Fail Of The Week: Bronze-Brazed Wrought Iron

September 4, 2022 by Jonathan Bennett 16 Comments

[Will Stelter], a promising young blacksmith working out of Montana, had a terrific idea for a unique composite material for finishing off a knife build. This build is a collaboration between multiple blacksmiths, and as the youngster of the group, [Will] really wanted to pull out the stops and finally make a material he’d been contemplating for years to impress the elders. He knows that if you try to forge wrought iron at too low a temperature, it develops cracks and splits. Could you do this on purpose, and then fill these cracks with bronze? It would be quite the stunning material, with the bright bronze veins running through the dark iron. He had to try.

Unfortunately, our young experimenter ran into some problems that didn’t have enough time to overcome. First, getting the bronze to flow and fill the voids of the iron was a challenge, particularly when heating with a torch. Throwing the whole experiment into a forge resulted in the bronze leaking through the enclosure. The most promising attempt was a beefed-up box, set in an oven for about 20 minutes, with the temperature high enough to liquefy the bronze. It was looking great, until he cut into it and found too many air pockets for a workable billet.

The attempt was a failure, but we’re delighted that [Will] went ahead and put the video out there anyway. And if you know how to make this work, go drop a comment on his channel, and we’ll all look forward to a part two, where he finally nails the technique.
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Retrotechtacular: This 15th-Century Siege Cannon Might Kill You Instead Of The Target

October 22, 2021 by Jenny List 10 Comments

For a happy weekend away in early September, I joined a few of my continental friends for the NewLine event organised by Hackerspace Gent in Belgium. You may have seen some of the resulting write-ups here, and for me the trip is as memorable for the relaxing weekend break it gave me in a mediaeval city as it is for the content of the talks and demonstrations. We took full advantage of the warm weather to have some meals out on café terraces, and it was on the way to one of them that my interest was captured by something unexpected. There at the end of the street was a cannon, not the normal-size cannon you’ll see tastefully arranged around historical military sites the world over, but a truly massive weapon. I had stumbled upon Dulle Griet, one of very few surviving super-sized 15th century siege cannons. It even had a familiar feel to it, being a sister to the very similar Mons Meg at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland.

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When Is Wrought Iron Not Wrought Iron?

August 3, 2018 by Jenny List 71 Comments

I grew up with a blacksmith for a parent, and thus almost every metalworking processes seems entirely normal to have as part of everyday life throughout my childhood. There seemed to be nothing we owned that couldn’t be either made or repaired with the application of a bit of welded steel. Children of blacksmiths grow up with a set of innate heavy hardware hacker or maker skills that few other young people acquire at that age. You know almost from birth that you should always look away from the arc when dad is welding, and you also probably have a couple of dictionary definitions ready to roll off the tongue.

The first is easy enough, farrier. A farrier makes and fits horseshoes. Some blacksmiths are farriers, many aren’t. Sorry, my dad made architectural ironwork for upmarket houses in London when he wasn’t making improvised toys for me and my sisters, he didn’t shoe horses. Next question.

The second is a bit surprising. Wrought iron. My dad didn’t make wrought iron.

But… Hang on, you say, don’t blacksmiths make wrought iron? At which point the floodgates open if you are talking to a blacksmith, and you receive the Wrought Iron Lecture.

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Retrotechtacular: Forging Of Chain By Smiths

May 13, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 36 Comments

Ah, the days when men were men and people died of asbestos related illnesses in their 30s. Let this video take you back to the ancient times when chains were forged by hand, destructively tested using wooden capstans, and sent off to furnish the ships of the line, way back in the year 1940.

The video is something of an advertisement for the Netherton iron works, located in the English midlands. Founded sometime in the mid 19th century, it appears the tooling and machinery didn’t change much the hundred years before this was filmed.

The chain begins as a gigantic mass of wrought iron bars brought in from a forge. These bars are stockpiled, then sent through chain shears that cut them into manageable lengths a foot or so long. The next scene would probably look the same in 1940 as 1840, with gangs of men taking one of the bars, heating it in a forge, beating it on an anvil, and threading it through the last link in the chain they worked on. This isn’t the satisfying machinations of industrial automata you’d see on How It’s Made. No, this is hard manual labor.

Whether through simple quality control or an edict from the crown, the completed chains are tested, or more specifically, proofed. Yard long samples are tested to their failure point, and entire chains are proofed to their carrying capacity in 15 fathom ( 90 feet) long lengths. These chains are then examined link by link, stamped and certified, and sent off to mines, factories, tramp steamers, and battleships.

Although the Netherton iron works no longer exists, it did boast a few claims to fame in its day. It manufactured the anchors and chain for both the Titanic and Lusitania. Of course, such a large-scale production of wrought chain in such an archaic method would be impossible today; today, every wrought iron foundry has been shuttered for decades. If you’ve ever wondered how such massive things were made with a minimal amount of machinery, though, there you go.

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