Today is

By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Blacksmith Horse Shoe

You ever see a blacksmith make a horseshoe? He takes a piece of metal and sticks it right into the burning coals of a hot fire. That fire is over one thousand degrees and glowing red. Then he pulls that metal out of the fire and uses a huge hammer and an anvil to strike the metal. The blacksmith hammers and shapes the metal, sticks it in water just enough to cool, and then puts it back in the fire.” The gentleman paused for a moment as the story took effect.

John Deere blacksmith

In 1962, a University of Illinois archaeological team unearthed the exact location of the blacksmith shop where John Deere developed the first successful steel plow in 1837. As a young journeyman blacksmith in Middlebury, Vermont, John Deere soon gained fame for his considerable workmanship and ingenuity.

Blacksmith expertise

These days most kids don’t have any idea what a blacksmith does, so I usually explain the concept like this. “When it’s hot, you can do everything with iron that you can do with clay, … except touch it.” In the “olde days”, before blacksmiths had thermometers, they found that the color of the iron changes with the temperature.

A Blacksmiths work

As a blacksmith you could specialise in either industrial work, making items such as specialist tools, fire escapes or security grills, or artistic work, making items such as decorative ironwork, gates, sculptures and furniture. Some blacksmiths are trained and registered as farriers, and shoe horses alongside their blacksmithing work. See the Farrier profile for details of this career.

CONCLUSION

A blacksmith is a person who creates objects from iron or steel by "forging" the metal; i.e., by using tools to hammer, bend, cut, and otherwise shape it in its non-liquid form. Usually the metal is heated until it glows red or orange as part of the forging process. Blacksmiths produce things like wrought iron gates, grills, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture,tools decorative and religious items, cooking utensils, and weapons.