Production Details:

Hardback
438pp

Description:

If you want to know how an eighteenth-century iron hinge was made, or how an intricate trivet was formed, or how a muzzle-loading rifle barrel was welded, The Art of Blacksmithing has the answers. If you would like to set up a blacksmithing shop, this book describes and illustrates the equipment and the techniques developed in more than six thousand years of working iron by hand. For the lover of history and the person who admires the ingenuity of common men, this book reflects respect for the specialized skills of the smith, and creates nostalgia for the colour and excitement of the village smithy, which so recently dissapeared from the Western world. Indeed, this unique book covers every aspect of a fascinating and little-known art, the fundamental craft on which the civilisation of the Iron Age was built.

The collector of wrought iron as well as the craftsman will find much here to interest him: how kitchen utensils and tools were made by hand, the intricate methods used to form arms and armor, and the special techniques and tools of the decorative iron worker, as well as historical background on the blacksmith and the iron maker.

Includes more than 500 illustrations.