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
---------------

They used a ****load of wrought iron in making weapons..particularly
the pilum. VERY effective at its task.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilum


"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child,
miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied,
demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.
Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
PJ O'Rourke