blacksmith

blacksmith, craftsman who fabricates objects out of iron by hot and cold forging on an anvil. Blacksmiths who specialized in the forging of shoes for horses were called farriers. The term blacksmith derives from iron, formerly called “black metal,” and farrier from the Latin ferrum, “iron.”

Iron replaced bronze for use in tools and weapons in the late 2nd and the 1st millennia bc, and from then until the Industrial Revolution, blacksmiths made by hand most of the wrought iron objects used in the world. The blacksmith’s essential equipment consists of a forge, or furnace, in which smelted iron is heated so that it can be worked easily; an anvil, a heavy, firmly secured, steel-surfaced block upon which the piece of iron is worked; tongs to hold the iron on the anvil; and hammers, chisels, and other implements to cut, shape, flatten, or weld the iron into the desired object.

Blacksmiths made an immense variety of common objects used in everyday life: nails, screws, bolts, and other fasteners; sickles, plowshares, axes, and other agricultural implements; hammers and other tools used by artisans; candlesticks and other household objects; swords, shields, and armour; wheel rims and other metal parts in wagons and carriages; fireplace fittings and implements; spikes, chains, and cables used on ships; and the ironwork, both functional and decorative, used in furniture and in the building trades. (See also ironwork.)

The blacksmith’s most frequent occupation, however, was farriery. In horseshoeing, the blacksmith first cleans and shapes the sole and rim of the horse’s hoof with rasps and knives, a process painless to the animal owing to the tough, horny, and nerveless character of the hoof. He then selects a U-shaped iron shoe of appropriate size from his stock and, heating it red-hot in a forge, modifies its shape to fit the hoof, cools it by quenching it in water, and affixes it to the hoof with nails.

Most towns and villages had a blacksmith’s shop where horses were shod and tools, farm implements, and wagons and carriages were repaired. The ubiquity of the profession can be inferred, in the English-speaking world, from the prevalence of the surname “Smith.” Blacksmiths also came to be general-purpose repairers of farm equipment and other machinery in the 19th century. By then, however, blacksmithing was already on the decline, as more and more metal articles formerly made by hand were shaped in factories by machines or made by inexpensive casting processes. In the industrialized world, even the blacksmith’s mainstay, farriery, has greatly declined with the disappearance of horses from use in agriculture and transport.