Have you ever wondered about how blacksmithing works? Or to be more precise, how it worked in Roman times? In this essay you will learn about blacksmithing techniques, tools, and more. Let’s jump into Ancient Roman blacksmithing!

You will learn about the different tools that blacksmiths would use. The tools that Roman blacksmiths used are as follow: an anvil, tongs, hammer, chisel, a poker, and a crucible. The anvil was used as a surface to hammer the soft metal from the forge into shape on. The anvil was a hard flat surface such as a rock. An anvil needed to be strong enough to not break from the blacksmith’s constant hammering. Now we move on to tongs. Tongs were used to grab things from the furnace. This was a necessary tool because …show more content…
The tongs would have to be able to hold the metal firmly. We now move on to everybody's favorite tool, the hammer. The hammer had kind of an obvious use, which was to hammer the soft metal into shape. The hammer was also used to pound impurities out of the metal they were working with. The hammer, much like the anvil would have to be able to not break after constantly pounding things into the desired form. A hammer would normally have been made from iron or wrought iron. Now we go on to a more delicate tool also known as the chisel. They would use chisels to make patterns and carve shapes and rune into the sword. The next tool is a poker, the poker is what a blacksmith from Ancient Rome would use to rearrange the charcoal in different areas around the forge to get the right heat. This was useful so the blacksmith didn’t take the risk of actually putting it in with his hands. Now I will tell you about the crucible, the crucible was a tool that blacksmiths would use to melt metal into a liquid. The crucible would go inside the forge the blacksmith was using. This tool would be useful because the romans …show more content…
Even though they both are iron there are still differences. Wrought iron has a carbon level of less than 2% while cast iron has more than 2%. Wrought iron is also smooth and a silverish color while cast iron is flaky and brittle with black spots. Wrought iron is stronger than cast iron and is less prone to corrosion while cast iron is the opposite. Although there are differences there are also similarities. Both are iron no matter the amount of carbon and other impurities they have. Both cast and wrought iron would be crafted into their different shapes for whatever purposes would fit the buyers needs. Both irons start as cast iron because originally the blacksmith would have cast iron and he would hammer it and do other things to get rid of the excess carbon and impurities to make it wrought iron. As you can see both cast iron and wrought iron however different still have