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i would like any with information to help me make a sword. thanks

wanto know about Blackssmiths in 1927

hi
sent u foto of my latest knife, hope 2 hear from u all

I'm a blacksmith who smith from nails to gates fences knives ... I'd
like 2 share info, techniks , philosophy or whatever about
blacksmithing, so feel free to mail me

I wonder how well the weight of iron bought would relate to the type of actual
work invested in any given pound of iron.  A wagon tire would have less work per
pound than a comparable weight of kitchen or hearth impliments.  Work in the
sense of transforming iron into objects may have less bearing on the pound of
iron as a guide to production per year than it does on what was pounded from the
iron hourly or daily.
George Dixon

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter King <peter@...>
Sent: Jul 1, 2005 6:42 PM
To: realwroughtiron group <realwroughtiron@...>
Subject: [realwroughtiron] blacksmith's work

I have been looking at the accounts of an 18th century ironworks recently
and in particular at those who were buying bar iron.  It occurs to me to ask
how much a blacksmith, using decent bar iron would be able to forge into
useful artefacts (such as hinges or horseshoes) in a year.  I see little
reason why this should have changed between the 18th century and now.  I am
talking about manual blacksmith’s work without the aid of a trip hammer, or
any other device relying on power from a water wheel, steam engine or the
like.  However the iron would be available in bars of various sizes down to
one inch by half or three-quarters of an inch square.

I fully appreciate that part of the work of a typical village blacksmith
would be shoeing horses, which would mean that he would not be working iron
all the time.  There are people listed in the accounts who were buying half
a ton, one ton or 1.5 tons per year, but have no addresses or occupations at
present.  Is this the sort of amount that a smith would use in a year? There
were also people who were buying considerably greater quantities, and they
must be ironmongers or master smiths with a number of employees.

Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
Telephone 01562-720368

Steve,
I'm doing some sightseeing in England next week.
Could I pay you a visit to discuss the making of the Mary Rose breech-
loader replica ?
I will see Nick Hall at Fort Nelson on monday 10th May. Could be in
Thirsk on thursday 13th.
Would that work ?
Cheers
Axel Biront

Members may be interested to know that I have been advised of a
Ukranian  site (in English)  showing Wootz Steel & damascus making on
http://www.geocities.com/qasruf7/bulat.html

For those that do not know Wootz Steel  is:
Wootz is the original crucible steel making technique, discovered in
India around 300AD (although some say as early as 200BC). Wootz is an
Anglicised version of ukku, the word for steel in many south Indian
languages.
Wootz is produced by placing a mixture of wrought iron or iron ore
and charcoal in a cruicible with glass, which is then sealed and
heated in a furnace with a number of other crucibles. After some time
the result is a mixture of impurities mixed with glass floating on
the surface, and "buttons" of steel. The buttons (with a typical
carbon content of 1.5%) were separated from the slag and poured into
2 kg ingots.

Wootz steel was widely exported thoughout the region, and became
particularly famous in the Middle East, where it became known as
Damascus steel. Damascus swords were renowned for their toughness, it
being said that they could cut through a man with a single stroke,
and be bent around a man and return to their original shape when
released.

Steve Suff

IIRC David Starley presented a paper on medieval arrowheads at the 37th
International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo MI, USA, two years ago.

You may want to contact him to see if he has published.

David Starley PhD
Science Officer

Royal Armouries Museum
Conservation Department
Armouries Drive
Leeds LS10 1LT
United Kingdom

Tel. 0044 (0) 220 1919
Fax 0044 (0) 220 1917

(off the archeological metallurgy list)

I have done some work on replicating a renaissance quarrel point I purchased in
Germany.  The corrosion shows how it was made fairly clearly and I have a decent
supply of wrought iron including bloomery iron.

Thomas Powers

----- Original Message -----

From: Guy Joyce

To: realwroughtiron@...

Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2004 11:00 AM

Subject: [realwroughtiron] arrowheads.

hello...i have just joined this site and i wonder if there is an interest in the re-production of 13th-14th cent. arrowheads. In particular the ones known as "type 16" as illustrated in Mr. Robert Hardy's book "Longbow".I would consider any information about how these might have been made very helpful.

cheers,

Guy

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
realwroughtiron-unsubscribe@...

>Unfortunately, as I told you in relation to a message to the Arch-metals
>list, you have uploaded to a password protected site.  I have no idea what
>my yahoo identity and password are.  Might I suggest that you put it on your

          As this list is based on Yahoo it is most probable that the
members on it do have a Yahoo password.  But then again, that's only my view.

Unfortunately, as I told you in relation to a message to the Arch-metals
list, you have uploaded to a password protected site.  I have no idea what
my yahoo identity and password are.  Might I suggest that you put it on your
own wrought iron site, perhaps with some suitably sceptical comment about
not necessarily being your view?

Peter King

  -----Original Message-----
From:  realwroughtiron@...
[mailto:realwroughtiron@...]
Sent: 20 January 2004 07:14
To: realwroughtiron@...
Subject: [realwroughtiron] New file uploaded to realwroughtiron


Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the realwroughtiron
group.

   File        : /valley furnace.pdf
   Uploaded by : stevesuff <c.topp@...>
   Description : Draft Article for observations

You can access this file at the URL

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/realwroughtiron/files/valley%20furnace.pdf

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit

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Regards,

stevesuff <c.topp@...>






To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
realwroughtiron-unsubscribe@...



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/info/terms.html

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the realwroughtiron
group.

   File        : /valley furnace.pdf
   Uploaded by : stevesuff <c.topp@...>
   Description : Draft Article for observations

You can access this file at the URL

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/realwroughtiron/files/valley%20furnace.pdf

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit

http://help.yahoo.com/help/uk/groups/files

Regards,

stevesuff <c.topp@...>

There is a new website that has been set-up on ironwork - mainly
concentrated on Scottish Ironwork, the site is very extensive and may
be of interest to you have not yet seen it. The details are as follows

"We are pleased to announce that www.scottishironwork.org is now live
on the internet !

This website sets out to be the world-wide focus to celebrate the
Scottish ironwork tradition. It is an exciting resource that provides
information for those interested in wrought and cast ironwork
manufactured or found in Scotland. On this site you will find
historical information on Scottish Foundries and ironworkers, a
searchable online database, a discussion forum, technical information
area and a special features page. Our database currently houses
information on 450 cast and wrought iron structures (bandstands,
gates, buildings, fountains etc.) manufactured or found in Scotland,
and found within the UK, Ireland, Australia, South America and India
to name a few. We have many more examples to upload, and we hope that
users will supply us with new information. The website is a living
project and we plan to add many more features over the coming months.

We hope that you will find something on the website to interest you -
please feel free to contact us with queries or information, and
please pass this message on to others who might find it of interest"

The leading work on the subject of Blister Steel is K.C. Barraclough,
Steelmaking before Bessemer: 1. Blister Steel.  If this is still in print it
will be available for the Institute of Materials.

The core of unconverted wrought iron was known as the sap.  This results
from the iron not having been in the furnace long enough.  You are not to
blame for having this happen, because you are probably the first people to
make blister steel since 1949.

Your inquirer in asking you to replicate medieval artefacts is committing a
fundamental error:  Blister steel was a 17th century invention.  It used to
be thought that it was an English invention, but Barraclough found it had
been invented slightly earlier in Germany.  There is no reason to believe
that it was a medieval process.  Furthermore, a particular kind of
converting furnace was used, and I think evidence of such furnaces would
have come to light if they were used before 1600.

I have reviewed evidence for 16th century steelmaking briefly in an article
'The cartel in oregrounds iron trading: the raw material for steel in the
18th century' Journal of Industrial History 6(1)  (2003), 25-49.  Such
evidence as there is concerning steelmaking in the 16th century suggests
that a different process was in use then.

I think your choice of early puddled iron was probably not the best (as you
realise).  Most of the steel made in England between 1615 and 1855 was not
merely made from charcoal iron, but the Swedish oregrounds iron, all of
which came ultimately from ores from the Dannemora mine.  The special
quality of this ore was that it contained manganese, which reacted with
impurities and carried them into the slag.  A certain amount of 'Old Sable'
Russian iron was however also converted to make a less good steel.  If you
do not have oregrounds iron available, rather more modern puddled iron might
actually have been better.

Steel was an expensive product.  A relatively small amount of it was welded
along the cutting edge of an edged tool in the course of its fabrication,
the rest of the metal in the tool being iron.  Blister steel is so called
because it has blisters on the surface.  Not being a metallurgist, I am not
clear why blister steel was not considered suitable for making into tools,
but it was not.

Something like the process that you seem to have in mind was (I believe)
however used by the Birmingham 'toy' trade when producing steel 'toys'.  Toy
in this context should perhaps be translated into the modern word trinket.
These were fabricated in iron and then case hardened by heating them with
charcoal, but no doubt for a shorter time than for blister steel, as it was
not necessary that the artefact should have more than a steel surface; at
least that is my understanding.  The locks for flintlock muskets were
similarly made in iron and then 'hardened'.

I suspect that your archaeologist friends may be starting their argument
from an inappropriate point.  If they are dealing with arrowheads, I would
have thought that the starting point was a metallographic examination of the
metal, which should provide clear indications, of what the metal consisted
of.

I would be interested to know what site they are interested in.  Perhaps you
can persuade them to post a query on the Arch-metals list, to get a
discussion going about this.


Peter King

  -----Original Message-----
From:  Arch-Metals Group [mailto:ARCH-METALS@...]  On Behalf Of
Steve Suff
Sent: 26 September 2003 14:29
To: Peter King
Subject: Blister Steel

We recently were asked to make some blister steel from wrought iron to
discover whether the process could have been undertaken at a medieval
ironworks that was being studied.

For the purposes of this task we used very early puddled wrought iron
(although charcoal wrought iron would have been used at the time). The
wrought iron was surrounded in charcoal and placed in a clay box which was
then heated in a furnace for 12 hours at 900-1000 degreee centigrade.

The results showed that steel could have been made with the technology
available at the ironworks during the period concerned.

However when subsequently looking at the photographs (which are posted on
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/realwroughtiron/ ), it could clearly be
seen the depth of steel penetration which had been made into the iron,
leaving a wrought iron core. It occurred to us that given that the
technology was available, that it may have been used for weaponary, tools
etc. For example a large number of arrowheads could have been stood upright
in sand in a clay box to the level where a steel tip was required, the
exposed tip then being surrounded in charcoal and heated in the furnace.
Similarly, a sword or axe could be heated for a predetermined time to
ensure sufficient penetration to have a steel edge but retaining a softer
wrought iron core.

Technically, from a blacksmith point of view there seems little advantage
to fireweld a steel edge on the wrought iron to make such items and a
considerable advantage in time by using this method. If you estimate that
to fireweld steel into an arrowhead would take approximately ten minutes
and Robert Hardy estimates that one million arrows were used at the battle
of Cressy, the time saving would be over 3,000 man weeks (at a 50hr week).
As this approach struck us almost immediately when looking at the treated
bars and we were not even considering the subject it would seem to us that
smiths at the time could have reached a similar conclusion.

As we are neither weapons experts or armourers we do not have sufficient
knowledge or experience in this field to know whether this is a method that
was actually used but we thought it interesting enough for those that are
to consider this as a possibility.

Steve Suff
Chris Topp & Co

We recently were asked to make some blister steel from wrought iron
to discover whether the process could have been undertaken at a
medieval ironworks that was being studied.

For the purposes of this task we used very early puddled wrought
iron, although charcoal wrought iron would have been used at the
time. The wrought iron was surrounded in charcoal and placed in a
clay box which was then heated in a furnace for 12 hours at 900-1000
degreee centigrade.

The results showed indeed that steel could have been made with the
technology available at the ironworks.

However, in subsequently looking at the photographs (which are posted
on http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/realwroughtiron/ ), it can
clearly be seen that steel penetration has been made into the iron,
leaving a wrought iron core. It occurred to us that given that the
technology was available, that it may have been used for weaponary,
tools etc. For example a large number of arrowheads could be stood
upright in sand in a clay box to the level where a steel tip was
required, the exposed tip then being surrounded in charcoal and
heated in the furnace. Similarly, a sword or axe could be heated for
a predetermined time to ensure sufficient penetration to have a steel
edge but retaining a softer wrought iron core.

Technically, from a blacksmith point of view there seems little
technical advantage to fireweld a steel edge on the wrought iron to
make such items and a considerable advantage in time by using this
method. If you estimate that to fireweld steel into an arrowhead
would take approximately ten minutes and Robert Hardy estimates that
one million arrows were used at the battle of Cressy, the time saving
would be over 3,000 man weeks (at a 50hr week). As this approach
struck us almost immediately when looking at the treated bars and we
were not even considering the subject it would seem to us that smiths
at the time would have reached a similar conclusion.

As we are neither weapons experts or armourers we do not have
sufficient knowledge or experience in this field to know whether this
is a method that was actually used but we thought it interesting
enough for those that are to consider this as a possibility.

Steve Suff
Chris Topp & Co

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the realwroughtiron
group.

   File        : /WroughtIronAnalysis.pdf
   Uploaded by : axel_biront <biront@...>
   Description : Wrought iron analysis on a 1910 bridge in Luthuania

You can access this file at the URL

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/realwroughtiron/files/WroughtIronAnalysis.pdf

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit

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Regards,

axel_biront <biront@...>