DIYbanter - View Single Post - Adjusting Lathe Chuck Jaws faster on my atlas lathe

Martin Eastburn

On 2/13/2015 6:16 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 14:23:52 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

"What do you know about Roman blacksmithing?"

Not a lot. Except that they sure did a lot of it. I do know that they were producing wrought iron all over the parts of the world that they had conquered. I suppose that ran right up to about 450AD.
Producing wrought iron is a lot of work. We make a couple of runs at it each year around here. The reason I say this, is that they wouldn't have gone to all that trouble if they weren't going to make a lot of stuff out of it.
The trouble for archeologists is that the iron items don't often survive because of rust.

Can you be more specific with your question? I know several guys who can supply lot more detail. I do a fair amount of "traditional" blacksmithing. That means, to me, that I mostly make stuff that people would have used around 1870 and before. Many of those items wouldn't have changed a lot from what a Roman blacksmith would have been asked to produce.

When making wrought iron the way they did it, they often got chunks of higher carbon steel here and there in the bloom. Sometimes (all too often) the whole bloom would be of a higher carbon content than needed. These pieces would be saved for edging tools that needed it.

We did a couple of 10 day 24X7 smelts back in about 1992 and 1995 or so where we did our best to replicate smelters of the 150 BC period, attempting to produce wrought iron FOR the blacksmiths of that period. We learned a lot and got very dirty sifting 8 tons of charcoal for the furnace. I'll bet the Romans did too. OT???

Pete Stanaitis
---------------
Several years ago I watched a show about the unearthing of metal Roman
artifacts in England. They had many examples of weapons that had
bronze handles and iron alloy blades. An "excellent" sample was shown
and almost all of the iron had rusted away, just a thin delicate iron
oxide blade was left. Most of the stuff dug up, when in the ground
still, would be a bronze handle with a blade made up of rust colored
earth with no solid iron left.
Eric

We are coming :-) - that is there is a machine and software that takes
pictures and converts them into objects.

Slices are what are used in 3-D printers - print a slice at a time.

Simply get the scraper to take level down, photo it many times,
scrape and replete.

Then into the software all of the pictures and it makes a 3-D model in
CAD - allowing a Plastic or Metal or ... material to reproduce the real
thing for a show. Painting and texture makes it look real.

Martin