Practical Blacksmithing - (Hardcover)

About the Book

Featuring more than 1,000 illustrations, this foundational text describes every aspect of working with iron and steel, and is essential for both the do-it-yourself backyard blacksmith and the professional metalworker.

Book Synopsis

The blacksmith's ABCs--learn metalworking as taught by the old masters!

The forging of metal gave birth to the Iron Age, and Practical Blacksmithing is the classic primer on the craft that shaped modern civilization. Featuring more than 1,000 illustrations, this foundational text describes every aspect of working with iron and steel, and is essential for both the do-it-yourself backyard blacksmith and the professional metalworker.

Originally published in four volumes in the early 20th century, this hefty, single-volume, new edition of Practical Blacksmithing is different from similar books in that it includes contributions by working tradesmen. Proving that what may be old can actually be new and useful, Practical Blacksmithing describes all the important smithing processes: welding, brazing, soldering, cutting, bending, setting, tempering, fullering and swaging, forging, and drilling. With this books clear and concise instructional material you will learn:

• Best methods and practices
• Unique how-tos
• Original techniques
• Arcane knowledge
• And more!

In addition to thousands of other useful facts, the modern blacksmith will be introduced to old tools and learn how to make them, and can even learn how to build a retro blacksmith shop with detailed do-it-yourself plans!

Industrialization and mass production may have led to the disappearance of the blacksmith from everyday life, but the art of metalwork never died. It smoldered like hot coals in a forge, and today those coals are red hot as craftsman taking up blacksmithing as a hobby or art form seek to learn the foundational aspects of the trade.

About the Author

M.T. Richardson was the editor of an early magazine about blacksmithing. A bible of the trade, Practical Blacksmithing collects his extensive knowledge and, in his own words, "a variety of practical information formed of contributions of hundreds of able workmen scattered over a wide area."