Abstract
Blacksmithing remained an omnipresent and essential trade in the west only so long as wrought iron was the basic ferrous commodity of western society. The introduction of the Bessemer process, beginning in the late 1850s, heralded the age of mass-produced steel and modern industrial manufacturing technologies, and with it the irreversible decline and eventual demise of blacksmithing. Many of the skills and secrets of working wrought iron, once acquired and passed on through a long-standing oral tradition shared among blacksmiths has, like its practitioners, also disappeared. This dictionary attempts to provide many of the orally preserved terms, once in use among blacksmiths in North America, as uncovered by the author during a career of study and research on the subject of blacksmithing.
Résumé
La forge n’est demeurée un métier omniprésent et essentiel en Occident qu’aussi longtemps que le fer forgé a été la substance ferreuse de base dans la société occidentale. L’apparition du procédé de Bessemer, vers la fin des années 1850, annonça l’âge de la production en série de l’acier, des technologies de fabrication industrielles modernes, et, par le fait même, le déclin irréversible et l’effondrement éventuel du travail de forge. Plusieurs techniques et secrets du travail du fer forgé-autrefois acquis et transmis grâce à une vieille tradition orale partagée par les forgeronsont, comme ses praticiens, disparu. Ce dictionnaire tente d’apporter autant de termes, utilisés jadis parmi les forgerons en Amérique du Nord, que l’auteur en a découvert tout au long d’une carrière d’étude et de recherche sur la forge.
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Light, J.D. A Dictionary of Blacksmithing Terms. Hist Arch 41, 84–157 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377010
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377010