Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How did they do this before modern tools

Prior to the late 19th century that wheel rim was probably wrought iron, rather than steel. Steel was expensive stuff until processes like the Bessemer convertor came along,

Wrought iron has very little carbon content, which makes it easy to forge and weld, but it has nowhere near enough to allow you to increase hardness by quenching and tempering as you can do with medium carbon steel for example. It tends to be pretty tough and not bad for corrosion resistance, at least as compared to your early steels.

As a kid in the 1950's I had heard of some of the many things blacksmiths could do from some old timers who were friends of my grandparents, (and even older than my grandparents). I recall hearing about them welding stuff but they never mentioned forge welding. All I remember is "They got it red hot and beat the hell out of it", or something to that effect. That was real interesting; thanks for posting.

It's been 40 years since I fired a forge. But for a fact red hot ain't anywhere near hot enough. You have to go past yellow, all the way to white if you're gonna hammer it into a weld.

I imagine magnetic induction and hydraulics would save the rotator cuff.

Tag.....

Modern version would be something like this vintage power hammer
https://youtu.be/WH9D6yBJwQk
But water driver power hammers are very old, very large, and very loud. Last one I saw was at least 15-20' in the shop, and more outside.
https://youtu.be/OVmF6Nsf77Q

Some folks even go a bit extreme...
https://youtu.be/E0ICdvaU94o

Last year I stumbled on a PBS show, looked like it was filmed in the 1960s, of a guy making a muzzleloader, from scratch, with nothing more than blacksmith tools. Very interesting how it all came together.

At Sovreign Hill in Ballarat Australia there is a wagon wheel manufacturing plant making new wheels with 1860 era machines. It is fascinating to watch them turn a seasoned section of a tree trunk into a completed hub, ready for the spoke installation in a matter of a few minutes, moving from one specialty machine to next down the production line.

Charcoal forges were common in Africa when I was there, I'm recalling adobe-type fire pits for charcoal and traditionally-shaped bellows operated by hand, familiar-shaped anvils too. I never paid enough attention to them.

There are a lot of diffrent sizes and typed of anvils.
I just traded a box of deer antlers to a knife maker for a #100 Fisher anvil. 1850-1870 (iirc)

Thanks, those were fun to watch.

My mother-in-law gave my son his grandad's forge - and I have his tire shrinker - an interesting (and heavy) artifact. It may have come from Fort Union.

I've got a couple hundred pounds of 150 year old tire and sleigh shoe bolts in their original boxes.

There are more than a few of those 25# little Giant power hammers around and in use. A buddy has one in his shop as well as a large air powered hammer.

Forge welding can be done with a propane Forge, but one has to put the fuel to it to get sparking get hot. It's much easier in a coal/Coke Forge. Also a lot easier to vaporize the work piece too.

old skill Wagon wheels, sAmurai swords, Norseman ship building and European late 18th century warship building (have a look at HMS Victory),
medieval armor manufacture techniques,stone masonry etc... necessity is a great driving force in learning, development and refinement.

the great things old societies have done with the relatively little tech they had but great ingenuity, but of course some of it proved
rather ground breaking for its time..like revolutionary steam power compared to the horse & bullock.

Yup,....VERY hard to control at forge welding temperatures. There's a pretty good cache of very old wrought iron implements and artifacts piled up around here, grist for the blacksmith's mill, as it were. Some of the tools are pre-territorial colonial and super durable, very fine finishes after hundreds of years exposure. A LOT of the mining tools from the Territorial Period were forged with locally available bituminous coals, and are litterally falling apart,....they'll need to be smelted, and all of those oxides floated off,....dunno if I can pull that off.
The fundamental difference between good wrought iron and steels / properties of material are no longer commonly emphasized in our votech and metal shop classes, and haven't been for quite a while.
Malleability , ductility, tensile strengths, vaporization versus oxidation,....etc, etc., etc.....
I'm meeting a lot of somewhat confused and ill prepared younger hands these days,.....and continue to lobby hard for getting back to these basics in first year classes.
Anybody here ever used Red Fir bark in lieu of forging coal ?

GTC

.....A slow, unwieldy, pretentious, TUB, crosstrees and "Castles" full of targets in red coats.....compared to the USS Constitution,....she's a SHIP, built by free men.

My pleasure.

My grandfather was a blacksmith. While he died before I was born, I've heard a lot about his great strength. Forge welding builds very strong arms on someone who does it regularly.

Back in the 1970's, the Arkansas Highway Department moved their Central shop from Jacksonville, Arkansas to West Little Rock, Arkansas. They had a sale after the move and there were a lot of old stuff that I craved, but had no money to buy, nor skills to use. Among them were a large coal forge, a power hammer and a large anvil. The anvil must have weighed 700-800 lbs. Lots of hand tools to go with these items. This shop was in an old building that was used during WWII in some capacity and I think these things were from that era. I did not get to attend the sale and would have been barred from bidding as I was a employee, but I had no money anyway. miles

Up the road about a half mile is the old farm owned by my best friend's parents, their parents before them and maybe their parents. It had a helluva lot of old outbuildings when we were kids. One time we went in one of them and it was a blacksmith's shop, complete with the old forge and tools. There were a bunch of iron wagon wheel rims and some wooden spokes still in their, waiting to be put together. My kin came to Kansas in the 1870's but were latecomers compared to his.