The Almighty Blacksmith!
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
What is a Blacksmith?
A Blacksmith is a man or woman who creates objects such as gates, swords, fences, armor, nails, out of iron or steel using heat. They make the shapes by heating the metal to the right temperature and then using tools and an anvil to hammer, bend and shape the metal into the object they are making.
The name “Blacksmith” comes from forging the “Black” metal and “Smith” comes from the proto-German word “Smithaz” means skilled worker. Unlike the Whitesmith who works with white/lighter metals.
The History Of The Blacksmith
Back in the day of the Iron Age, The Blacksmith would be the town’s tool maker and weapons maker; he would also make the horse shoes, for the horses.
The first compass created by a Blacksmith was a forged needle that floated in a round vial; this discovery was a very great one. The Blacksmith would forge the needle as perfectly as he could, the Blacksmith would align the molecules in the iron and that is why north is north and south is south. Now that they knew what direction was what, sailors could travel in their boats without the need of stars or the sun.
But where does the Blacksmith get his metal from?
Each time a Blacksmith wanted to make an arrow head or a simple tool, he needed to smelt down the iron in the ore in a blast furnace. It’s a bit hard to explain when I do not know as much as these professionals, so here is a demonstrating video of how iron smelting was done back in those days.
What do I think of the Blacksmith?
Blacksmithing looks like a very good and useful thing to get into, I would love to give it a try, it looks challenging but also very enjoyable, I love to build things so this seems like my kind of thing, there is a very cool video that my dad and I watched, it’s about an hour long, but it’s quite a good video! Here is the video right here!
Are Blacksmiths still around?
Yes of course they are! Where ever you see nicely built fences or gates, like this stair case railing, usually they are built by a Blacksmith, there are many people out there who have many, many years of experience in Blacksmithing, like in the video above, the man in it makes Blacksmithing look so easy! But he has had over 30 years of practice.
My last thoughts on the art of the Blacksmith
I would certainly give it a go! It would be a fantastic experience; being taught by an actual Blacksmith would be awesome! I hope this gave you a bit of a background on the Blacksmith, and I hope you someday give it a go, because to me its looks pretty fun!
This was written by my son, Jesse Ranson