What Metals Does a Blacksmith Use?

The work of a blacksmith isn't widely and fully understood, especially as the trade has become largely obsolete in the industrialized world and continues to exist mostly in the realms of the hobbyist and the historical re-enactor. This is probably because the metal a blacksmith works is not part of his name, as it is with other metalworkers. When it comes to blacksmiths, "black" is synonymous with "iron."

Blacksmithing is the trade of shaping and cutting hot iron and steel into useful objects. Blacksmiths work with iron that has been heated, often to the point of being red-hot, but not with liquid metal. The basic tools of blacksmithing are tongs, a hammer and an anvil.

The only types of metals a blacksmith works with are iron and steel, with steel being merely an iron alloy. However, they do not work with all types of iron. The main form of iron not worked by blacksmiths is cast iron, which is too brittle to be worked by blacksmithing tools. Modern blacksmiths work mostly with mild steel, which today is interchangeable with wrought iron.

There are entirely separate trades for working with metals other than iron. For example, there are coppersmiths, goldsmiths and silversmiths.

A horseshoe.A major source of employment for blacksmiths in modern America is in shoeing horses. T horseshoes worked by blacksmiths are U-shaped iron objects that need to be re-shaped for a good fit on the hoof of a particular horse. Other horseshoes, particularly those made of aluminum, are simply filed and bent cold but rarely manage the same fit as a shoe that is heated and shaped to order.

An Indian blacksmith making horseshoes.Blacksmithing as a trade had gone into steep decline through the middle of the 20th Century, as the ever-cheaper prices for ready-made steel tools made it comparatively expensive to have old tools repaired at a blacksmith's shop. However, a renewed interest in traditional trades and Do It Yourself work during the 1970s brought blacksmithing back as a hobby and craft. In the developing world, where iron tools aren't cheap relative to the typical person's income, blacksmithing remains a living trade.