next up on Viral History, Hayley Considine once again travels back in time to
learn more about the rich and varied skills and crafts of our ancestors in
"Ancient Artisans"
Hello guys and welcome back to the Ancient Technology Centre where I'm here
with Ian who's going to be taking us through the
process of making an Iron Age nail so Ian - tell us what we need to be doing
Well to start with if you'd like to get going with the bellows okay okay so one
perfect and what we're wanting to do is get the metal up so it's about eight or nine
hundred degrees centigrade and then I'll start hitting it so. Whilst I'm doing
this can you tell me is there any truth in the fact that a blacksmith is called a
blacksmith because he used to get so grubby while he was doing this? To the best
of my knowledge there isn't, the word Smith if we break the name down the word
Smith comes from the germanic word smite meaning to hit and black was because of
the fact that iron, when it came out of the fire, was black so it was literally
hitter of black metal but as you can see we do also get very grubby as well. Okay
getting there slowly do you want..? I'll pass over to your able assistant.
Wow. Okay. Every blacksmith had their style of nail-making. This is the one
that I have been shown and certainly has been around for as long as the guy who
showed me how to make it has known. Is it the most effective way of doing it even
in comparison to modern ways? No traditional well, modern nails are made
with machinery and can do thousands and thousands in a second,
you used to have professional nail makers and one of them would have been
expected to be able to do between two to four thousand nails in a week. This
method, in a modern forge will get you about maybe a thousand if you're really
really lucky fifteen hundred in a week so...so about half then? About half yes. In the
early Iron Age, though, when they were first started being made, because the metal was
so expensive even if a nail came out bad, they would still find a use for it
though, so nothing was wasted at all. Okay so just straighten that up then we're
ready to make sure it fits into our tool. Oh wow so they're all measured? All
measured, that's partly thanks to the to the Roman Empire where everything was
regimented and everything had its place in this order.
So for this next bit I'm going to be needing Alistair to come along with his
chisel and hammer and just be able to start cutting the nail off so we can
snap it and then put a head on it. Okay it's a really quick process? it is quite quick I
mean in a modern forge I can be doing a nail in a couple of minutes because I
can get to much higher temperatures, whereas in this one when we're really
going for it on good conditions, then three or four minutes for a nail. Okay
that's it. And would this have been a two-man job then basically?
Probably would have been only you had, in blacksmith shops, you had someone called a
striker, a striker who was, his job was basically the heavy hitter.
Perfect and so he would come along and just if extra metal needed moving or
something needed doing quickly he would be there with a big hammer to get it
done. Two seconds. There we go. There we have, one still-glowing Black Smith-made nail.
That's brilliant. Crikey me! Well thank you so much for showing us that, it was a really quick
process. Thank You Ian and we'll see you guys next week for another episode of
Ancient Artisans!
you