Speaker 1: Right. But this guy, so you know the horn of
[38:59] Speaker 1: the anvil, right?
[39:00] Speaker 2: Oh, do I?
[39:01] Speaker 1: He would make like, he would bend the chain initially
[39:04] Speaker 1: on kind of like a thick, about the middle part
[39:06] Speaker 1: of the horn. And then he would bend it even further,
[39:09] Speaker 1: moving it a little up the horn. And this guy
[39:10] Speaker 1: just so expertly put it exactly where he needed it
[39:13] Speaker 1: to be. I think one of the things I like
[39:16] Speaker 1: about Black Bear Forge guy is that he doesn't seem
[39:18] Speaker 1: the least bit pretentious. I'm pretty sure he lives in Minnesota.
[39:23] Speaker 1: He's not wearing his little leather cap, ironically. He seems
[39:27] Speaker 1: very helpful. He was born in that cap. He's making
[39:29] Speaker 1: these videos to help. Yeah, I think you might be right.
[39:32] Speaker 1: And with a white beard. I think he was born
[39:35] Speaker 1: with a white beard as well.
[39:37] Speaker 2: Well, when you watch this bearded axe thing, what this
[39:40] Speaker 2: guy does is he starts with a block of iron
[39:44] Speaker 2: and then eventually makes an axe head. But he's hammering
[39:47] Speaker 2: this thing out. He's using this little rolling tool and
[39:50] Speaker 2: hammering that as he's kind of rolling it forward. And
[39:52] Speaker 2: it's almost like, kind of reminded me of baking, like
[39:55] Speaker 2: the way you would use a rolling pin to smooth
[39:58] Speaker 2: out dough. And then when it came time to actually
[40:01] Speaker 2: make the sharp part, I guess what he was doing
[40:04] Speaker 2: was forge welding. And we're kind of jumping around, but
[40:07] Speaker 2: this is one of the techniques. And it's also called
[40:10] Speaker 2: fire welding. And that's when you combine different grades of
[40:13] Speaker 2: iron and steel, and you're joining these things together in
[40:17] Speaker 2: multiple shapes together. I think that's what was going on
[40:20] Speaker 2: because what he did, he had this axe head and
[40:24] Speaker 2: the sharp part he split. And I was like, well, dude,
[40:27] Speaker 2: what kind of an axe is that? That's crazy looking.
[40:29] Speaker 2: I thought he messed up. But then he put some
[40:32] Speaker 2: other kind of metal in between and would use this.
[40:35] Speaker 2: And from what I gathered, it's, where is it? Flux?
[40:39] Speaker 2: Is that what it is?
[40:41] Speaker 1: Flux. Yeah. Like sand. Did it look like sand?
[40:43] Speaker 2: Well, it was in a bottle and it looked like
[40:45] Speaker 2: a little sandy chemical. So I guess that's what it was.
[40:47] Speaker 2: And he would. heat it up, and then spray this
[40:49] Speaker 2: stuff on it and hammer it together, heat it up,
[40:52] Speaker 2: spray some of this, and hammer it until that metal
[40:55] Speaker 2: becomes one. And the really, you know, the super specific
[40:58] Speaker 2: metal that he needed for the sharp axe blade was
[41:02] Speaker 2: melded with the rest of that iron to where you
[41:04] Speaker 2: couldn't even tell. It was just like they became one
[41:07] Speaker 2: with one another.
[41:08] Speaker 1: He was probably reinforcing the axe head with a stronger...
[41:15] Speaker 1: a stronger type of iron. Totally, yeah. So there's slightly
[41:17] Speaker 1: different carbon content. And then the outside was a harder kind,
[41:21] Speaker 1: so it resisted surface deformities. But the interior stuff was strength,
[41:27] Speaker 1: was strong, so it resisted breaking. Probably, but he was
[41:30] Speaker 1: making these two one. I saw Black Bear Forge do
[41:34] Speaker 1: the same thing with the chains. Yes. He was using
[41:37] Speaker 1: a scarf weld where you make one end angled and
[41:42] Speaker 1: then you make the other end that it's going to
[41:44] Speaker 1: join to angled in the opposite direction so they kind
[41:46] Speaker 1: of fit tightly together. And then he would heat it
[41:48] Speaker 1: up and hammer it together and it just became one.
[41:51] Speaker 1: But he used flux as well. And from what I
[41:54] Speaker 1: could tell, when you use flux like sand or borax,
[41:57] Speaker 1: I think is something you can use, it prevents that
[42:01] Speaker 1: joint from oxidizing, which makes it a stronger... a stronger joint,
[42:06] Speaker 1: a stronger seam rather than kind of a compromised seam.
[42:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was also interesting to see how this
[42:13] Speaker 2: guy would, sometimes that block was out for quite a
[42:16] Speaker 2: long time of hammering and shaping and hammering and shaping.
[42:19] Speaker 2: And then it looked like when he got into the
[42:21] Speaker 2: little more detailed work as it became an axe head,
[42:24] Speaker 2: he would put it in the fire and he would
[42:26] Speaker 2: turn around very quickly and start hammering. You could tell
[42:29] Speaker 2: he wanted to do it very fast.
[42:31] Speaker 1: Right.
[42:31] Speaker 2: And he would hammer it for like 10 seconds and
[42:33] Speaker 2: then put it right back in the fire.
[42:34] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[42:34] Speaker 2: And then pull it out and hammer it really fast
[42:36] Speaker 2: for 10 seconds. So whatever he was doing at that
[42:38] Speaker 2: point required a super, super, super hot piece of, what
[42:43] Speaker 2: do you call it, ground piece?
[42:45] Speaker 1: Work piece.
[42:45] Speaker 2: Work piece.
[42:46] Speaker 1: Yeah. But, I mean, so most blacksmiths, you'll notice in
[42:50] Speaker 1: their shops, they set the forge and the anvil up
[42:52] Speaker 1: within just twisting distance.
[42:54] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
[42:54] Speaker 1: Like you're standing in one place moving from one to
[42:56] Speaker 1: the other so that you can lose as little heat
[42:58] Speaker 1: as possible when you transfer it out of the fire.
[43:00] Speaker 2: You don't walk across your shop.
[43:02] Speaker 1: No, you don't stop and like make a sandwich or anything.
[43:05] Speaker 2: There's also drawing, which is drawing that metal out into
[43:10] Speaker 2: a longer, thinner shape. You might be shaping something into
[43:14] Speaker 2: a rod or a block into a blade like I saw.
[43:18] Speaker 2: And that's sort of lengthening it without flattening it out.
[43:23] Speaker 1: Right.
[43:23] Speaker 2: Because you can also flatten it. That's another thing. That's
[43:25] Speaker 2: called peening. Peening.
[43:27] Speaker 1: Yeah. There's also upsetting, which is the opposite of drawing,
[43:31] Speaker 1: where you shorten the length of iron or steel by
[43:36] Speaker 1: hammering it. And that's what happens when you make a nail.
[43:39] Speaker 1: Would you want to talk about making nails here?
[43:42] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, we kind of mentioned earlier, you know,
[43:44] Speaker 2: the foundation. I mean, there were things that were built
[43:48] Speaker 2: with dovetail joints and corn cobs to keep logs together.
[43:53] Speaker 2: And there were technologies like that. But If you really
[43:56] Speaker 2: want to talk about the building of the world, you
[43:59] Speaker 2: got to talk about iron nails and how many millions
[44:04] Speaker 2: and tens and millions of iron nails that were made
[44:08] Speaker 2: in the world by hand, by people.
[44:11] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, before industrialization, they were all made by hand.
[44:15] Speaker 1: And it's apparently harder to make them than you would think.
[44:19] Speaker 1: I watched a video by a blacksmith named Nick Kimball
[44:23] Speaker 1: on Instructables. And I guess his brother writes for Instructables
[44:26] Speaker 1: and interviewed him. And he's like a blacksmith at one
[44:29] Speaker 1: of the colonial model farms. Yeah. I think maybe Mount Vernon.
[44:33] Speaker 1: They didn't say. No, I met that guy. So he
[44:37] Speaker 1: looks like it too. He looks like a cool dude.
[44:40] Speaker 1: But he showed how to make a nail. And he
[44:43] Speaker 1: says he can make one a minute. And this guy
[44:45] Speaker 1: is an advanced blacksmith. Like he has a job as
[44:48] Speaker 1: a blacksmith. That's how advanced this guy is in the
[44:51] Speaker 1: 21st century. And he can make one a minute. Apparently,
[44:55] Speaker 1: blacksmiths of yore could make 10 to a dozen of
[44:58] Speaker 1: them a minute. And it's very involved. You actually have
[45:03] Speaker 1: to make the tool first to make the nails. So
[45:07] Speaker 1: you take an iron bar, flatten that, punch a hole
[45:09] Speaker 1: in it using your pritchel hole and a punch. And
[45:12] Speaker 1: then you take nail rod, little strips of the iron
[45:16] Speaker 1: that's going to be nails, heat it up. hammer a
[45:21] Speaker 1: shoulder into it on the edge of the anvil so
[45:23] Speaker 1: that there's like a, it's narrower for the bulk of it.
[45:28] Speaker 1: And then up top, it just kind of is a
[45:30] Speaker 1: little wider and boxy. And then you put it into
[45:33] Speaker 1: the hole of the tool that you made and then
[45:36] Speaker 1: you heat it up and you hammer the head a
[45:38] Speaker 1: bunch of times to flatten it. That's what you have
[45:40] Speaker 1: to do to make one single nail. And some blacksmiths
[45:43] Speaker 1: in the days of yore could make a dozen of
[45:46] Speaker 1: those in a minute. That's how good they were at it.
[45:49] Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
[45:51] Speaker 1: I would have charged so much for nails, it would
[45:54] Speaker 1: have been astronomical. I would have been like, no, I will, like,
[45:59] Speaker 1: let's make you some chain mail instead. What do you
[46:01] Speaker 1: need nails for? Let's do something cool. And they'd say,
[46:04] Speaker 1: you know, I need to build a second story in
[46:05] Speaker 1: my house. I'd be like, all right, it's going to
[46:07] Speaker 1: cost you.
[46:09] Speaker 2: The Josh nail?
[46:11] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[46:11] Speaker 2: The Josh Clark special?
[46:12] Speaker 1: Because it would not be fun to make nails, for sure.
[46:16] Speaker 2: No, but boy, they made a lot of them.
[46:17] Speaker 1: They did.
[46:18] Speaker 2: There are also some other techniques. There's bending we've kind
[46:20] Speaker 2: of already talked about when you're creating curves and things.
[46:25] Speaker 2: I mentioned the staircase irons, how they're twisted around. That
[46:31] Speaker 2: is done with a square bar, which is a bar
[46:35] Speaker 2: with a square hole in it. And that's placed over
[46:38] Speaker 2: a square rod of hot iron. And then you turn
[46:41] Speaker 2: that square. You basically, sort of like that Dremel you
[46:43] Speaker 2: were talking about, you stick that hot thing into the hole.
[46:47] Speaker 2: And you twist it around and you create those little twists.
[46:50] Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, every time it's a blacksmith tradition, you say,
[46:54] Speaker 1: et voila. You got anything else?
[46:59] Speaker 2: I don't have anything else. I know we got stuff
[47:02] Speaker 2: not quite right, but hopefully the Smithies, hopefully our enthusiasm
[47:06] Speaker 2: won them over.
[47:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, let's hope so.
[47:09] Speaker 2: Are they coming after us?
[47:10] Speaker 1: It cloaked our ignorance. Also, there's like a ton that
[47:14] Speaker 1: we didn't talk about. It's a really, I mean, this
[47:17] Speaker 1: is a countless human, thousands of year long body of
[47:21] Speaker 1: knowledge that we just tried to do in 45 minutes
[47:24] Speaker 1: and failed at that. But there's a lot to it.
[47:28] Speaker 1: So if you're interested in it, go check it out.
[47:30] Speaker 1: At the very least, go watch some videos. And since
[47:32] Speaker 1: I said go watch some videos, everybody, it's time for
[47:34] Speaker 1: Listener Mail.
[47:37] Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to call this Olympic Torchbearer.
[47:39] Speaker 1: Okay.
[47:41] Speaker 2: Hey, guys. I was a torchbearer for the Winter Olympics,
[47:44] Speaker 2: and it was a lot of fun. The amount of
[47:46] Speaker 2: logistical coordination that went into it was incredible. I was
[47:49] Speaker 2: told four months in advance when, down to the minute,
[47:53] Speaker 2: I'd be carrying the lit torch, and it wasn't off
[47:55] Speaker 2: by more than a few, actually. A guy came to
[47:57] Speaker 2: our hotel with a bunch of toys, vehicles, and action
[48:00] Speaker 2: figures and modeled exactly what would happen. That's so cool.
[48:04] Speaker 2: I had to be reminded by my handlers to ensure
[48:07] Speaker 2: that I kept it very high, high enough so as
[48:10] Speaker 2: to not light my hat on fire. The torch is
[48:13] Speaker 2: pretty light but fairly top-heavy. I'm sure we were wearing
[48:16] Speaker 2: mittens to make it impossible for any of us to
[48:18] Speaker 2: make any finger gestures, even accidentally, that could be seen
[48:22] Speaker 2: by the world on the live feed. Didn't even think
[48:24] Speaker 2: about that. One term you didn't use that I thought
[48:27] Speaker 2: you'd appreciate, when one torchbearer passes the flame to another,
[48:30] Speaker 2: it's called a torch kiss. We went through training and
[48:32] Speaker 2: practiced just this part. On the street, we did a
[48:35] Speaker 2: little dance after we kissed, and then I and whoever
[48:38] Speaker 2: just finished got back on the bus. As you mentioned,
[48:40] Speaker 2: a guy took my torch and extinguished it right afterward,
[48:43] Speaker 2: and since it was still hot, they stored it in
[48:45] Speaker 2: a rack on the bus. When we got back to
[48:47] Speaker 2: the starting point, they removed the fuel cell and gave
[48:50] Speaker 2: it back to me.
[48:51] Speaker 1: Broke it in half.
[48:52] Speaker 2: And that is from Matt Jones. We had quite a
[48:54] Speaker 2: nice little exchange about this. He said he did get
[48:57] Speaker 2: it through work, but he was not a C-level executive.
[49:00] Speaker 2: He won it through a drawing at his work.
[49:02] Speaker 1: Oh, that's totally great.
[49:04] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[49:05] Speaker 1: That's great. He might as well have gotten it from
[49:07] Speaker 1: contributing to society, as great as that is. Man, I've
[49:11] Speaker 1: got to thanks for that, Matt. Also, I knew it
[49:13] Speaker 1: was called The Kiss. I thought I said it was
[49:15] Speaker 1: The Kiss. And if I left that out, that drives
[49:18] Speaker 1: me crazy, man. when there's a fact that I know
[49:21] Speaker 1: that I failed to put into the podcast that somebody
[49:24] Speaker 1: then comes and says you left out this really awesome
[49:26] Speaker 1: fact and I just drop to my knees like the
[49:29] Speaker 1: Liberty Mutual guy in the elevator and go.
[49:31] Speaker 2: No you know how much that bothers me when that
[49:33] Speaker 2: happens to me.
[49:34] Speaker 1: How much none man it's like it'll ruin my week
[49:39] Speaker 1: My week's just toast now, thanks to Matt.
[49:41] Speaker 2: There's the difference between you and I.
[49:44] Speaker 1: Well, if you want to ruin my week and have
[49:46] Speaker 1: a neutral effect on Chuck's week, maybe even make it
[49:49] Speaker 1: more positive, you can email us. Go ahead and type
[49:53] Speaker 1: it out. After that, wrap it up. After that, spank
[49:56] Speaker 1: it on the bottom and then send it off to
[49:58] Speaker 1: stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
[50:03] Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
[50:06] Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[50:11] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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