A post-apocalyptic smith will not necessarily be a replica of the Master Smith of 1776. There will be gaps in his knowledge that only experience not presently available can fill. Many modern smiths do not, for example, know how to make files or shoe horses. They will, however, have a wealth of knowledge and materials that would amaze our 18th century Master Smith. They may have Templesticks, a power hammer, modern steels that are air-hardened. They'll understand some science and engineering that their forebears never heard of. They will find, unfortunately in many cases, that they'll have to go back to hand tools rather than electrically powered machines. They will find that they cannot order propane, coal, steel, acetylene, oxygen, or other items now commonly ordered by phone or on line. They'll have to make do... something most smiths have had to learn even in these times.

The blacksmith of old was the original Angus MacGyver, and had to be at least as inventive as that television character. Who do you think made the first Swiss Army Knife anyway? The post-apocalyptic smith will have to be even more inventive than his forefathers.

The answer to the basic question (why to learn smithing in the first place) is fairly self-evident to a "born" smith, someone who wants to learn it just for the sake of learning it; he does it because he can and he needs no further justification for it. Anyone else, particularly those reading these words on Miles' site, might need some additional motivation. He might ask, "How will learning to do blacksmithing help me survive the end times, or any other disaster?"

Well, life in a post-Apocalyptic world will not be easy. The things we have all become accustomed to, like toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, dry-cell batteries, state-of-the-automotive-art Maybach automobiles (if one is extremely weathy!), and telecommunications will all either be gone completely or sharply reduced in availability. We will have to find substitutes or trade for what we want.

I like honey, for example, but I absolutely HATE bees (You wondered why I didn't buy the bee book, Miles?). After a nuclear war or some natural or supernatural disaster, I won't be able to go to Aldi's or Sam's to buy honey. I'll have to raise the bees myself, trade other goods and services, rob a beekeeper, or do without honey. If I thought that I could control my nerves well enough to actually open an active hive and rob the bees of their labor, I might consider learning how to raise the little venomous flying thorns myself, but I don't think I could do that... hey, even Superman has a weakness! This leaves brigandage and trade. One is costly, one is risky and immoral. I would choose to trade.

Trade what? Well, the beekeeper probably isn't a blacksmith, and like me, he can't go to Fleet Farm to buy tools that he needs to ply his trade. He, like everyone else will need to find other sources for axes, shovels, hoes, picks, wedges, hooks, and a thousand other tools. I need a quart of honey, he needs... say, a boot scraper for outside his front door to keep the mud out of the house (no electricity for the vacuum cleaner and he probably has other things for his wife to do than wear herself out sweeping up dried mud). Or maybe he needs a hook to hang his lantern on when the sun goes down. Possibly he might need a spring for his shotgun to keep the bears out of his hives.  He might want something nobody ever heard of, like, for instance a 'skeeter chaser (pictured at left).  Mosquitoes and other insect vectors spread more disease than all the sneezes in the world.

Virtually any essential tool can be made by a skilled blacksmith using only the basic tools of hammer, forge, and anvil. You need a fish-hook? Can do! How 'bout a horse shoe? No problem at all! It might pay to remember that gasoline not being available will make horses extremely popular all of a sudden... which will make farriers quite sought after.

A word about farriers... a good farrier, which is a blacksmith who specializes in horse shoeing and related enterprises is worth at least his weight in gold. He must be part blacksmith, part veterinarian, and it doesn't hurt to know something about wainwrightry and harness mending. A farrier can do most simple blacksmithing tasks, though he may not be up to things like hardening and tempering knife blades or making a file from scratch. A blacksmith who is not trained in working with horses should not attempt to shoe a horse. He could end up crippling a valuable animal... and the owner might then become upset enough to find a new place to shove the smith's hammer... after first heating the head to red heat in the forge!

Any steel tool can be repaired and/or refurbished by a competent blacksmith. Many a modern smith makes a fair amount of his living from refurbishing plow points, or at least he did ten or fifteen years ago. Picks, axes, shovels, mattocks, broadaxes, froes, adzes, hoes, and other hand tools do break and wear out. They'll be needed, quite probably, within the time span addressed by other areas of Miles' site. Many essential tools will be broken and need repair... probably more repairs will be needed than new tools, though this will depend upon many issues as yet unknown.

This is not to say that trade is the only reason to get into this kind of work. Indeed, most farmers would still find basic smithing skills useful, even in the age of electric arc welders. I was able to persuade a modern dairy farmer to part with his grandfather's forge only with great persistence and the promise that I would see to any future blacksmithing needs he might have. I've since straightened a wagon tongue and a steel lever, and repaired "obsolete" farm machinery, among other things.

The three basic tools of the smith (hammer, forge and anvil) can and must be supplemented by a whole bunch of other tools, but every one of those tools from a drill bit to a rotary forge blower can be made with the three basic ones. The most commonly used hand tool in my shop is a two pound cross-peen hammer.

The two on the bottom in the illustration at left are cross-peen hammers. The astute observer will note that one has a longer handle on it. Both weigh the same, but the longer handle gives the smith more leverage and allows for a more forceful hit. I use this one for rough work like squaring round stock. The shorter handled hammer is used for finishing points, bending, and welding of light stock.

Most smiths use a heavier hammer than two pounds, but they are usually in better shape than I, work with heavier iron, and have a much larger anvil than I do. I sometimes use the 4 pounder for heavier stock, but not often. I don’t think I would crack my anvil face, but I don’t especially want to find out.

Almost any hammer will work for smithing... even that little 10 oz hammer your wife uses to hang pictures in the living room, though to do any significant amount of work, you'd have to do quite a bit of hammering with something that light. It is best to get a hammer in the two to five pound range at a minimum for general blacksmithing, but even better to have an assortment of hammers in different weights and configurations. Brass, and lead hammers do have their uses in blacksmithing, as do wooden mallets, but in a pinch they can be done without. I find them useful for adjusting work clamped to a drill press table and straightening out bends that find their way into longitudinal twists.

An anvil, at least a quality anvil, is one of the more difficult items to find these days. My own anvil, pictured at left, is a relatively small and light model made in China and sold at Fleet Farm (on clearance) more than twenty years ago. It is a traditional one in that the body of the anvil is made of wrought iron and the face of tool steel welded onto the body. It has served me well for some twenty odd years and will likely last another twenty. Unlike most modern anvils, my anvil rings just like the old ones did. Modern anvils are almost all made of cast steel, thus they do not ring. This is not as bad as some smiths will tell you.

The old London pattern anvil or slight variations thereof, is the most common anvil in public perception. This is the anvil that commonly gets dropped on the heads of cartoon characters from great heights. It has a horn, a face, a pritchel hole, and a hardy hole near the heal of the anvil.

A common variant is the farrier's anvil, which is generally lighter in weight, and has a longer and more tapered horn. Other designs may have two horns or other design variations. They can weigh anywhere from a thousand pounds or more in the case of a shop that does steam locomotive repair or traditional anchor making, to a few ounces for a jeweler's anvil. If you can afford to buy an anvil, get one that weighs at least 150 pounds or so... heavier is better, but if you are trying to bug out of town with your family in a '91 Ford Escort, a 500 pound anvil in the back will almost certainly overload the suspension, not to mention the back of the smith who has to lift it.

I have found that my 50 pounder is heavy enough for most small household hardware like hooks, trivets, fireplace tools, etc. It is also easy to move around my garage. Would I trade it for 150 pounder, though? Absolutely!

If you have to improvise an anvil, a section of railroad track will work, as will a section of steel I-beam. Almost any kind of heavy steel will work. Cast iron, like an engine block does not make a very good anvil. Cast iron is brittle and will shatter upon impact with a hammer. Probably the first anvil was simply a large rock, and while a piece of granite is not my favorite anvil, I have been able to use it for some purposes.

The anvil at right is made from a section of railroad track and has served Miles for quite some time.  An anvil like this one does have limitations, especially when working with very heavy stock, but you can use it for a surprising number of things.  Most common tool repairs can easily be handled with this anvil. 

An important consideration with this type of anvil, or any light weight anvil is the fact that it will soak up heat from the hot iron being worked on its surface.  When I am working with any stock larger than half an inch in diameter, I generally put my anvil in the slack tub for a few minutes after every two hours or so.  As a rule of thumb, if it becomes too hot to touch, it is too hot!

The anvil is mounted traditionally by spiking it to a heavy wooden post sunk into the floor a fair distance with the face of the anvil about knuckle-height to the smith. If you want it lower, be my guest, I suspect that chiropractors will still be plying their trade in the foreseeable future. I mount mine on a box made of 2x12 stock held together with long carriage bolts and filled with concrete capped by another piece of wood. This is a fairly stable support and can be moved... with difficulty, as it weighs more than the anvil.

Instead of being spiked, my anvil simply rests in a rectangular recess sized to fit its base. This allows me to remove the anvil and move it separate from the base. Other smiths use a steel frame support and some chain the anvil down. This, they tell me, keeps the anvil from ringing as loudly. To each their own.

You also need a forge.

The forge can be as simple as a fire built on the ground with a "trench tuyer" and three "slaves" using their lungs and a long tube each one in sequence to provide a forced draft as it was done in times past. Now, slaves, by nature are not very good workers, being unwilling ones... not that I blame them. Volunteers fail as well, as they require food, shelter, and other human needs just like the slaves do... but in a pinch, a group of men with a good sense of rhythm can serve in this fashion for a time. There are better ways, however.

The forced draft is essential. Naturally aspirated fires simply do not provide enough heat to work iron and steel unless they are quite large. This can be done, as, I have been told, the traditional Japanese swordsmiths do, but a large fire consumes proportionately large amounts of fuel and the immense heat from such a fire makes it difficult to approach the iron being worked.

Almost everyone even in these modern times is familiar with the common fireplace bellows. This small bellows is called a "single-acting" bellows, because it can only provide a forced draft when being pumped in one direction.

The double-chambered or great bellows is similar in operation, but it has two chambers and can provide a steady draft by virtue of the design allowing for draft production while being pumped in either direction. While a pair of single-acting bellows can be used in tandem, a double-chambered bellows is preferred. The size of the bellows depends upon the size of the forge, which in turn is dependent upon the size of the metal to be worked.

Probably the best compromise package is either a modern or an antique forge with a hand-cranked rotary “squirrel-cage” blower to provide draft. The rotary blower was invented around 1850 and has pretty much supplanted the bellows due in part to its compact size relative to the bellows it replaced.

My own forge is one of these. It was built by the Buffalo Forge Company of Buffalo, NY, probably in the early 1900's. It is made of heavy cast-iron and provides useful heat for most things I need it for. I obtained it from a friend and when I picked it up, the blower was froze up from rust and lack of use. Some of the parts were bent from where it had been crushed against the back wall of a shed by a trailer carelessly backed into it. I've since restored it to working condition with minimal expense.

This is what you want, if you can possibly find one. The modern ones are available from several sources, and the old ones can sometimes be found at farm auctions.

If you cannot locate or cannot afford a forge... all is not lost. The first forges were made from scratch. Forges can be made from masonry, or iron and steel. I've made forges constructed out of brick held in a wooden box with a piece of black iron pipe as a tuyer... the tube providing the draft to the fire. Never use galvanized pipe for any forge part that will get hot... unless you would like to experience lead poisoning first-hand. I've also used brake drums for the "duck's nest". Brake drums work fairly well, being made of cast iron. Anyone capable of performing basic smithing operations should be well-able to engineer his own forge... and there are numerous sources available for those not able to design their own.

It is often helpful to have a "blacksmith's helper"... a support that is the same height as the edge of the forge.  It is useful to have such a device adjustable to account for variations in the level of the floor as well as the angle one wishes the work to be held in the fire.  At right can be seen an improvised helper, a saw-horse.  There are iron helpers, but for light work, a wooden support is more than sufficient.

Another item that is needed is some kind of container for quenching steel and supplying water for cokification of the coal, or containing the fire in the case of a charcoal forge. This is called the slack tub, and is essential.  I use an old whiskey barrel sawed in half, as can be seen in the photograph, but any kind of bucket or tub will work so long as it is water-tight and relatively heat resistant.

In addition to the slack tub, you also might want a container of oil and/or brine. Not all steels can be effectively hardened in a simple water bath. There are, for example, oil-hardening steels.   Caution: plastic buckets and the like do not make good slack tubs, especially when containing oil.  They will melt and possibly cause a large oil spill in your driveway.

A forge traditionally burns coal or charcoal, though they can be designed to burn various petroleum products, alcohol, wood, coke, natural gas, wood gas, and propane. If it will burn, you can probably design a forge to burn it... though some fuels are more preferred than others. Probably the most useful fuels for a post-apocalyptic smith are the traditional ones; coal and charcoal. Most of the others, natural gas, propane, etc. will not be available in any reliable quantity.

Coal suitable for smithing is not at all easy to come by commercially any longer. I used to buy it from a local coal supplier, but now they only supply stoker coal, which is a high-sulfur product in very large granulation. It can be used, but it doesn't work well at all. Smithing coal can be ordered in fifty pound bags, but be prepared to pay for shipping... coal is heavy. Coke, which is what you convert the coal into when you burn it in a forge, can be burned as well... if you can find it. The best coal (or coke) for smithing has a very high percentage of carbon, and a low percentage of sulfur and other impurities.

The "shelf life" of coal, coke or charcoal is in the millions of years... much longer than you need to store it, and it can be stored out in the weather with no problems. Unless you live in an area where you can "strip mine" it on your own land however, you can't make it yourself, so get a few hundred pounds in storage against the time when you can't order it any longer... more if you plan to "hire out" your services to the neighbors.

"Shot coke" is a petroleum product, and does not work well for smithing due to an extremely high sulfur content... take in a lung full of the fumes from that stuff some day. After you have finished your coughing spell, you'll understand with a great wealth of detail why you don't want to use it if you can possibly avoid it.

Charcoal is pretty much the antithesis of coal in many ways. It is almost pure carbon, with no sulfur or anything else to make the thick black smoke that characterizes a coal fire. It is readily available at many distribution points. It can even be made on-site if one has a ready supply of wood. It is relatively light in weight. It is not without problems, however.

First, the forge must be designed with a much deeper bowl than a coal forge in order to produce useful heat. A coal forge can burn charcoal, but it must be modified a bit. When I burn charcoal in my own forge, I generally stack a few rows of bricks around the periphery to improvise a deeper bowl.   Alternatively, one can simply mound it up over the top of the fire.

The best charcoal is "natural lump" charcoal, which looks like blackened tree branches, or in one case I saw, blackened hardwood flooring scraps. Conventional charcoal briquettes intended for outdoor cooking have some problems... the binder in this product will break down if exposed to excessive moisture, and I have heard that it will produce toxic fumes under a draft. I question this claim, but I cannot refute it, so use charcoal briquettes for smithing at your own risk.

Probably the biggest drawback for charcoal is that it burns up much faster than coal does. A hundred pounds of coal will be enough to supply my own forge for the entire Summer, a hundred pounds of charcoal will be gone in a month or two.

Should you wish, you can make your own charcoal. Alex Bealer's book contains some references to the subject as it was done historically, and is done today. Not all that much has changed in the basic process. Charcoalers build fires in piles of wood that are partially buried in the earth. They open drafts up to let varying amounts of air in to the fire from time to time until the charcoal is done, and then they smother the fire. This is a very simplistic version of what they actually do, however. Most of us would not have need for such large amounts of charcoal as is commonly made this way, however. Charcoal making is as much art as science... kinda like blacksmithing... and those who make it develop an expertise that is difficult to impart to others who have not spent time in the woods sleeping under a tarp and tending fires.

My neighbor Seffe tells me of long hard hours spent in making charcoal under his father’s tutelage as a boy growing up in Mexico. He also tells me that the pay for the finished product was minimal at best. This is, unfortunately (or fortunately, if one is buying rather than selling) common in the history of charcoal making.

The basic process is simple; one burns wood under carefully controlled conditions to burn off the wood gas and moisture among other things, and leave behind the almost pure carbon that is charcoal. Hardwood makes the best charcoal, but any wood can be used.

Making small batches is labor-intensive, but not impossible to accomplish. One way is to simply build a fire on the ground, wait for the flames to die down, (an indication that most of the wood gas has been burned off), and douse it with water. This will leave charcoal in the ashes that can be gathered up and put to use in a forge.

Another way that I have found effective is to build a fire in a commonly available Weber charcoal grill with hardwood. Let the fire get going pretty well and then put the lid on the grill and close up the vents. The Weber design is almost perfect for small scale charcoal production. It pretty much duplicates with modern air vents and steel, what the traditional charcoal makers do with dirt. Your first batch of charcoal will probably have quite a bit of wood left in it. No problem, leave the wood for the next batch... or simply use it as it is in the forge. You can convert it to charcoal much as coal is coked in the forge, though you probably do not want excessive amounts of wood in your forge. It produces tars, creosote, smoke, etc. that are tough on the smith's eyes, not to mention his lungs.

The first tool that a smith needs to construct, assuming he has a hammer, working forge, and an anvil, is a pair of tongs. Tongs are a tool used to handle small pieces of iron in the forge. In a pinch, a pair of ViseGrips will work, though the short handles on them limit their utility somewhat. A piece of iron can be worked without tongs, provided it is long enough that the smith can hold onto one end of it without burning himself when the other end is at red heat. Eighteen to twenty-four inches or more is about right. This should give you some idea of how long to make the tongs.

My first and second sets of tongs are not pretty. They are crude and ugly. I made them myself, though, and I still use them from time to time. These days, though, I seldom admit to having made something that ugly!

 If you wish, you can order tongs already made. This is perhaps not a bad idea for the neophyte who is short of time... which we all may be. However, making a pair of tongs is a good exercise and by the time the apprentice has finished a pair of tongs, he will have learned a good deal and will... perhaps... be ready to tackle the project he made the tongs for in the first place.

The tongs at left are horse shoe tongs... or that is my belief.  With so many tools, it is not at all uncommon to find one in a shop that you never saw before.  Most often the smith who used the tool in question is long dead, so you cannot ask him outside of consulting a medium... something I definitely DO NOT recommend.  These are used, as near as I can tell, to handle horse shoes in a forge.  The cupped jaws allow for the cleats to be held firmly. 

There are a plethora of other tools that can be either made or ordered. None of them are essential, but all of them are useful. They include hardies, specialized hammers, clamps, nail-headers, vises, drills, punches, and so many others that I could not possibly list them all here.

About vises.... a five dollar vise with a clamp to attaching it to a work bench is unsuitable for blacksmithing. Your vise needs to be large, heavy, and firmly fastened to a work bench. It it can be swiveled in several dimensions, so much the better, but it must be sturdy and able to take pounding as you may be using it quite heavily.

Should you be so very fortunate as to find a leg vise... get down on your knees and thank God profusely. I only recently acquired one myself, and this after actively searching for twenty years. Even if you find a damaged one that can be repaired... you have a prize beyond price.

A leg vise has an extension on the stationary jaw that goes to the floor, thus it is supported right from the floor and is much sturdier than any bench mounted vise. When something is clamped in this vise and is hammered on, the force of the blows is not wasted on the flexing of the bench, it is rather, applied to the work being hammered.

Traditionally, a leg vise's leg is set upon something like a white oak post buried a fair distance into the ground, though this is not my favorite. My own smithy needs to be portable, so I prefer something on the order of a wedge plate or other support base that can be picked up and moved along with the rest of the shop.  A plumbing flange and nipple of the appropriate size makes a tolerable adjustable "foot" for the leg.  A concrete floor with a steel plate supporting the vise leg is pretty hard to beat, but if you don't have concrete, improvise something else... a large rock, a post, a steel plate, etc.

I got this vise (shown "as found" in the photo at right) from a farmer's work bench in Abrams, WI.  The present owner of thefarm had little use for it after his father's death, so it stood idle.  When I came to remove the vise, it hadn't been used in some twenty to thirty years, and neither had the blowtorch in the ice cream bucket on the bench.  The leg was buried in the dirt floor with the rotted remains of a wooden post under it.

Most smiths buy some of their tools and make others. Necessity being the mother of invention, smiths often make tools that they will only use one time for some specific purpose. They do this primarily because they can.

The one "tool" that a neophyte smith simply cannot do without is a good set of books detailing smithing operations, properties of metals, and any other subjects that might be thought useful. Wainwrightry, harness making, and automobile mechanics come to mind. Yes, smiths can repair automobiles... who do you think made and repaired the first ones?

Two books I have found to be extremely informative are The Complete Modern Blacksmith, by Alexander G. Weygers, and The Art of Blacksmithing by Alex W. Bealer. Both have a wealth of information in the form of prose as well as diagrams. Remember, even if I manage to expand this article such that it becomes more of an e-book than a web article, it won't be available when the Internet is gone... unless somebody saves the entire document and puts it out on a packet radio server.

Another tool that can be useful is either a gasoline or kerosene blow torch. It used to be a commonly available tool, but today is found more often in antique shops, having been replaced in the working world by propane torch.   Both the old and the new torches are shown at left.  Please excuse the workbench clutter. 

You might not be able to use it once the gasoline is gone, but until that time, it will be quite useful for tempering steel tools, soldering (you'll need an old-fashioned soldering iron that has to be heated up by the torch), etc.. Be careful with this tool... and make very certain it is in workable condition before you do something as foolish as actually igniting it. NEVER attempt to add pressure to a burning blow-torch. If the check valve fails and sprays gasoline out through the pump stem... it will ignite with no way to shut off the fuel supply. It is difficult to get one to actually explode, but if it does, you don't want to be near it. A good rule of thumb is to always have a full bucket of water around to pour on the torch if something... unexpected... should happen. I cannot stress enough that these torches, while quite useful, are dangerous in the extreme and as they are all fifty year old antiques now, may not be in the safest condition.

Get a good tap and die set.   The one shown at left is a high-end set by Sears in their Craftsman line.  They make several different sets in different price ranges.  This one contains a set of Easy Outs.  I have personally found Easy Outs to often be ineffective in removing broken bolts, but the alternatives are definitely to be avoided.  Photo courtesy of Sears.

There will come a time when you will need to either tap a hole in something or thread a rod for some reason. Trust me, you do not want to attempt to cut threads by hand with a file. It can be done, but is extremely time intensive and has a large scrap ratio. Cutting internal threads by hand involves first making a tap, which is done by first cutting threads on a rod of annealed/normalized tool steel, then tapering the threads at the end and cutting flutes into it. If this sounds impossible to you it probably is, though it has been done. Making taps and dies is not nearly so difficult if one has a properly equipped metal lathe. More on this topic later.

By now you may have come up with another question; if I can't buy a shovel at Fleet Farm, where can I order a half-ton of half-inch square mild steel? The answer is, unfortunately, that a post-apocalyptic smith may not be able to order anything.

Where, then, can he get metal to ply his trade with? Good question! Probably the first thing any competent post-apocalyptic smith would do is to secure a good supply of raw material, mostly mild steel, but various types of tool steels might also be put into "stock", as well as a few other metals, i.e.: brass for brazing, lead and tin for soldering, maybe some copper tubing and other materials. He might also procure for himself some old recycled wrought iron or Swedish iron. Preferably, he'd do this ahead of time, before the waste products hit the fan.

He'd load his stock, tools, forge, anvil, weapons, reloading equipment, ammunition, food, water, other assorted supplies and his family, carefully into an old school bus he bought and bug out to parts unknown. (An old school bus makes a very good bug-out vehicle because of its large cargo capacity, high road-clearance, and the nearly bullet-proof sides). But suppose he did not plan well enough and was caught unawares. (Remember, not even Jesus knows the hour!)  Photo courtesy of www.usedschoolbusses.com.

Well, look around you. There are all kinds of things in the average garage or machine shed that won't have much use in a post-apocalyptic world. A gas or electric lawn mower, for example. The blade is high-carbon steel, suitable for making knives, machetes, cleavers, hoes, mattocks, splitting froes, etc. How 'bout that old side rake? Well, you might be able to use it as is, but the rake tines are also high carbon steel that can be used for many things.

The most useful source of base material however, may be that very school bus that got you out to Gramma's farm in the first place. (Trust me; at four to ten miles per gallon, you won't be driving it around all that much after the original trip!) You can jack the body up and remove the drive train, wheels and suspension. Leave the body intact as it makes a very good instant shelter and eventually a good place to store things that need to be out of the weather. After you finish dismantling the drive train and suspension, you will have hundreds of pounds of springs, shafting, and nuts & bolts. Much of this will be good quality high-carbon steel.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a common ordinary junk-yard is considerably more valuable than a gold mine. You have at your fingertips, an almost inexhaustible supply of various grades of iron and steel bar stock. You have tons of sheet steel, which, as any smith who has attempted to draw a bar down to a thin sheet will tell you, is unbelievably precious. You have wire, and generators, hundreds of radios that probably still work, gears and transmissions, air-conditioning compressors, batteries... that can be used as is or broken up for scrap lead which has a whole 'nother application... as projectiles.

If you are a competent smith and wish to ply that trade in the post-apocalyptic world, try to locate yourself near a country junk yard. You will enrich yourself immeasurably not only for your own projects, but if you can lay claim to that junk yard somehow, you can supply other smiths with base materials as well... in exchange for other goods and services, of course.

It is possible for a knowledgeable smith to make his own iron and steel. This is not to be undertaken lightly, however. Alex Bealer address this topic in the second chapter of his book. Depending upon what exactly is wanted, different methods were and are used.

One method of making wrought iron involves distributing small pieces of cast iron in a furnace filled with charcoal. The charcoal is then ignited and the fire fanned to a very high heat. This will burn the extra carbon out of the cast iron and leave pure iron and slag behind. This material will collect in the form of a "bloom" in the bottom of the furnace, where it can be dragged out and worked with hammers to form various sized rods of wrought iron stock.

This will not be an easy task to accomplish, and anyone attempting it should first consult a doctor to make certain of his own sanity before proceeding. The final product of this venture however may be well worth the effort.

Actual wrought iron is virtually unavailable today. It hasn't been made in any form for quite some time, and after about 1900, wrought iron bar stock was pretty much replaced by mild steel. Most smiths hated the stuff, but short of making their own wrought iron, a daunting task, they had to use mild steel where they had used wrought iron. The advantages of wrought iron may almost be worth the effort, however. It is far easier to weld than any steel, one cannot burn it at any temperature... it will melt first. It is much more resistant to rust than mild steel. This is the stuff from which you want to make hooks that will be used outdoors.

There are still a few sources for wrought iron. It is expensive, but it might be worth stocking a few hundred pounds for certain purposes... if one has the money. Swedish iron is very much like wrought iron, but has less slag content and is more expensive. It, too, is available in limited quantities.

Stainless steel is interesting material to work with. It cannot be welded in a forge. It retains heat well and it can be used to forge implements that are virtually indestructible as far as rust is concerned. If you really try hard, you can get it to rust, but it won't be an easy task. There are different grades of stainless steel. The most rust resistant is not magnetic and is generally softer. Surgical steels, some cookware, and other food grade machinery is made of this stuff.

Other tools might be desirable. In the way of power tools, a trip-hammer or power hammer will save many hours of hammering if it can be adapted to wind, water, steam or other post-apocalyptic power supply. Another machine that will be greatly useful is a metal lathe... preferably a large one with as many accessories as possible. Most of them will be electric, but there are ways to supply limited electricity in a post-apocalyptic world.

Traditional machines that are useful include treadle grinding wheels and post drills, which are a kind of old-fashioned drill press with a hand crank. Time was when every farm in the country had both of these items in a shed somewhere and often they can still be found there, covered with rust and with wooden parts rotted to nothing.

The post drill at right was missing a few parts, covered with accumulated grime, and not very well mounted to the wall of this work shop when I first laid eyes on it.  I was able to place it back into service with relatively little effort.  Currently it is "in trust" to me, pending its return to the farmer who owns it.  As he normally borrows my electric drill press when he needs it, his post drill may be in my garage for some time to come.

Keep your electric tools; drills, saws, grinders, etc. You can still use them as I type this. I know this because I am using a computer to type it on. For a while... possibly a long while... electricity will continue to be available and electric tools are of immense value in speeding the construction of a home, if one needs to be built, a smithy, sheds, greenhouses, and other structures and/or projects. There are also ways of producing post-apocalyptic electricity for your power tools addressed in other areas of Miles’ site.

I have made much mention and emphasis on post-apocalyptic issues in this article. As I was writing this for Miles, I thought this appropriate, but the principals can and perhaps should be applied outside of a post-apocalyptic scenario as well. By definition, the apocalypse is at a time no one knows. It will come as a "thief in the night." How then can one prepare?

First, trust God. Second, don't worry. If you are able to get prepared in time for the coming changes, so much the better. If you get killed in the first nuclear exchange, you have nothing to worry about anyway... not that it would do you any good at that point.

Living "off the grid" is, in fact, its own reward. Slavery was never actually abolished, you know. Only the form of it was changed. We are all still slaves in many ways. We have to work for a "master" in order to make money in order to pay for our living expenses. We have to take rudeness, unpleasant working conditions, and other nastiness as a matter of course. We never seem to get out of the rut we have dug for ourselves. This is by design... and started early in the last century. It is a difficult cycle to break, but break it we can, if we really want to.

The best way to cope with a post-apocalyptic world is to start living in the way you would have to live then as soon as possible. On the day the bombs fall, an Amish farmer will likely look at the distant mushroom clouds, shrug his shoulders, perhaps mutter "Gott in Himmel!", say a prayer, then urge the horse on to the farm yard. He probably won't be milking cows much longer for a living due to the changes in the economic system, but otherwise, he has plenty of Kerosene and appliances that use them. He won't miss the electricity as he doesn't use it, and he won't care about the EMP that fried all the radio and television stations. His life, and the lives of his family will probably go on. He may have problems he might not otherwise have had, but the basic living skills are already there and he is an expert.

We should all become experts... while there is still time, and the best way is to simply go out and do it.

Chapter II, Learning the Art

K, so you've managed to beg, borrow, purchase or steal (just an expression... you wanna try to steal my blacksmith shop... by all means go ahead and try!) all the required tools to set up a smithy. Congratulations, you're ready to become an apprentice. An apprentice is one step above an idiot, and even that only by virtue of the fact that he has decided he wants to be a blacksmith.

The absolute best way to learn the smithing trade is to find a Master Smith who is willing to undergo the many headaches associated with training such an individual who wishes to learn... or at least thinks he wishes to learn. Many modern apprentices quickly discover that blacksmithing is not an easy way to make a living, nor is it a simple task to learn. As an apprentice, you will find yourself doing all sorts of things that will make you think that the Master Smith training you is in fact Satan himself... especially the first week. You will become familiar with a great wealth of detail exactly what the phrase "hands on training" means... and each one of your blisters will remind you every day of that first week.

It might help to understand the Master Smith's reasoning. Most Master Smiths have been at this for quite some time. They have the muscles, the callouses, the scars, and, most importantly, the experience to prove it. They've also trained, or attempted to train a modern apprentice or two... often to their eventual regret. If you want to be trained as a blacksmith... be prepared to pay for the privilege. A Master Smith's time is valuable.

The smith will invest a good deal of time in training an apprentice, much of this training is accomplished in that first week. The apprentice will learn to build and tend a fire, the names of tools... which he will be fetching constantly. He'll learn the meaning of the phrase "black heat", at some point. He'll also find out in that week of Hell whether or not he really wants to be a blacksmith or not. The Master Smith will find this out as well... and he normally has no patience for slow learners. You will get yelled at as an apprentice. This is something most modern schools do not teach their students, which is a sad thing. You're an apprentice, so get used to it. Figure the first week is one of testing... if you pass, great. You pass by not quitting. Most young apprentices give up and quit. This is a sad commentary on our youth, but it is often true nevertheless.

By the end of the first week, you will have learned a great deal... but don't get cocky... you're still just a newly-trained apprentice with excrement for brains, as far as the Master Smith is concerned. Over the next few months and years... if you make it through the first week... your knowledge and skill will increase such that you may become a journeyman. The exact point at which this occurs is difficult to determine. On the day that the smith gives you some payment for your work, you have officially become a journeyman. You can permit yourself exactly one and one half seconds of pride in this... then get back to work. Time is money... or what passes for money in the post-apocalyptic world.

I have been doing this on and off for nigh onto twenty years. I do not consider myself a Master Smith. In fact, I probably am not much of a journeyman, in real terms. The gaps in my knowledge are too great to be of any real use to a Master Smith other than as a half-trained apprentice. I call myself a "shade tree blacksmith", or "hobby smith". Even this is a bit pretentious of me.

Most modern smiths will never achieve that exalted title of "Master Smith", though quite a few will claim it. If you ever reach a point where there is nothing else to learn, some apprentice will teach you something new and you'll realize that you really have not mastered your craft yet. When you have reached a point where you know more than half of the things you need to know as a blacksmith, perhaps then you can call yourself a "Master Smith". It is always better to wait until another Master Smith tells you this, though. He can see not only how much you have learned, but also how much you have yet to learn and so he is a better judge of your progression.

An important maxim: "A Master Smith is always learning... if he ever stops learning, get a shovel, for he has expired."

There are a few schools that teach blacksmithing, though not as many as there used to be. If you've got the time, the money, and the inclination, go for it! Plan on learning much more than just blacksmithing, however, and also plan on having gaps in your education that a true apprenticeship would not leave you with. You'll learn technical math, for example, but you probably won't learn how to use a coal forge. You'll learn how to weld with various types of electric and gas welders, but you may not learn how to weld in a forge. Yes... you can weld iron and steel in a traditional forge. How do you think welds were made before the oxy-acetylene welding torch was invented?

The third way to learn blacksmithing is the least satisfactory, but probably the most widely practiced these days. It is learning by doing. This is the way I learned.

About twenty years ago, I ran across a book in the public library called "The Art of Blacksmithing", by Alex W. Bealer. I found it fascinating. I read it cover to cover and renewed it for an extra month. My first forge was an iron box that had previously been soldered together and used metal window screen for a grate and an electric hair-drier to provide draft. This did not work very well, as one might imagine.

I built a second forge out of metal pipe, wood, and brick held up on a metal frame. While more satisfactory than the first, it still left much to be desired, and I built a progression of other forges, each more or less superior to the previous model over the next several years.

My first anvil was a section of railroad track, which worked quite well, all things considered. My second was an actual London pattern anvil, but it had been made of cast iron, and it broke when I hammered on it. My third and final anvil is the one I use now.

I made my first pair of tongs using some scrap iron I found in the garage. They are not pretty, about what you'd expect from an untrained apprentice, but I still have them today and I still use them. After reading Alex's book, most of my learning came from my own experimentation and from watching other smiths work. I am still learning, and I hope I never stop learning.

If you find yourself in the final category of learning methods, take heart, for you are in very good company indeed. The first blacksmith did not have Alex's book. He did not have a steel hammer, a forge, or a steel anvil. He learned much as you will, by personal experimentation. We don't know that man's first name.... but we know his last name; Smith, or Schmidt, or Schmitt, or Smit, or any of a number of other variations depending upon the nationality of the individual. Next time you are introduced to a Mr. Smith, shake his hand with a bit of pride, for you are meeting someone descended from a Very Important Person.

Many a post-apocalyptic smith will quite probably fit into this final category as well. Most probably he hasn't had the opportunity to prepare himself for life in the post-apocalyptic world... like many of the rest of us. He'll learn blacksmithing because the blade on his hoe is worn out or broken, and he'll probably ruin his first attempts to repair anything. If he is persistent, he'll learn however.

Chapter III, Basic Forging Operations

K, so now you have either completed some course of study or read a few books on the subject. If you are very smart indeed, you have now realized how much you have to learn and have either abandoned all hope of ever joining the ranks of even the "shade tree blacksmiths", or you think you are ready to start working iron. If you are still reading this, perhaps you are in the final group. If you are not very smart, continue to read as even you may glean something from this... hey, even I learned how to do it, nicht wahr?

The first thing you need to do is go out and get yourself some moleskins, Bandaids, and tincture of iodine. Unless you are a professional carpenter, mason, or other tradesman who works with his hands, you are going to have blisters. It usually takes me a couple of weeks in the Spring to develop callouses on my hands such that I no longer get blisters from hammering. No pain, no gain.

I have assumed that the reader has been able to obtain a forge somehow. The ways and means of building forges is beyond the scope of this article. Look in your blacksmithing books for examples. There are many on line articles on the subject as well.

Excuse me, I have to go and stir the beans for the chili. OK, I'm back again.

Fire management is a basic skill acquired early by an apprentice that does not enjoy getting yelled at constantly. You want the forge fire to be centered over the grate so you start the fire by packing coal around a four-by-four block placed over it. You pack the coal, which should be wet and finely ground almost to a powder, to a depth of six inches or so.

Start the fire with wood shavings and small pieces of wood in a sort of tepee fire lay down in the hole formed by the four-by-four, which should now be removed. Try to avoid using Kerosene to start your forge fire... Kerosene will be sought after in the post-apocalyptic world for other purposes, such as lighting, heating, and cooking. Learn to start a fire with birch bark, wood shavings, and pine sticks... known as tinder and kindling. Popsicle sticks work great if you can get them. You can use the ubiquitous Bic butane lighter for igniting your tinder, but you will find that a wooden match works better, if you have a good supply of them. They are cheap now, but they won't be when the supply runs out, so stock up.

When the tinder catches fire, go ahead and start providing a draft from the rotary blower, bellows, or whatever provides your draft. This should be done very slowly at first and gradually building up as the kindling starts. You then push the coal toward the center of the forge and increase the draft. By now the fire should be "roaring". It will produce quite a bit of black smoke as the tar and other impurities are burned off leaving "coke", which is almost pure carbon, behind. Coke is what you want to use to heat your iron, and you will continually be producing it as you work.

Within a few moments, your fire will be ready to work.

Probably the first basic smithing operation that everyone learns is called "drawing out". No, this does not involve a pencil, triangle and T-square, though the related field of mechanical drawing would not be a bad sideline to have at your disposal. Some day you might be called upon to make a steam engine from a set of 1875 blueprints.

Drawing out is the process of forming work by hammering it on the face of the anvil while it is at red heat, in a "plastic" state. A length of iron bar stock is thus made longer and thinner by this process. You heat a section of the bar and work it, flipping it ninety degrees after a few blows have been landed, to repeat the process again.

To sort of "get the hang of it", you might want to get yourself some oil clay commonly available at any art supply store... or any other fairly stiff putty-like material. Roll the clay out into a long piece of round "stock" and let it cool for a while in the refrigerator. Take it out and try to work it with a toy plastic hammer. You can use your regular anvil, or the kitchen table, if the female half of the household will allow it. This will give you a rough idea of how iron behaves in a plastic state without burning any coal.

When you flip the work, allow your hammer to fall to the anvil surface and rebound for one stroke. Don't actually apply any force to the blow, just let it fall from its own weight. This allows your arm to get a short rest and also helps to remove the scale, that dark material that flakes off the hot iron as you hammer it. It also causes the anvil to ring. Take your choice of the reasons to hit the anvil while the work is being flipped. Any one of them is just OK... and all smiths do this for one reason or another... the reason varying with the smith.

A good first project for a new smith is a "rake". A rake is a tool used by the blacksmith, or quite likely the apprentice, to move lumps of coal, or other objects around in the forge. It is a rod of metal with a short flattened bend on the working end, and an elongated loop on the handle end. It needs to be long enough so that you can handle it without burning yourself on it. About 24 inches length overall is about right. Some smiths actually use something more akin to a garden rake with small tines, but I have found my simple rake to be quite sufficient.

The use of this tool gave rise to the phrase "raking over the coals", meaning to make someone uncomfortable.

Another good project is a fireplace poker... which can double as the forge rake, for those short of iron stock.

You'll note that the finished work will be black in color. This is where the term "blacksmith" comes from. Iron as it was traditionally worked, was called "the black metal". "Smith" comes from the verb "smite", as in to smite the black metal. Hence: blacksmith.

Another catch phrase even in modern culture is "to strike while the iron is hot", meaning to take advantage of a transient condition of opportunity. Iron is normally worked at "red heat". So... what does that mean exactly?

Well, in theory, Iron can be worked at any temperature, and in some applications, medieval armor, for example, is worked cold. There are problems with cold working bar stock however. First and foremost, you will quickly run out of energy trying to forge cold bar stock. Second, if you do manage to work it while cold, you will end up with a piece of iron that is so work hardened and loaded with internal stresses, that it will likely break at the first application you put it to. This is especially important when forging something like a sword or other knife blade.

So strike while the iron is hot. It may have occurred to you by now that you have to work quickly. If it has, you are correct in your presumption.

Heat is traditionally gaged by color, and the proper forging heat will vary with the type of material being worked. Most mild steel, used for 90% of the work most smiths do, works best at a bright yellow-orange to a red-orange color. When it gets to a dull red color, it has cooled too much and must be reheated for further working. Forging temperature is not nearly as critical as that of welding or hardening and tempering. If you get it so hot, that sparks fly out of the forge, you have gotten it too hot. This is what is termed "white heat", and is the temperature used for welding. You can burn your work like this and if you do, you will have to discard that piece of metal and start over. The smaller the work becomes, the more critical this is because smaller work heats up much faster.

A word about "black heat". Recently forged iron holds its temperature for quite a while after it is taken out of the fire. One will obviously be careful about picking up a piece of work that is still glowing red, but an inexperienced individual might simply grab onto a piece of black iron laying on the anvil. That piece of iron can be hot enough to make a piece of wood burst into flame. Think what it could do to your hand. Good rule of thumb: when you are visiting another smith's shop, don't touch anything unless he hands it to you... if it didn't burn his hands, it won't burn yours either.

An experienced smith upon reaching for a piece of iron for which he is unsure of the temperature, will invariably hold his hand over it first to see if he can feel any heat, then he will touch it quickly and pull his hand away... perhaps a few times... before picking it up. If the iron is very hot, it will sear the nerve endings so fast that there is no time for the pain to get to the brain. The nerve endings a little further up the network will fire before they die though... but not fast enough to keep you from blistering your hand. If you are fortunate, your skin and the flesh beneath will not stick to the metal when you scream and pull your hand away.

Iron works HOT. Never forget that.

You'll gradually lengthen and thin the bar to the required specifications and end (hopefully) with a square piece of bar stock that has some hammer texture, a black surface, and is the proper length for the required usage. Try to avoid getting it into a trapezoidal shape... unless you are actually trying to do that. Hint: if you end up with a trapezoidal cross section... claim you wanted it that way! Once a bar has gotten started in a trapezoidal shape, it requires a good deal of effort to correct. Keep your blows square to each other.

A point is formed by gradually tapering the work down. You can make it as gradual or as abrupt as you wish. I start tapering my storage hooks about three inches from the end and bring 'em to a fairly sharp point. This is not necessary, and it may be desirable to avoid sharp hooks, especially when they are destined to be placed where someone might injure himself on it. Hint: don't hang wall hooks at eye level if it can be avoided.

Bending can be accomplished in any one of several ways. It seems fairly straight-forward, but it can be the most frustrating experience a new smith can have, perhaps because it seems so simple. That pointed end of the anvil is called the "horn", and one of the primary uses it has is for bending the iron being worked. It can be used with light blows close to the pivot point to make for a gradual curve, or further from the pivot point to produce a more abrupt bend. Bending on the horn is not as easy as one might think. I will just about guarantee that your first bend will be misaligned. Don't panic, you can flatten it out on the anvil's face to correct your mistake.

The elongated loop for the handle of your rake is normally forged on the horn. Figure that you need about two inches more than the length of the loop you plan to make. Measure that distance... about a hand's breadth... from the end and add three inches for the bend and mark it with a piece of soapstone. Heat the area just beyond the mark and then make your bend either over the horn or by simply bending it with tongs. You can either make a teardrop shaped loop or a "square handle". If you wish to do the teardrop handle, you need to put a scarf on the end of the rod before you make the U bend. If you want a square handle, just bend the rod until it becomes parallel to itself and then heat the end of it and bend the rod until it touches itself. You can weld this joint... and it is fairly easy to do if you have a teardrop shape and have properly scarfed the end of the rod. This is not necessary, however.

At this point, you should have a fairly usable rake and are ready to move on to other things.

What other things? The sky is the limit!

Drawing out is probably the most common forging operation, but it is not the only one. A second operation is called "upsetting". While drawing out thins and lengthens the work stock, upsetting does the opposite; it shortens and thickens the stock.

There are various techniques for upsetting. One of the most interesting is to simply heat the end of the rod you want to upset and then drop it onto a hard surface such that it hits longitudinally. The momentum of the rod itself supplies the force of the blow. This can be repeated as many times as necessary to achieve the desired thickness. This method is rather difficult to control however. You will often find that the work will bend as well as being upset.

Other methods involve hammering on the heated end of the workpiece to facilitate upsetting, and bracing the heated end against the anvil face and hammering the other end. These both work to some extent, but also suffer from a tendency to bend the work.

The Complete Modern Blacksmith has an excellent section on upsetting. There are techniques there for correcting the above mentioned bends. The use of an upsetting matrix, also shown in this book, greatly reduces the tendency to bend the work while upsetting.

Why would you want to upset a piece of work in the first place? Well, for things like wall hooks, as I make them, you wouldn't. Likewise for many other implements. But suppose you wanted to make a bolt with a head on it? I suppose that you could forge the shaft and the head separately, but handling such a small piece as a bolt head... and especially at welding heat, is almost an exercise in frustration. Even if you somehow manage it as a new smith, quite possibly the weld will be imperfect and will break when torque is applied to it. Much better to upset the head from the shaft in an upsetting matrix and then refine the shoulder with a header plate. Once this is accomplished, one can forge the square or hexagonal bolt head. I would highly suggest the square bolt head for beginners... they are much easier to do. Carriage bolts are made similarly, but with a square-holed header plate.

Fullering is a specialized form of drawing out. It involves the use of a tool that looks like a chisel with a rounded over working surface. To use it, one simply places the working surface over the workpiece and hammers it into the metal. This will make a (hopefully) shallow impression on the work, thinning it and lengthening it, but not appreciably increasing the width. This is repeated for the entire length of the workpiece. The finishing operation involves forging the high spots down to the level of the impression, thus forming... perhaps... a blank for a knife blade or similar implement. Fullering can also be done with the peen of a hammer... so long as it is not too sharp. Another type of fuller fits into the hardy hole of the anvil and the metal is placed on top of it and struck with the hammer.

I have never found fullering to be all that useful... but then, I don't normally make knives from round or square bar stock. Still, it is an available technique.

Twists are formed by holding one end of a workpiece that has been heated and twisting the other end of it. You either need an apprentice, or you need to get creative. If the implement to have the twist applied to it has a bend in it as a forge rake or wall hook, one can put the bend into the pritchel hole or hardy hole of the anvil and twist the other end. If it does not have such a bend, you need something like a vise to hold it.

I have a metal work table (rummage sale $5.00) that has a few holes drilled in it that I sometimes use for twisting. This method has the advantage of having the relatively true work surface to use as a gage to avoid unwanted bends in the section getting the twist as I can keep the workpiece relatively parallel to the table top. You also may need some kind of gripping tool to apply twists for some applications. Tongs will work, but I have a couple of old-fashioned monkey-wrenches (photo at left) that work quite well for this. The jaws can be adjusted to fit the metal and then used without fear of having the work twist out of the grip. I've seen one of these wrenches with another piece of metal welded onto it to form an adjustable "T" handle. I haven't tried that yet, but it should work rather well as you would have more control over the workpiece, not to mention added leverage.

Bends will sometimes manifest themselves in a twist. They can be dealt with. You can't really correct them very well on an anvil with a hammer in the way you would a bend developed while drawing out as you will cause flats to form on the twisted section. I usually correct them by laying a small piece of plywood on the anvil and then using a brass hammer to correct the bend against the plywood. The plywood will burn, but it and the brass hammer are usually soft enough to avoid flats and hard enough to allow for the bend correction. Another technique I have found useful is a wooden mallet and a large section of a tree trunk or stump. This makes for much smoke, but never produces any flats on the twist. It also does not leave any brass residue on the work. 

I have placed a short Windows Media clip here that demonstrates a few techniques.  Video quality could be better, but it does serve to show drawing out, twisting, and correcting a bend in a twist.

Most twists, such as those put in a fireplace poker's handle, are purely decorative. Whether or not the post-apocalyptic smith would utilize his limited resources of time and coal to produce such things would depend upon circumstances. I suspect that most smiths would still do some decorative work on their products... decorative work tends to fetch a higher price in the market place.

Market considerations will still be important in the post-apocalyptic world... though the relative values of things will likely be skewed from where they are now. In some places a bride's dowry is still commonly paid to the new husband by the bride's family. In the post-apocalyptic world, surviving women may be a bit scarce... conditions being harsh. If you want a healthy young wife, for example, (this is assuming, of course, that you are not an ornery old man such as myself, but rather a youngster intent on starting a family) you may end up having to pay her father. It is easier to make twenty decorative pieces than it is to make forty plain ones in exchange for the hand of the same woman. If she is beautiful and/or exotic, you might have to pay even more, further enhancing the added value of your labor.

My solution would be to court her older sister, who might not be as pretty, but probably is smarter and possibly not as flaky... and maybe only have to produce ten decorative items. If she is a widow with kids (a definite possibility in this kind of world), so much the better! Older children are infinitely useful around a smithy!

Some twists are not decorative, however, but are actually one of the basic simple machines known as the screw. Certainly you can make lag bolts and wood screws by twisting appropriately shaped bits of metal. You might also find yourself needing to make a drill bit for your post drill, or even a brace bit for the local carpenter's brace.

Twists for drill bits need to be more true than a decorative twist. You need some kind of guide. A piece of half-inch pipe the appropriate length will provide a good guide for twisting a metal strap sized a little smaller than the inside diameter of the pipe. You would then insert the workpiece and twist it the appropriate number of times. For a six-inch bit, you will probably twist it six times. Drill bits do wear out. They also break. You will have to replace them somehow. Start with decorative twists... the techniques are similar.

Metal can be cut by various methods. You can use a chisel, a hardy, a bar-cutter, a hack-saw, a set of bolt cutters, or even a hand ax. If at all possible, get yourself some bolt-cutters and/or a stock cutter before the bombs fall. These items are infinitely useful and save an unbelievable amount of labor and coal.

A hardy is one of a variety of anvil tools that fits into the hardy hole (catchy name, nicht wahr?). It is a sort of inverted chisel that sits fixed in the anvil. One uses it by placing a heated workpiece over it and striking it lightly with the hammer. You do this, typically four times, rotating the workpiece 90 degrees between blows and finish it off by breaking the almost cut through bar with your tongs. If you have a good sturdy hardy, you can do this cold, but it is quite a bit of work and wears out the hardy.

Using a hardy to cut bar stock takes a bit of practice. If you hit too hard, you may cut through in one stroke and impact the hardy with your hammer face possibly marring both the hardy and the hammer face.  A brass hammer is a good tool to use when cutting small stock on a hardy.

A chisel is used in pretty much the same way, excepting that it is held above the work and struck directly with the hammer. This is done on the edge of the anvil over the area known as the "table", just forward of the edge of the face before the horn. This area is softer than the face. In modern times with anvils scarce and expensive, one normally covers the table with a thickness of soft metal, aluminum, brass, or soft iron. This avoids marring the surface. Never try this directly over the face of the anvil. This is a hardened work surface and will damage your chisel... if you are fortunate. If you are not so fortunate, your chisel will damage your anvil face. Its kind of an irresistible force vs. immovable object kind of dilemma.

Another kind of chisel-like implement is called a “hot set”. A hot set is a chisel or punch that has a perpendicular handle on it. This allows one to keep one's hand clear of the hot metal.

All in all, a hardy is superior to any chisel or hot set for most applications involving heated metal. Cold chisels are often useful for some tasks where it would not be convenient to heat the work being cut.  Typically this will be when it is necessary to remove a bolt from a piece of antique farm machinery and the nut is rusted tight and rounded over.  Chiseling it off may be the only alternative if your acetylene torch is out of fuel.

To avoid all the extra effort, expenses, and risks associated with the use of hardies and chisels for cutting metal, use your bar-cutter or bolt-cutters. Learn to use the hardy, however; one of these days somebody may steal your bolt-cutters and you'll have to go back to the old ways... unless you really want to start using a hack saw.

These constitute most of the common methods of forging iron and steel. There are others, however, they are pretty much just variations of the above operations. If you master the above techniques, you will be well on your way to becoming a fair-to-middlin' post-apocalyptic smith. There are more things to learn however, so after you feed the rabbits or the goats, finish driving the sand point, dig the latrine pit, and shoot the weasel that's been pestering the chickens, come on back and read on.

Chapter IV, Welding, Brazing and Soldering

ll smiths eventually have to weld something... and most of us do not especially enjoy the experience. It requires exceptional skill, good quality coal or charcoal, and often no small measure of Divine assistance. Call it luck if you wish... I don't believe in luck. If you get a good weld the first time you attempt it, God was standing over you supervising your work. There is simply no other explanation... it is that improbable.

I will not address welding with modern apparatus like oxy-acetylene, electric arc, etc. I do not know the first thing about these techniques... don't even know how to light a torch. If you own one of these things, good for you, you probably have taken a course somewhere on modern welding. If you haven't ... you'd be well advised to do so before you kill yourself and a few by-standers.

In any case, the supply of pressurized oxygen and acetylene will be sharply curtailed in the event of a major disaster.  If you have such a torch, lay in some supplies if you intend to use it.  Don't waste money on an electric arc welder in preparation for a disaster.  They require a fairly high tech base to remain usable.  Welding rods and high voltage electricity are going to be in short supply.

In times past, there were welding apparatuses (apparatii?) that utilized calcium carbide and water to produce a chemical reaction that liberated acetylene gas.  If you can get one of those units in working condition, grab it, but not if you don't know how to use it.  Acetylene gas can still be made with the same calcium carbide/water reaction.  Oxygen can be made through electrolysis of water.  If a method can be devised for getting the gases into your welding tanks, oxy-acetylene welding could still be a viable welding technique in the post-apocalyptic world.  This will not be easy, however, and if you do not know how to facilitate this kind of production and storage, do not attempt it.  The production of oxygen and acetylene, not to mention hydrogen as a by product, is extremely dangerous as all these gases are explosive.

Forge-welding is a process as old as blacksmithing. Indeed, traditional wrought iron has been "folded" several times before it ever gets to the smithy. The word "wrought" means "worked", and making it involves a good deal of work... much of which is welding. Folding, that type of welding used in the manufacture of wrought iron is just exactly that; one folds the metal being welded in half, heats it to welding heat and forges it into one solid mass.  

This is not as simple as it sounds, however. Traditional wrought iron is the easiest by far to weld as the danger of burning the metal is all but eliminated. It welds so easily that a flux is often not needed. Wrought iron, though, is probably not the material the post-apocalyptic smith will be working with.

The simplest weld to make is a common lap weld, and the simplest variation is one in which the piece to be welded is a ring or chain link. The reason that this is fairly simple is that both ends of the weld are composed of the same material as they are in fact two ends of the same piece of metal. Thus the welding temperature will be the same. It is much more difficult to weld two different types of steel together because they have to be heated to different temperatures simultaneously. This is often not as critical as it might be thought, however.

To begin, take a piece of bar stock, draw it out to the required thickness and length and then put a "scarf" on each end. This is a tapered section. Make one scarf "up" and one "down" such that they will fit together. Forge the link so that the two scarfs are almost touching and then dip the area to be welded into the flux.

Flux is something to keep oxygen and other impurities away from the metal surfaces to be joined. Various substances have been used. Japanese sword smiths used a flux made from charcoal ashes, others have used sand, ground glass, iron filings, and other things. Often smiths are a bit secretive about what they use as a flux. I am not, I use borax. You can get borax from chemical supply companies and possibly at a welding supply store... but I just use the familiar Twenty Mule-Team Borax available as a product to wash clothes with. You can get it in pretty much any grocery store. Again, Borax will not be available in a post-apocalyptic world. Stock up now and keep it someplace dry. It has a long shelf life.

Once the scarfed joints have been well-coated with flux, get your rake and rake out the clinkers from your fire. Clinkers are impurities that are within the coal and collect at the grate in the bottom of your forge. They are multi-colored and when they fall to the floor, they make a metallic "clink" sound... hence "clinkers". If you do not do this, you will not be able to make a successful weld in that fire. If you are using charcoal, don't worry about clinkers, they don't exist.

It's an old joke for a smith visiting another smith's forge to drop a bit of copper down into the forge when the "home" smith is not looking. Until the bit of copper has been found and removed, that smith will not be able to make successful welds. This is not funny. It wastes resources, time, and effort that will all be in short supply in the post apocalyptic world. A smith who plays this trick on another smith owes him a day's labor and/or the use of his wife for a period of time to be negotiated between the victim of the prank and the wife in question. If she decides that she likes the new smith better, she may stay... at her option, not her husband's. In other words... don't play this kind of trick unless you are willing to assume the risk of the consequences. There most assuredly will be consequences.

Rake the coals back into the center, place the workpiece back into the fire, way down deep where the fire is the hottest and start fanning the fire. Judging welding temperature requires experience, and you will probably burn some iron before you have gotten the hang of it. Welding heat is described as "white heat", though this is a misnomer.

First of all, welding heat will vary with the composition of the steel. Generally, high carbon steels will weld at a lower temperature than mild steels, and if you heat it too hot, it will burn. This is most critical with small workpieces... or thin ones. Knife blades forged of folded stock are extremely difficult to make if you actually have to do the folding.

Also, "white heat" really isn't white. It is, at best, an off white color, more yellowish. White heat as applied to forging operations is about the color of a "cold blast" lantern flame. A Dietz Blizzard and Little Wizard are both examples of cold blast lanterns. This is the proper color/temperature to weld most mild steels, Swedish iron and wrought iron. High carbon steels such as are used in the manufacture of automobile springs generally weld at a yellowish temperature. Take a look at a "hot blast" lantern flame for a fairly close example of this color. A Dietz Monarch is an example of a hot blast lantern.

Be careful not to burn the work.

When in doubt as to welding temperature, take a thin rod... say 1/8th inch or so in diameter and slowly push it down to the piece being welded. If it sticks to the workpiece, you have reached welding temperature. If you are welding a large piece, you need not work especially fast as a large workpiece holds its temperature fairly well... a small piece needs to be welded quite quickly.

Be careful not to burn the work.

Judging temperature by color is almost a lost art. It is easier to do in a dark area, which is one of the reasons that smithies tend to be dark and gloomy places. If you are forging out of doors, which you may be doing at least initially, a hood for the forge helps quite a bit. All rivet forges had hoods, but many forges commonly used on farms did not have them. Hoods are made of sheet metal, have a large opening for fire tending and placing work inside, and are tapered to form a short smoke stack. If you are indoors, this stack needs to go to a chimney... though if indoors, you probably don't need the hood in the first place, just good ventilation.

The obvious fire hazard in using a forge indoors cannot be overstated, and if your neighbors see smoke coming from the eaves of your garage, they will call the fire department. I know this from experience. The fire chief who responded was very polite, but he was not amused.

When your workpiece has reached welding heat, take it out of the forge quickly and hit it with the hammer. This blow must be quick, hard, and accurate. It needs to both spray the flux out of the joint and join the molten metal together in one or at very most two or three blows. Hammer it together and examine it. Hopefully the lap will be aligned properly. If it has been misaligned, you can try to dress it by forging it on the horn or the face of the anvil... after it has cooled to red heat. If the weld holds under this kind of stress, it will hold whatever stress you are making it to withstand... if it does not hold up, it was never welded in the first place and you must start over.

Be careful not to burn the work.

Should you have need to weld two separate pieces into one piece, you will have need of either a hold-down of some kind, or a well-trained apprentice. This most difficult of tasks is something I have never managed... though I only attempted it one time. Even more difficult is trying to weld, say a high carbon steel blade onto the edge of an ax head. This is seldom done these days as we have good quality high carbon steel available in quantity at affordable prices. Today one would make the entire ax head out of high carbon steel and not just the edge. In times past it was common to weld blades into ax heads, hammer faces onto hammer heads, and even high carbon edges onto scissors and shears.

Pray to God you never have to do this kind of work! The technique involves placing both items into the forge in such a way as both reach their respective welding temperatures at the same time. When this happens, you have to lay the blade into the scarf made for it and quickly weld it into place. It can be done, and has been done, but the men who can do it are truly Master Smiths indeed.

Forge (or "pressure") welding is not without difficulties and risks.  Risks of fire and injury can be minimized by making sure that all flammable material and all personnel are far enough away from the smith to avoid the molten metal and flux that will be violently expelled in the welding process.  Take this seriously.  Medical help will be in short supply, so avoid risk of injury whenever possible.

Welding is a type of cohesion, and is especially strong. Less strong, though somewhat easier to do are brazing and soldering. Both of these methods of joining metal are classed as adhesion. As such, they are not as strong as welding.

Brazing involves heating the steel to the proper temperature and then joining two pieces together with melted, or initially powdered, brass. Brazing requires a fairly high temperature, but not as high as is required for welding. It is done in the forge. If something needs to be brazed... normally this will be some item made of cast iron which cannot be welded... it is best to use modern methods if at all possible. Forge brazing is chancy at best, and unless the item being repaired is small, say fixing a broken handle on a Lodge 6 1/2" skillet, your chances of success will be limited.

To braze, you must first clean both surfaces to be joined. You can do this with a common wire brush. Next, heat both surfaces, apply flux and some brass filings (spelter), and after placing the workpieces to be joined in the forge, heat until the brass melts. Then tap the end of the smaller of the two pieces such that the melted brass on both pieces is joined together. Obviously, both pieces must be carefully supported such that they align well. Once they are joined together, let the fire die down so that the brass will harden and (hopefully) the two pieces will be joined together.

In times past it was (allegedly) fairly common to braze items like broken saw blades, due to the difficulty in welding such thin metal. I have never met a smith who could demonstrate this to my satisfaction with traditional methods.

Soldering is fairly simple and straightforward. First, as with brazing, you must make certain the surfaces to be joined are clean. You melt a lead alloy and use it to stick two pieces of metal together. Steel can be soldered, but it is difficult to do properly, and even when done properly is not very strong. When steel is soldered, it is normally thin sheet steel. The metal traditionally joined in this manner is copper, though brass will also submit well to soldering.

Aluminum cannot be soldered or brazed... it must be welded, and a blacksmith cannot weld aluminum with traditional methods. It can be cast, though my only attempt at casting aluminum... didn't work out too well. Never attempt to heat magnesium. It looks like aluminum, but is stronger and lighter. It also burns with a fire that cannot be extinguished. If the “aluminum” you are trying to melt in a crucible catches fire, take it out of the forge and get away from it until it burns out. It wasn't aluminum.

By traditional methods, one would heat an old-fashioned soldering iron up either in a forge or with a blow torch, and use it to heat the items being joined and the solder. You can apply the torch flames directly to the material being joined, and you may have to if you are joining items that are large... like sections of a copper roof being repaired in cold weather (be careful not to burn the wood underneath the copper). You would also use solder to fit copper pipe and tubing together. Silver solder is the stuff to use these days, as there are laws forbidding the use of lead solder for this purpose.

Soldering also takes much skill and practice and is not really the bailiwick of the blacksmith, though he should be at least somewhat familiar with the process. A post-apocalyptic smith might be called upon to repair nearly anything, and a short-wave vacuum tube radio cannot be repaired with a forge and a hammer.

Metal can also be joined by other methods. Mechanical fastening, is probably the oldest method, next to welding. Riveting and/or bradding are both methods of mechanical fastening. One does this by placing rivets or brads through holes in both pieces to be joined and rounding over the end or ends. Only the rivet needs to be heated... and even this is not an absolute requirement. If the rivet is soft enough and small enough to be worked cold, one can mushroom the end with no problems... at least for light work where extremely tight fitting is not necessary.

For heavier work using large rivets, the rivet must be heated to a working temperature, placed, and be mushroomed over before it can cool. As it cools, it shrinks, further tightening the joint. Hull plates on older ships like the HMS Titanic were riveted, so a properly fitted and riveted workpiece is capable of great precision and strength. Quite possibly the Titanic's rivets failed due to their not meeting specs... but this is conjecture.  There are ships still floating that date from the Titanic's day and have riveted hulls.  I have done some riveting, with mostly small rivets. Probably the most common use for a rivet that a blacksmith will encounter is the pivot for his tongs. A rivet works well there.

There are special forges, special hammers, special anvils, and other tools for riveting. If you plan to build an ark out of iron. Perhaps you might have need of such items. Since an ark will not be needed for survival in the post-apocalyptic world, you might consider something else as an extra tool. I have found that a simple hammer, anvil, and forge will suffice for most riveting jobs.

Pop rivets are different from traditional rivets, though they operate in somewhat the same way. Pop rivets require a special tool called a Pop riveter. They have the advantage in that they can be done "blind" with no access to the other side of the surfaces being joined, however, they are not especially strong. Use them to assemble sheet steel to be put under light loads. If you need to build an armored vehicle to combat the armed mobs besieging you and your neighbors... use heavier steel and traditional rivets or bolts.

Other items used for mechanical fastening include nuts & bolts, nails, screws... in an almost endless variety of sizes, shapes, materials, and types. Get yourself a good supply of mechanical fasteners. One can make mechanical fasteners, but nothing is more tedious than spending a day with a nail header and a bunch of nail rods making nails in the traditional way.

If you have need for a decorative rose-head nail on occasion, get yourself a nail-header, and make these rare items up as needed. Otherwise, get yourself a twenty-five pound box of nails in various sizes and a selection of screws, bolts, rivets, washers, nuts, lock nuts, and other common hardware before the giant mushrooms start growing on the horizon. Your time will be better spent getting Grampa's old steam-tractor up and chugging than it will in making nails and rivets.

There are some modern adhesives that are truly amazing in their capabilities. One of the most common is any variation of epoxy... and there are specialized epoxies for many purposes. Polyurethane glues like Elmer's Probond and Gorilla Glue are also amazing. None of these will handle heat well, though, so use them where appropriate. There are also adhesives used in aircraft manufacture not generally available to the public. Some of these are heat resistant. If you have a source of the stuff used for repairing U2 airframes, you probably know more about such substances than I do. Needless to say, such materials will be rare in the post-apocalyptic era. Stock up if you think you will need them.

Chapter V, Heat Treating

uch about the subject of heat treating is misunderstood by most people... and even some otherwise fairly skilled smiths are a bit weak in this area. It is a confusing subject.

There are basically four types of heat treatment; hardening, tempering, normalizing, and annealing. There are any number of ways to accomplish each one, however, and the effectiveness of the method varies with the type of metal being worked, not to mention the skill and the effort of the smith.

Practically speaking, these kinds of treatment are only useful when dealing with some kind of high-carbon or tool steel. Metals other than ferrous metals can also be annealed, though the technique varies quite a bit from what is common with steel. Annealing brass cartridge cases is one common application for this process.

Hardening is just exactly what it sounds like, treating the metal in such a manner that it reaches it's maximum level of hardness. Tempering is reducing that level somewhat to enhance other properties. Annealing is the process of treating the metal such that when cooled, it is as soft as it can be made without re-heating it. Normalizing is done differently, but the result is similar to annealing.

Of course everyone knows that the proper way to harden steel is to heat it red hot and then to plunge it into water. A sword blade thus treated will be virtually indestructible; flexible as a whip and so hard that it can chop through a machine gun barrel without marring the blade in the slightest. Right? Well... not quite.

There are... problems with this method... especially when dealing with the more modern alloys. Some of these alloys are amazing in their capabilities. Their properties and heat treatment requirements may also be quite exotic. Air hardening steel, for example, should not be quenched in water, brine, or oil. It has very specific requirements to achieve desirable properties. None of those involve conventional quenching.

If you can get the steel, you can get a data sheet on it, and if one is going to be playing with such magical stuff, one had better be well informed. Otherwise, stick to conventional materials that you know how to work with. For most practical projects, simple high carbon steel will suffice for the most demanding tool requirements.

The adamant of Greek and Roman mythology is neither needed nor desired for simple hand tools. The forging of weapons, particularly edged weapons is a whole 'nother kind of smithing, however, and those who forge weapons and armor are often very interested in new alloys.

Hardenability is dependent upon many factors, but the most important one is carbon content. If it does not have enough carbon in it, it cannot effectively be hardened by heating and quenching. There is a substance known as "superquench", which supposedly allows even mild steel to be hardened. I have my doubts about this. I don't know much about superquench, having never used it. There are several different formulas, most involving the use of lye as an ingredient. There are other formulas however, that use other ingredients, though most of these ingredients will be in short supply in the post-apocalyptic era. If you need to harden it, make it from high-carbon steel. You'll need such lye as you can make for soap production eventually.

To harden steel, heat it red hot and quench it. It really is that simple. Now, what exactly is "red heat", and what do I quench the steel in? Good question, apprentice, you are learning!

The proper hardening temperature for any given steel will vary depending upon carbon content, and also other things alloyed to it like molybdenum, chromium, arsenic, potassium, etc. Carbon content is by far the most important factor having to do with the composition of the steel, however. If you have a data sheet on the steel you are working with, you will know the proper hardening temperature. Matching that temperature with a specific color that you may not be familiar with in a primitive forge, however, is another matter entirely.

Most often in the post-apocalyptic era, you will not be able to get specific alloys with nicely defined properties detailed in a data sheet. You're gonna be after junk-yard steel... which is a whole 'nother subject entirely that I'll go into in a later chapter.

In general, a ferrous metal has reached its hardening temperature when it loses its magnetic properties. In other words, when the metal being hardened no longer sticks to a magnet, it is at the proper temperature for hardening. This temperature is fairly critical, so when it is reached, take a good look at it and try to remember the color. A mechanic's pick-up tool, a magnet on a telescoping metal rod works well to test the metal being heated. You need not actually touch the metal... just feel for the pull of the magnet. When it ceases, you have reached "red heat" for the purposes of hardening.

Most high carbon steels can be quenched in either oil or water. Tool steels sometimes get a little temperamental about what they like to be quenched in. I ran across a crow-bar once the metal of which would crack when quenched in water. If you get a piece of metal like that, quench it in oil. Used motor oil will do unless the work has to be used in food preparation. Transmission fluid, vegetable oil, or any other kind will work. You have to submerge the entire work when you do this as the oil will burst into flame when touching the hot steel.

Exactly what to quench the work in depends upon the level of hardness desired, the requirements of the material you are quenching, and the availability of quenching media. If you don't have any oil, you can't quench oil-hardening steel in it. Hardening can also be accomplished by other methods. A needle can be quenched, for example, by thrusting it into an apple or tomato.

In times past sword blades were hardened by thrusting into human flesh. I do not recommend human beings as a quenching medium. This makes the smith rather unpopular with the friends and relatives of the specific medium in question... to say nothing of the medium himself... who may actually survive the process. Besides, anything alive tends to writhe around when subjected to hot steel, no matter how well restrained and might damage the work in the process. If you must use brine as a quenching medium, and water is in short supply, collect a bucket of urine. It may not smell good, but it will work, as will the blood of a recently butchered animal.

The post-apocalyptic era is not for the squeamish.

In general the faster the steel is cooled, the harder it gets. In order of fastest to slowest, here are common quenching mediums: superquench, brine, water, oil, air. Larger pieces to be quenched such as anvils are frequently quenched by pouring a continuous stream of quenching medium on them... in the case of an anvil, on the working surface, the face. Remember that as the metal cools, it shrinks. Thus, if it is not cooled evenly, it may crack. Keep it moving when you quench it, and if it has specific quench media requirements, follow them.

Once quenched, the artifact is hard. It is not very tough, however, it is brittle. It may in fact be as brittle as glass. It is rather disconcerting to see a piece of steel shatter into shards... not to mention potentially dangerous. If you harden and temper your work in separate steps, be careful with recently hardened steel.

There is a process known generally as "case hardening". Case hardening is not the same as conventional hardening in a heat treatment sense. To case harden something, one packs it into a container of any one of several carboniferous compounds marketed under different trade names. One such trade name is Caseknit. The container is then heated to a very high temperature and kept that way for a period of time. The carbon from the compound then migrates to and is absorbed by the artifact. In this way, an artifact made of mild steel can have the outer surface rendered much harder than the rest of the metal.

There are a few applications for which this is desirable for one reason or another, but most smiths do not have the facilities or the inclination to do case hardening. It really is quite time-consuming and troublesome.

A variation of case hardening is color case hardening. Color case hardening produces a hardened surface in addition to a random color pattern as is commonly seen on Colt Single Action Army revolver frames, Shiloh Sharps rifle receivers, and similar applications. Color case hardening is somewhat more difficult to do than conventional case hardening... and the practitioners of this process guard their secrets well. For post-apocalyptic operations, this is not especially important and there are other things that should take priority to the smith's time.

The way to do case hardening effectively is to wait until you have a number of articles to case harden and then do them all in one batch. You'll need a very hot fire and it will need to be kept going for an entire day or more to properly case harden the work. In the post-apocalyptic era, this will be a difficult thing to manage effectively. If someone is running a steam plant nearby for local electricity generation or some other reason, the way to proceed is to wrap your package in clay, plaster, or cement, let it harden, and then put it into the firebox of the steam plant. Just leave it there until the plant is shut down, then go retrieve your package, break the covering, and quench the case-hardened artifact.

Color case hardening is very much dependent upon the quenching process, though, depending upon who you ask, there are other factors such as inclusion of animal hooves, leather, etc. in the hardening compound. The quench media can be water or any of a number of other materials. I have heard that acids are commonly used. I do not recommend this... it is dangerous to quench hot metal in any substance, adding acid to the equation, which may liberate hydrogen upon the addition of iron, strikes me as a bit foolhardy. Other methods involve a rising column of bubbles in the quench media. Supposedly the bubbles in the quench material rising to the surface are what cause the color pattern.

If you want to try case hardening, be careful. Use safety goggles, acid proof clothing if you want to try acid, do not breathe the fumes, and good luck to you.

Most often the product obtained by case-hardening is simply not worth the effort needed in a post-apocalyptic world, but if one really wants something casehardened for some unfathomable reason, with much experimentation, it can be done.

Normalizing metal is done by heating to hardening heat and then allowing it to air-cool. By this method, the metal is rendered relatively soft. You would do this if you wanted to file, grind, engrave, polish or do some other cold machining of the artifact before hardening and tempering.

Annealing is done for the same reasons as normalizing; to make the metal soft. The difference is that with annealing, the metal is cooled very slowly. If you have facilities to do so, you can cool it over several days. Some smiths use Vermiculite, asbestos, or other insulating materials.

When I want to anneal something, I wait until I am almost done for the day, then heat the artifact up until a magnet will no longer stick to it, bury it in the coke and let the fire go out, covering my forge with an old Weber grill cover. It will take several hours to cool and the metal is rendered soft enough for most cold machining operations.

Typically one forges the work, normalizes or anneals it, performs any necessary cold machining operations, hardens it and finally tempers it. There are ways and means of hardening and tempering in one operation. A chisel, for example, can be shaped by forging, have a blade rough ground on it after normalizing, and be hardened and tempered in one operation. I'll detail these techniques at the end of this chapter.

After the workpiece has been hardened, one then must temper it. In some cases, this must be done immediately, as certain alloys will develop longitudinal cracks if it is not quickly tempered.

Drawing/tempering is that part of smithing that is extremely critical. If you want to produce usable tools in your smithy, you must become an expert at this. There is an almost endless variety of techniques to produce properly hardened and tempered working surfaces. No one method is best for every smith or every application. Springs are probably the most challenging heat treatment task for any smith, and as might be expected, there have been many tricks developed over the years.

When an artifact has been hardened homogeneously, that is to say that it was heated to hardening temperature and then entirely quenched, tempering is a second step in the heat treatment process. The exact procedure will vary a bit depending upon the application. Making a tool bit for a metal lathe for example requires the bit to be brought into a state of homogeneous temper throughout the entire artifact. This can be a tricky process, and is best accomplished by using a kiln equipped with a pyrometer. You may not have such a luxury however, in the post-apocalyptic era.

If you do not, you will have to experiment until you have your technique down to a science. One way to homogeneously temper an object is to build a small kiln of sorts over the top of the forge with firebrick. After the interior of the kiln has been heated one can place the artifact to be tempered inside the kiln and watch it carefully for color, pulling it out quickly when it reaches the proper color/temperature and quench it.

Relatively few tools, however, require homogeneous tempering. Most are made hard at the working surface, leaving the rest of the tool relatively soft. A cold-chisel is a good example. This tool must have a sharp edge that retains its shape even as it is used to cut iron and steel. The other end of the tool, however, must take repeated hammer blows. It cannot be rendered overly hard or it may shatter when struck. This is why when one sees a cold-chisel that has been used a bit, the cutting edge may be sharp, but the other end is battered and mushroomed over with steel that has been deformed by hammer blows. One must often dress such a tool on a grinder in order to avoid having bits of metal fly off under use.

There are a number of ways to temper a tool such as this. The way I first learned it was to harden the tool by quenching and then polish it to an almost mirror sheen. This can be done with a wire brush, a fine grindstone, or a whetstone. At this point, you've (hopefully) got a very hard and brittle tool... be careful not to drop it on a hard surface, it may shatter like glass.

Now, the tool must be slowly heated from the striking end. As you watch it , you will notice color bands forming on the surface of the tool. The color bands represent different levels of hardness. The hardest color band is a light straw color and the softest a dark blue color. The color bands will slowly march down the length of the tool until the reach the cutting surface. Now it must be quickly cooled by quenching before the edge can become too soft. Quench it cutting edge first to arrest the process immediately, then slowly submerge the rest of the tool.

Heating the tool can be done in the forge, and in the case of a cold chisel, this will work fine. One can also use a blow torch for this purpose, and this is one of the best tools available for that purpose. There is danger in getting a tool overly heated on the striking end because if it gets red hot, and is subsequently quenched, it will again become hardened, necessitating a repeat of the process. It should be noted that a fire hot enough to bring the work to red heat is not necessary.

The heat source need not be a fire. In the case of a knife blade, for example, tempering may be accomplished by bringing the back of the knife very close to or actually in contact with a red hot piece of steel. This will afford better control of the process.

Variations of this type of tempering process are called drawing. In order to be certain that the tempering is done evenly, the process may be repeated. This may be termed double-drawing or triple-drawing. Normally you will see high-quality wood chisels and such that are double or triple drawn. Screw drivers and such are normally only drawn once.

If this sounds unnecessarily complex and time consuming, there are other options, though the process of drawing a tool to the proper temper is probably the most common and useful method for most tools. One method for tempering a small lock spring I have read about involves hardening it in oil, and then dipping into sawdust. The sawdust will adhere to the oil and coat the spring. The next step is to hold the spring over the forge until it catches fire, allowing all the oil and sawdust to burn off. This supposedly gives a spring that is perfectly tempered.

In my experience, nothing is ever that simple. The methods that work will vary greatly depending upon the size of the spring, the quenching medium used, and most importantly, the composition of the steel. You can try this if you need to replace a spring in the lock of a muzzle-loading firearm or something, and if it works with a particular alloy, take note of it. If it doesn't work, you will have to try other methods.

Tempering small parts in the post apocalyptic era will have modern smiths tearing their beards out until they have adapted to the new conditions and learned new techniques.

Take a good look at your text books on the techniques of drawing and tempering steel. Learn these chapters. Practice the techniques while you can still get steel relatively cheaply. Currently, most general blacksmiths make their living by wrought iron work. Tools will likely be a more important stock in trade for the post apocalyptic smith.

Not every tool needs to be hardened and tempered. Plow points, for example do need to be hard, but this is less critical in the case of a hand tool like a hoe, which can be made of mild steel and simply quenched when finished. It won't be as durable as a hardened blade, but it doesn't take as much to make, and remember that the first hoe was probably made of wood and/or stone, bronze and/or copper coming later on.

Always remember that in the immediate post-apocalyptic era, resources may well be in short supply. Use high carbon steel for critical tools, not for boot scrapers, nails, and wall hooks. Save stainless steel for items that must be rust-proof for some reason. Depending upon what has caused the situation to be defined as post-apocalyptic, you may be facing shortages that may last a year, seven years, or for the rest of your life.

Chapter VI, Junk-yard Steel

here is an old adage that states; “One man's trash is another man's treasure.” There is much truth in that statement. While in Northern Iraq during the aftermath of the first Persian Gulf War, I frequently saw Kurdish refugees scrounging our trash dump for things we had discarded. A broken tent peg (or sometimes one that was not broken) was perfectly good firewood to cook dinner over. Discarded portions of MRE's were also sought after. Probably the most highly regarded item, though, was the metal tin that our T-rations were shipped in.

After the food they had contained was cooked and served up to the soldiers, they were “junk” to us, and we threw them out with the rest of the trash... until we noticed the refugees “mining” the trash dump for these treasures in particular. At first we were mystified. What in the world did they want with used tins like these? We eventually noticed the tins being stored in and around the refugees' tents. At last, an explanation came forth.

The Kurds had been chased out of their homes with the Iraqi military hot on their heels. They left, typically in the back of a wagon pulled by something like a 1950's era Ford/Ferguson farm tractor with their families, a few blankets, AK47's and ammunition, other weapons, and little else. Some left on foot leading an ass, horse, or other pack animal. I know of one woman who walked sixty miles while in her eighth month of pregnancy. Needless to say, she didn't carry much other than her child. A few thoughtful individuals brought along a wok... which is a very useful cooking utensil that cooked Mid-Eastern flat-bread (in an inverted position) as well as rice and various meat stews.

Most of these refugees, however, had either not thought to take cooking utensils or been too rushed for time to do so. The various NGO's as well as the US military supplied food for the refugees, as well as water and shelter, but nobody had thought to supply cooking utensils in any great numbers. Hence the trash miners.

The T-rat tins were waterproof, did not burn, and most importantly, were available locally. Thus, they