WEBVTT - Selects: Blacksmiths? You got that right! 0:00:00.930 --> 0:00:04.609 Hi guys, it's Josh, and for this week's Select, I'm 0:00:04.690 --> 0:00:09.550 going with our 2020 episode on blacksmiths. Growing up, there 0:00:09.619 --> 0:00:12.899 wasn't a lot of smithing going on around me. Pretty 0:00:12.940 --> 0:00:16.720 much zero smithing, actually. So I wasn't very familiar with 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.560 this topic. But I found very quickly that I really 0:00:20.620 --> 0:00:23.799 enjoyed researching it and talking about it, too. And I 0:00:23.860 --> 0:00:27.490 came to admire all the blacksmiths. on the videos that 0:00:27.550 --> 0:00:31.270 I watched. It's just kind of mesmerizing. And if you 0:00:31.310 --> 0:00:33.810 think about it, there are many things that people do 0:00:33.950 --> 0:00:38.629 today that are essentially unchanged over the last few thousand years, 0:00:39.130 --> 0:00:41.510 which is pretty cool. So I hope you like listening 0:00:41.530 --> 0:00:44.150 to this one as much as I liked researching it. 0:00:51.000 --> 0:01:00.750 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:01:00.830 --> 0:01:03.310 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's 0:01:03.370 --> 0:01:06.790 Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's out there somewhere, 0:01:06.850 --> 0:01:08.390 and this is Stuff You Should Know. 0:01:09.510 --> 0:01:11.930 Did I tell you about my new hobby that started yesterday? 0:01:11.950 --> 0:01:14.990 I'll bet I can guess. 0:01:15.650 --> 0:01:17.069 Watching blacksmithing videos. 0:01:17.650 --> 0:01:19.780 Yeah, I was going to say the same thing, man. Like, 0:01:20.310 --> 0:01:22.600 I don't have any desire to blacksmith myself. 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:23.000 Nope. 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:26.679 I just like watching these videos. There's something really amazing 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:27.180 about them. 0:01:27.340 --> 0:01:30.580 Yeah, there's one. I don't know if you watched. It's 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:34.080 on YouTube. It's called Blacksmithing Forging a Bearded Axe. 0:01:34.980 --> 0:01:36.720 No, I didn't see that one. Oh, God. 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:42.300 It just reminds me of the sort of the lulling 0:01:42.380 --> 0:01:45.420 of that show, how it's made. But I watched this video, 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:48.170 and most of them have some sped up stuff, too, 0:01:48.190 --> 0:01:53.090 because blacksmithing takes so long that a 30-minute video, I mean, 0:01:53.150 --> 0:01:54.770 half of it is in fast motion, so it just 0:01:54.790 --> 0:01:56.150 goes to show you, and it's edited. 0:01:56.530 --> 0:01:58.230 And they always put it to Yakety Sachs. 0:02:00.710 --> 0:02:04.810 But it's just crazy, though, when you see how long 0:02:04.870 --> 0:02:08.010 it takes to make this one axe. And then you 0:02:08.030 --> 0:02:13.170 think about outfitting armies. Yeah. It just feels like it 0:02:13.230 --> 0:02:15.829 was every other person a blacksmith. And did they just 0:02:15.889 --> 0:02:16.300 do that 24-7? 0:02:16.850 --> 0:02:20.190 Yeah, I get the impression there is a Walt Whitman 0:02:20.350 --> 0:02:24.320 poem about blacksmiths. And he's basically like they were the 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:28.440 most important people in any community. Everybody loved them. They 0:02:28.500 --> 0:02:31.739 owed no one anything because they never had any debts 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:35.120 because they were so vital that anything they did probably 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:37.820 was worth 10 times what anybody else could do for them. 0:02:39.020 --> 0:02:42.440 They seem to have been pretty amazing people on the whole. 0:02:43.380 --> 0:02:45.160 Yeah. I mean, and we'll talk about this more, but 0:02:45.190 --> 0:02:48.250 when you think about just nails. Yeah. And how many 0:02:48.350 --> 0:02:50.990 nails built this country and the world. 0:02:51.630 --> 0:02:51.810 Right. 0:02:51.970 --> 0:02:53.109 Those nails had to be forged. 0:02:53.130 --> 0:02:55.639 Right. Yeah, when you watch some of these blacksmith videos, 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.139 and like you're saying, when you do see how long 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.560 it takes to just make an average thing that you 0:03:00.590 --> 0:03:04.410 would like buy in a second these days, it really 0:03:04.450 --> 0:03:06.990 gives you an appreciation for just what a sea change 0:03:07.030 --> 0:03:08.490 the industrial revolution was. 0:03:08.710 --> 0:03:09.450 Yeah, amazing. 0:03:09.470 --> 0:03:14.110 To where this was automated and made, converted to mass production. 0:03:14.130 --> 0:03:17.290 It just could have never happened before. And it didn't 0:03:17.340 --> 0:03:20.320 happen before, but it was up to the lone blacksmith to... 0:03:21.530 --> 0:03:25.180 equip their entire communities with all this stuff. It's pretty cool. 0:03:25.620 --> 0:03:30.440 So are we going to do blacksmith history first or 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:32.100 the metal history first? 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.600 We'll do blacksmith history first, I think. Okay. 0:03:36.990 --> 0:03:39.530 I guess we've got to look at the name because 0:03:39.610 --> 0:03:43.490 if you look at other smiths, they were all a 0:03:43.510 --> 0:03:47.430 little more specific. They were called bronze smiths. Blacksmiths are 0:03:47.470 --> 0:03:48.870 not called iron smiths. No. 0:03:48.870 --> 0:03:48.970 No. 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:50.980 Even though they work with iron, and most of the 0:03:51.020 --> 0:03:53.119 other smiths were named for the metal that they work with. 0:03:53.580 --> 0:03:54.960 Silversmith, that's a good one. 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:56.500 Yeah, oh, God, good silversmith. 0:03:56.870 --> 0:03:57.030 Sure. 0:03:57.050 --> 0:03:58.570 It's worth their weight, and it's gold. 0:03:58.630 --> 0:04:01.590 Silver. Don't bring up gold to those guys. 0:04:01.610 --> 0:04:05.030 Oh, no, no. But black comes from, well, we're not positive, 0:04:05.090 --> 0:04:09.010 but one explanation is blacksmith comes from the hammer scale, 0:04:09.450 --> 0:04:12.350 or these scales. If you're watching these videos, you'll see 0:04:12.380 --> 0:04:16.840 when they're hammering this stuff, these little tiny, chunky scales, thin, 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.420 not chunky actually, just little chunks of thin scales are 0:04:19.540 --> 0:04:22.580 falling off every time they hammer it. That's the hammer scale. 0:04:23.300 --> 0:04:25.099 And it is black, and your hands get all black, 0:04:25.140 --> 0:04:27.670 and your face gets black. Or it might have just 0:04:27.730 --> 0:04:29.169 been because iron is black. 0:04:29.830 --> 0:04:33.590 Typically, yeah, it's pretty dark. It's dark enough. Especially wrought iron, 0:04:33.650 --> 0:04:37.030 it tends to be black. So that's why they think 0:04:37.130 --> 0:04:40.250 one of those two reasons is where blacksmith came from. 0:04:40.830 --> 0:04:43.860 And the name Smith itself, we actually talk about this 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:46.450 in our book that's coming out, you know, In the 0:04:46.490 --> 0:04:48.029 episode on keeping up with the Joneses. 0:04:48.050 --> 0:04:48.670 Oh, that's right. 0:04:49.130 --> 0:04:50.790 We talked about. You mean the chapter? 0:04:51.750 --> 0:04:52.190 Yeah. Yeah. 0:04:52.210 --> 0:04:56.890 The chapter. In our book, we talk about how keeping 0:04:56.950 --> 0:04:59.059 up with the Joneses could have very easily been keeping 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:03.200 up with the Smiths because the two names are so prevalent. 0:05:03.220 --> 0:05:06.920 And in fact, Smith is the most prevalent name in 0:05:06.940 --> 0:05:10.180 the United States. And it's all derived from blacksmiths and 0:05:10.220 --> 0:05:14.180 just how many blacksmiths there were because every community needed one. 0:05:14.930 --> 0:05:16.610 And then if you were in a large enough community, 0:05:16.630 --> 0:05:20.050 you had multiple blacksmiths all working. Because one blacksmith had 0:05:20.089 --> 0:05:22.210 to do all this work to supply this one community 0:05:22.250 --> 0:05:25.000 with all this stuff. And they could only keep up 0:05:25.010 --> 0:05:26.940 with a certain size community, you know? 0:05:27.660 --> 0:05:31.880 Yeah. And if you had an on-site thing that you 0:05:31.900 --> 0:05:33.980 were doing, you had a blacksmith with you. If you 0:05:34.020 --> 0:05:37.460 were out at war in battle, you had blacksmiths there 0:05:37.500 --> 0:05:41.460 because not only do they create these weapons and the armor, 0:05:41.940 --> 0:05:44.229 but they have to fix stuff. You know, after a big, 0:05:44.390 --> 0:05:46.850 long day of battle, you go in and trade in 0:05:46.890 --> 0:05:48.930 your sword and say, fix this thing. 0:05:48.950 --> 0:05:49.469 Yeah. 0:05:49.690 --> 0:05:52.050 And those smithies got to be working around the clock. 0:05:52.950 --> 0:05:55.210 Yeah, and they have, like, apprentices and help and all 0:05:55.250 --> 0:05:57.970 that kind of stuff. But, yeah, I mean, like, you 0:05:57.990 --> 0:06:00.830 get the impression that the community could come to a 0:06:00.890 --> 0:06:03.969 standstill when the blacksmith was sick for a week or something. 0:06:04.430 --> 0:06:07.510 Yeah, and there were blacksmiths doing all kinds of work 0:06:07.540 --> 0:06:10.120 all over the place, so many that they eventually, and 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:12.120 this makes sense, would become a little more specialized. 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:12.520 Mm-hmm. 0:06:12.990 --> 0:06:15.410 And horses were a big deal back then. We still 0:06:15.430 --> 0:06:17.130 love horses today, but back then they did a lot 0:06:17.150 --> 0:06:20.260 more for humanity. They just look pretty and run around 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.719 in fields now. So they had to make horseshoes, and 0:06:23.740 --> 0:06:27.260 it was a very specialized set of equipment for making 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.960 horseshoes as opposed to just regular blacksmithing. So that was 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:34.750 a very busy job. They were called farriers. And even 0:06:34.790 --> 0:06:37.430 when blacksmithing as a whole kind of went away, there 0:06:37.450 --> 0:06:41.050 were still farriers working because— It's not like a shoe 0:06:41.070 --> 0:06:43.750 store where one size fits all. Well, shoe stores aren't 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.600 one size fits all, but it's very specific to your 0:06:47.620 --> 0:06:49.880 foot size or your hoof size as a horse. 0:06:50.420 --> 0:06:50.600 Yeah. 0:06:50.620 --> 0:06:52.240 So you can't just throw any old shoe that's close 0:06:52.300 --> 0:06:55.860 enough on there. You got to make them a la carte, basically, 0:06:56.670 --> 0:06:58.530 made to order, I think, in the fashion world. What's 0:06:58.589 --> 0:06:59.150 it called? 0:07:00.089 --> 0:07:00.869 Pret-a-porter? 0:07:00.910 --> 0:07:01.390 Bespoke. 0:07:02.350 --> 0:07:04.690 Oh, yeah. That's the opposite of pret-a-porter. 0:07:05.470 --> 0:07:08.710 And so farriers continue to work for years and years 0:07:08.750 --> 0:07:10.880 and years, and I think they're are people that still 0:07:10.890 --> 0:07:12.080 do farrier work today, aren't they? 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:14.400 Sure. Sure. Just to show off. 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:15.100 Right. Sure. 0:07:15.580 --> 0:07:18.500 But I guess you kind of spoiled the ending. Blacksmiths 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:23.480 aren't really around much today because of industrialization. But they were. 0:07:23.500 --> 0:07:25.670 They're around now. They're in Brooklyn, New York. I guarantee it. 0:07:25.750 --> 0:07:30.570 Yeah, they are. For about 2000 years, they were extraordinarily 0:07:30.650 --> 0:07:35.210 important to society. But, you know, society was around for 0:07:35.230 --> 0:07:37.510 a very long time before blacksmiths came around. So there's 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:42.260 this this really important window in the historical development of 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.820 of human society that blacksmiths you know existed in um 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:50.480 prior to that you know we had tools but they 0:07:50.500 --> 0:07:53.560 were mostly made of stone and then at some point 0:07:53.620 --> 0:07:56.230 somebody said hey if you put tin and copper together 0:07:56.270 --> 0:07:58.630 you can come up with this stuff called bronze and 0:07:58.690 --> 0:08:00.930 it's pretty great you can make some pretty neat things 0:08:00.970 --> 0:08:04.170 with it and one of the things about bronze is 0:08:04.230 --> 0:08:07.690 that it has a fairly low melting point something like 0:08:07.930 --> 0:08:15.120 um 1,742 degrees Fahrenheit, 950 degrees Celsius, which you could 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:20.970 get a hot campfire to that temperature to melt, melt 0:08:21.390 --> 0:08:25.429 into molten liquid bronze, which means that you can create 0:08:25.470 --> 0:08:28.830 casts and molds and you can pour that molten bronze 0:08:28.850 --> 0:08:30.510 into it. And as it cools, you've got a handy 0:08:30.570 --> 0:08:32.880 sword that you can make over and over and over again. 0:08:33.260 --> 0:08:37.680 So bronze fulfilled this purpose for tools for many thousands 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.920 of years. So much so that— and these metals were so 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:45.000 important that we go back and call these historical ages 0:08:45.460 --> 0:08:48.300 by the name of the metal tools that were being produced. 0:08:48.380 --> 0:08:50.370 So you get the Bronze Age, and then that was 0:08:50.470 --> 0:08:53.130 eventually followed by the Iron Age. And one thing that 0:08:53.150 --> 0:08:56.110 stuck out to me, Chuck, I hadn't realized before, is 0:08:56.150 --> 0:09:01.170 that you think of history as progressing, you know, constantly. Yeah. 0:09:01.500 --> 0:09:03.680 But the Bronze Age, even though it was followed by 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.140 the Iron Age, the Iron Age marked a period of 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:10.559 cultural decline. where the Bronze Age, which had come previously, 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:14.450 was a period of cultural blossoming. But for the first 0:09:14.490 --> 0:09:17.380 several centuries of the Iron Age, it was a step backwards. 0:09:17.429 --> 0:09:21.310 A lot of the classical or antiquity societies kind of 0:09:21.350 --> 0:09:24.490 crumbled at about the same time. They think possibly because 0:09:24.530 --> 0:09:29.469 of climate change or mass droughts and starvation, kind of 0:09:29.490 --> 0:09:30.090 like the Maya. 0:09:30.710 --> 0:09:34.809 Yeah, so it's not like the iron caused that, but iron, 0:09:34.830 --> 0:09:38.579 like really good bronze is, probably superior to iron in 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.179 a lot of ways. I think iron is a little softer. 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:43.040 It might rust a little quicker. 0:09:43.420 --> 0:09:46.430 It depends on what kind of iron you have, for sure. Right. 0:09:46.470 --> 0:09:50.190 But the iron that they were using, basically, they started using, and, 0:09:50.230 --> 0:09:52.370 you know, there's not like a demarcation line. Then there 0:09:52.450 --> 0:09:55.109 is some overlap, and no one knows exactly when the 0:09:55.150 --> 0:09:58.010 big switch happened. But it was cheaper, and it was 0:09:58.050 --> 0:09:59.969 more readily available than bronze. 0:10:00.170 --> 0:10:00.410 Was. 0:10:00.610 --> 0:10:04.010 So they just started using iron, basically, and it surpassed bronze. 0:10:04.590 --> 0:10:08.850 Yeah, the Greeks pin a semi-mythical group called the Chalabes, 0:10:09.570 --> 0:10:13.970 who supposedly were absorbed by the Hittites in Anatolia and Turkey, 0:10:14.470 --> 0:10:16.710 and that they were the ones who figured out how 0:10:16.809 --> 0:10:20.780 to mine iron. Because originally there was iron stuff, like 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.180 King Tut was found with a dagger made of iron. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.460 And it would have been even more highly prized than 0:10:27.620 --> 0:10:31.780 anything made of gold in his entire tomb because iron 0:10:31.820 --> 0:10:35.200 was so rare at that time. Yeah. Because the only 0:10:35.300 --> 0:10:38.000 source of iron on Earth, as far as humans knew, 0:10:38.540 --> 0:10:39.780 came in the form of meteorites. 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:40.059 Yeah. 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:42.760 So you had to find a meteorite above ground to 0:10:42.850 --> 0:10:45.979 find your deposit of iron. Yeah, totally. making a dagger 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:47.780 out of that would have been, that would have been 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.070 a very special dagger. And then eventually they say, the 0:10:51.090 --> 0:10:54.270 Calabese figured out, no, there's actually iron like in rock 0:10:54.429 --> 0:10:57.390 in the earth. And people started figuring out that you 0:10:57.410 --> 0:11:00.310 could take that rock and heat it to some pretty 0:11:00.350 --> 0:11:03.840 high temperatures considering and then hammer it. And you can 0:11:03.900 --> 0:11:07.480 hammer the other stuff out, the ore out or hammer 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.400 the iron from the ore. And you have something approaching 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.040 what you would consider iron, something called bloom. 0:11:13.700 --> 0:11:15.959 Yeah, so they just couldn't get the fire hot enough 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:17.880 basically at first to get to the iron point. 0:11:18.179 --> 0:11:18.370 Right. 0:11:18.570 --> 0:11:20.250 But they could make it hot enough to get to 0:11:20.270 --> 0:11:23.010 the bloom, and they would put it in an oven 0:11:23.050 --> 0:11:24.630 known as a bloomery, and it would kind of just 0:11:24.710 --> 0:11:28.330 roast out those impurities. It had iron, it had slag, 0:11:28.350 --> 0:11:31.970 which is sort of a glass-like byproduct that you, you know, 0:11:32.030 --> 0:11:33.750 it's so funny that you can just hammer this stuff out. 0:11:34.710 --> 0:11:39.740 But bloom would eventually, when they, I mean, it worked okay. 0:11:39.770 --> 0:11:41.920 You could heat it up, you could hammer it, and 0:11:41.940 --> 0:11:44.210 it would get a lot of the slag out And 0:11:44.370 --> 0:11:48.630 it was useful enough for tools. But when the blast 0:11:48.650 --> 0:11:51.950 furnace came around, when you really got larger furnaces and 0:11:52.010 --> 0:11:55.949 hotter fires that incorporated bellows to really get that oxygen 0:11:55.990 --> 0:11:59.490 in there and get it super, super hot, that eventually 0:11:59.590 --> 0:12:03.670 allowed them to get that ore to pig iron. And 0:12:03.740 --> 0:12:08.340 pig iron was a pretty big advancement because from pig iron, 0:12:08.820 --> 0:12:11.360 you could hammer that slag out to eventually get to 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:11.900 wrought iron. 0:12:12.500 --> 0:12:17.510 Right. I want to give a shout out to Harold DeSmith, H-A-R-A-L-D. 0:12:18.130 --> 0:12:20.569 He wrote an intro to iron smelting that talks all 0:12:20.610 --> 0:12:23.530 about making bloom himself with pictures. It's pretty cool. It's 0:12:23.550 --> 0:12:24.569 worth checking out for sure. 0:12:24.730 --> 0:12:26.250 And the Grabster helped us with this one, right? 0:12:26.530 --> 0:12:30.239 Yeah, big time. Thank you, Grabster. But with pig iron, 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.120 that was like a, it was like you said, like 0:12:32.179 --> 0:12:34.480 a pretty big change in that, like you could suddenly 0:12:34.540 --> 0:12:37.360 make much purer iron because we had a much hotter 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.239 furnace that we were working with. And the thing about 0:12:41.340 --> 0:12:44.370 pig iron is, In very much the same way as bloom, 0:12:44.670 --> 0:12:48.360 you've got to hammer out those impurities. And so to 0:12:48.410 --> 0:12:52.199 make pig iron into wrought iron, you would take this 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:54.980 pig iron, which is pretty impure, heat it up and 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.440 hammer it with a sledgehammer over and over again. Heat it, 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:00.380 hammer it, heat it, hammer it. Very much the same 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.679 process as bloom, but at higher temperatures and producing a 0:13:03.700 --> 0:13:07.650 much purer iron. And then eventually you would have wrought iron. 0:13:08.450 --> 0:13:11.439 And they say that they figured out how to use 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:16.180 water hammers, like water-powered hammers. In part because of the 0:13:16.300 --> 0:13:19.920 plague of the 13th century, it killed so many people 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.090 that they didn't have the human power any longer that 0:13:24.110 --> 0:13:27.050 they needed to hammer pig iron. So it made people 0:13:27.110 --> 0:13:29.309 devise water hammers. 0:13:29.550 --> 0:13:33.080 Yeah, water hammers, steam hammers. You know, if you look 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:36.240 at these videos today, these people and their and their 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.380 shops and their sheds that they have behind their house have, 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:43.400 it looks like hydraulics, I guess, that are pounding this stuff. 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:45.660 And at first when I saw that, I was disappointed. 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.760 I was like, oh, man. But that's just the big 0:13:48.950 --> 0:13:52.470 initial work. Like there's still tons of hammer work by 0:13:52.510 --> 0:13:56.650 hand because there are many, many, there's a lot more 0:13:56.670 --> 0:13:59.469 to it than that initial hammering to get to the 0:13:59.490 --> 0:14:01.569 wrought iron stage. But I was, at first I was 0:14:01.610 --> 0:14:04.209 kind of like, oh, man, what? They don't like swing 0:14:04.230 --> 0:14:04.829 a hammer anymore? 0:14:05.290 --> 0:14:08.230 Right, no. No, there's definitely— It's very smart. 0:14:08.250 --> 0:14:09.250 They don't need to swing a hammer. 0:14:09.510 --> 0:14:11.950 Right. It's called work smarter, not harder. But there are 0:14:12.010 --> 0:14:14.790 traditionalists who are like, no, I want to use a hammer. 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:20.200 But so the different types of irons that humans have 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:23.520 come up with over the ages— and this is a really 0:14:23.540 --> 0:14:25.300 important point I think we should point out here, Chuck. 0:14:25.660 --> 0:14:31.050 Like blacksmithing— And all of the information and knowledge and 0:14:31.210 --> 0:14:34.150 like ways of working with different types of iron, different 0:14:34.210 --> 0:14:36.770 techniques and actually coming up with different types of iron. 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:40.980 All of that started with those people who figured out 0:14:41.020 --> 0:14:42.720 that you could take rock from the earth and hammer 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:43.690 the iron out of it. 0:14:43.820 --> 0:14:44.460 Yeah. 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:47.240 And just more and more people over the ages as 0:14:47.300 --> 0:14:50.180 it spread and continued to be around for hundreds and 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:55.200 thousands of years. All the people working with metal contributed 0:14:55.260 --> 0:14:58.000 to that body of knowledge. And so that's, I think, 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.550 one of the things that's so appealing about blacksmithing is 0:15:01.610 --> 0:15:08.410 that it is a genuine human technology that was created 0:15:08.630 --> 0:15:12.380 by humanity. You know, not just like a couple of 0:15:12.420 --> 0:15:14.900 people who had a really good idea. It was this 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:19.350 group of humans, countless humans all working together over thousands 0:15:19.390 --> 0:15:22.670 of years, contributing to one another's knowledge to create this 0:15:22.730 --> 0:15:25.109 body of knowledge. And I think that's what makes it 0:15:25.130 --> 0:15:25.870 so neat to me. 0:15:26.010 --> 0:15:30.280 So cool. And like such a brute way of doing it. 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.440 You know, the finesse comes in for sure. And maybe 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.380 that's what I like about it is both. Like it's 0:15:36.420 --> 0:15:38.870 swinging the heavy hammer. But it's also doing this really 0:15:38.890 --> 0:15:40.830 beautiful finesse work later on in the project. 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:41.360 Right. 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.440 Really cool. So if we're going to– well, maybe let's 0:15:44.460 --> 0:15:46.110 take a break and then talk about the types of iron. 0:15:46.130 --> 0:15:46.490 How about that? 0:15:46.930 --> 0:16:18.080 Let's. All right. 0:16:18.340 --> 0:16:22.120 We promised you talk of iron types. There's Iron Maiden. 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:29.090 Sure. There's Take Your Iron Supplement. That's right. What else? 0:16:29.110 --> 0:16:30.150 There's really just Iron Maiden. 0:16:30.530 --> 0:16:31.150 Yeah, I guess so. 0:16:31.370 --> 0:16:34.750 That's all. That's all you need to know. Iron types, 0:16:34.770 --> 0:16:37.490 they're based on the carbon content of the iron. So- 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:41.360 If you hear wrought iron, you might just think that's 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:45.980 like the cool thing that your staircase spindles are made 0:16:46.020 --> 0:16:46.280 out of. 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:47.680 They are not made of wrought iron. 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:49.600 They aren't made out of wrought iron anymore, at least. 0:16:49.980 --> 0:16:51.000 They used to be back in the day. 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:51.540 Yeah. 0:16:51.740 --> 0:16:54.000 But this is also called bar iron. It's about 0.08% 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:56.320 or less carbon. And this is sort of, from what 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:07.210 I saw back in the day, just the main— iron 0:17:07.230 --> 0:17:09.530 that they would mainly use for the most part. 0:17:10.270 --> 0:17:10.950 The wrought iron? 0:17:11.150 --> 0:17:11.390 Yeah. 0:17:11.930 --> 0:17:15.600 Yeah. And the difference, the big difference between wrought iron 0:17:15.630 --> 0:17:20.399 and steel is that wrought iron has silicates in it 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.399 that kind of ends up as like these fibrous filaments 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:31.120 that get hammered into order, basically, by the blacksmith from 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:36.530 pig iron, which gives it a certain structure. With steel... Steel, 0:17:36.930 --> 0:17:38.910 like you said, all types of iron are basically based 0:17:38.970 --> 0:17:41.850 on their carbon content. Steel has a much higher carbon 0:17:41.869 --> 0:17:45.490 content than wrought iron does. And so it doesn't need 0:17:45.510 --> 0:17:47.760 to be hammered like wrought iron does because it doesn't 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.640 have these iron silicates that need to be arranged just 0:17:50.700 --> 0:17:54.260 so or else it'll make it brittle. Instead, because of 0:17:54.300 --> 0:17:59.340 this carbon in it, it forms this kind of crystalline 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.590 structure in the iron that makes it hard and durable material. 0:18:04.910 --> 0:18:07.780 way harder and more durable than wrought iron. The problem is, 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:12.100 is because that durability and the strength and hardness, it 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.500 makes it more difficult for a blacksmith to work with 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:17.320 down the line than it does wrought iron. But it's 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.629 also a much more effective, say, battle axe than a 0:18:20.690 --> 0:18:21.870 wrought iron battle axe. 0:18:22.230 --> 0:18:24.270 Yeah. And like you said, it's not what we use 0:18:24.330 --> 0:18:26.550 on our staircases and wrought iron these days. It's not 0:18:26.690 --> 0:18:29.060 wrought iron and the production of that in like a 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.379 big way went out in, you know, the 20th century 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:33.290 pretty much altogether. 0:18:33.350 --> 0:18:34.230 Went out with disco. 0:18:35.170 --> 0:18:37.450 Oh, gosh, I wish it lasted until the 70s. 0:18:37.990 --> 0:18:40.650 So one thing we should say also, Chuck, is we 0:18:40.710 --> 0:18:43.149 tend to think of steel as like a modern invention. 0:18:43.630 --> 0:18:46.730 Steel was perfected in the modern times. It was like 0:18:46.770 --> 0:18:49.490 basically the thing that kicked off the Industrial Revolution, if 0:18:49.510 --> 0:18:52.869 I remember from our robber barons episode. But that's not 0:18:52.910 --> 0:18:56.550 to say that people weren't experimenting with steel long before that. 0:18:57.070 --> 0:19:02.220 It was just the scientific understanding of it was lacking. Instead, 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:06.119 that was replaced by an intuitive understanding among blacksmiths of, 0:19:06.530 --> 0:19:10.270 you know, what fuel did what to iron to make 0:19:10.310 --> 0:19:12.630 it stronger. They weren't saying like, oh, if I use 0:19:12.670 --> 0:19:16.050 charcoal or coke, it's going to make this a better 0:19:16.130 --> 0:19:20.290 steel than say, you know, coal or something like that. 0:19:20.510 --> 0:19:22.970 That's right. Then you've also got cast iron. If you 0:19:22.990 --> 0:19:26.960 have a nice cast iron collection in your kitchen, it's 0:19:27.020 --> 0:19:30.450 going to be 2% carbon or more It's very brittle, 0:19:30.470 --> 0:19:31.850 so you're not going to hammer cast iron. 0:19:31.869 --> 0:19:31.929 No. 0:19:32.830 --> 0:19:35.399 It is formed into shape by casting it. That's why 0:19:35.420 --> 0:19:37.840 it's called cast iron. And use a mold while it's 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:40.460 molten and pour it in there. And it's a great 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:41.120 thing to cook with. 0:19:41.700 --> 0:19:43.160 Yeah, and we would have never been able to make 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:46.670 anything out of cast iron until those bellows were introduced 0:19:46.690 --> 0:19:49.710 to the forge to really bring that temperature up. Yeah, yeah. 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:51.500 has a very high melting point. 0:19:51.660 --> 0:19:53.000 Yeah, if you're going to pour it, it's got to 0:19:53.020 --> 0:19:55.740 be super, super hot. And we'll get to these temperatures 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:58.139 and the different kinds of hot later on, which is 0:19:58.380 --> 0:19:59.180 very interesting stuff. 0:19:59.619 --> 0:20:03.420 Yeah. So we've got, like, the blacksmiths are working with this. 0:20:03.619 --> 0:20:06.260 They're figuring out that if you add, like, carbon or 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.540 if you do this, like, if you... Heat the iron 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:14.379 to a certain temperature and then take it off and 0:20:14.420 --> 0:20:16.620 hammer it and then let it cool on its own. 0:20:16.660 --> 0:20:19.950 It's going to form one type of finished product. If 0:20:19.990 --> 0:20:23.169 you do something that's called quenching it, which is cooling 0:20:23.210 --> 0:20:25.350 it down in a bucket of water and usually mineral 0:20:25.450 --> 0:20:28.230 oil these days, it's going to cool differently. So its 0:20:28.270 --> 0:20:31.450 structure is going to form differently. And again, they didn't, 0:20:31.910 --> 0:20:34.030 they were passing this knowledge on, but they weren't using 0:20:34.070 --> 0:20:36.949 terms necessarily that we were using. What's interesting to me 0:20:37.010 --> 0:20:39.230 is we use terms that they came up with, like 0:20:39.330 --> 0:20:43.160 quenching and slag and scale and that kind of stuff. 0:20:43.180 --> 0:20:45.399