Collaborate Disseminate
If you grow up around a working blacksmith’s forge, there are a few subjects related to metalwork on which you’ll occasionally have a heated discussion. Probably the best known is …read more Continue reading When Is Damascus Steel Not From Damascus?
Blacksmiths used to making vambraces and pauldrons are now forging spikes to protect Ukrainian checkpoints. Continue reading Medieval Blacksmiths Are Helping the Ukrainian War Effort
Cookware isn’t something we typically build ourselves; you’d want a well-equipped metal shop to do the job and do it right. [Torbjörn Åhman] has just that, however, and set about …read more Continue reading How To Forge A Skillet From Scratch
Intel has announced CVE-2021-0146, a vulnerability in certain processors based on the Atom architecture, and the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is at the center of the problem. The goal of …read more Continue reading This Week in Security: Intel Atoms Spill Secrets, ICMP Poisons DNS, and The Blacksmith
One of the biggest challenges facing the aspiring blacksmith is procuring the tools of the trade. And that means tackling the unenviable task of finding a decent anvil. Sure, one can buy an ASO — anvil-shaped object — at Harbor Freight, but a real anvil is much harder to come …read more
Continue reading Railroad Rail Transformed into Blacksmith’s Anvil with the Simplest of Tools
You know the funny looking side of the anvil? That’s where the best curves come from. It’s called the anvil horn and is the blacksmith’s friend when bending steel and shaping it into curves.
The principle of bending a piece of steel stock is very easy to understand. Heat it …read more
Continue reading Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: Curves And Rings
For the past few months we’ve been running this series of Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated posts, exploring the art of forge work for a novice. It’s based upon my experience growing up around a working blacksmith’s business and becoming an enthusiastic if somewhat inexpert smith, and so far we’ve spent …read more
Continue reading Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: Your First Time At The Anvil
Regular readers will recognise this as the third part of a series exploring blacksmithing for those who have perhaps always fancied having a go but have never quite known where to start. It’s written from a position of the unusual experience of having grown up around a working forge, my …read more
Continue reading Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: Hammer And Tongs
When you grow up with something as the constant backdrop to your life, it’s easy to forget as an adult that not everyone else shares your instinctive knowledge of the subject. My dad is a blacksmith, he’s now retired, but as I was growing up his very active forge was …read more
Continue reading Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: Let’s Talk About Anvils
Blacksmiths were the high technologists of fabrication up until the industrial revolution gained momentum. At its core, this is the art and science of making any needed tool or mechanism out of metal. Are you using the correct metal? Is the tool strong where it needs to be? And how …read more
Continue reading Blacksmithing For The Uninitiated: What is a Forge?