What Would a Fantasy Blacksmith Shop Look Like – Wastatch Forge Blacksmith Interview Part 2

Justin Lewis 0:00

If you've ever wanted to know how to correctly describe a blacksmith shop, and roleplay, your blacksmith for your players in your d&d game, today's the episode for you. It's part two of our mini series with Wasatch Forge, a local blacksmith shop right here in Utah, where we talk with d&d aficionados, Matt and Stan who are also master blacksmiths. If you want to check out part one, go back to our previous episode, where we dissect a little bit about their opinions as it were with d&d, welcome to How to be a better DM, the show for dungeon masters who want to make every session special without devoting hours and hours and hours and tons of money. Today, we're talking like I said about blacksmithing. And I'm your host, Justin Lewis, I have been helping dungeon masters Old and young alike. For over 140 episodes. Actually, this is our 100 and 50th episode, so a little celebration to us. But without further ado, let me give you the rest of my talk with Matt and Stan on blacksmithing. All right, so we are going into the blacksmith shop. This is the shop floor I'm assuming Yep.

Matt 1:11

This is kind of our cold work area where we do all of our grinding so what

Justin Lewis 1:14

does that mean? Cold work.

Matt 1:16

That means it's already been forged, okay, and is now going to be finished into its final shape if it's not just rough forged. Okay. You know, instead of tongs and things like that we don't do hardly any cold work on them. It's all hot work, but knives, swords blades of any kind that requires a large amount of cold work,

Justin Lewis 1:36

okay, and that that would meaning like honing the blade to your

Matt 1:41

finances, whether it's as basic as using stones to refine your edges and that sounds like stone age level technology. But I'm talking about

Justin Lewis 1:56

what's the term like a grinding wheel?

Matt 1:58

Yeah, but it's it's a specific tradable powered sandstone

Stan 2:04

wheel grinding wheel. I don't know.

Justin Lewis 2:08

But But yeah, there is a word for it. Awesome. Just lost it. Cool. But that you know, you have this fine sandstone. You know, in Arkansas, Waterstones are a modern representation of it, where we found a vein of good stone for making wet stones out of, but it's a it's a large wheel based Whetstone that you step on and it turns Gotcha. Okay, that is very similar to my line of belt grinders there so.

So obviously in d&d adventurers go into a d&d shop. The Dungeon Master would be explaining this is what you guys see. They're not gonna see belt grinders right,

Matt 2:56

but they will see and I'll come up with it but a trail powered grinder grinding stone literally, you guys will leave will walk the gate and be like, and you're like way

Justin Lewis 3:15

aside from a grinding stone that has its foot powered, what else would characters see coming into a blacksmith shop on average, you know, the village blacksmith. So

Matt 3:26

your blacksmith shop has to have a anvil of some kind. Whether it be a one of my favorite examples, is a stone in the field in a in an Ireland field, where it has some little different little cut ins into it, and a flat section and people like oh, this is a blacksmith shop. And it's literally a field in the middle of Ireland and like what do you mean? Well, this is an anvil. No, that's a hunk of granite lying in a field. Yeah, otherwise known as a stone anvil,

Stan 4:00

but a nice piece of granite. But it's,

Matt 4:03

it's worked. Yeah, yes. Cool. So you don't have to have a large chunk of iron with a steel top on it. And by the way, under no circumstances does a blacksmith anvil in medieval times, look like a 19th century. anvil. They, they're not that so what do they look like? A large lump of steel, relatively so it's just like a flat top.

Justin Lewis 4:29

Okay. Just like a almost like a table almost like

Matt 4:32

No, no, we're talking like fist size. Okay, so

Justin Lewis 4:35

basically the width of this. Yeah,

Matt 4:37

so imagine this as being a square. Interesting. That's the grand majority of your anvils throughout history forever.

Stan 4:43

If you look up, if you look up Viking Viking

Matt 4:46

steak anvil, you'll that is not a small envelope that isn't it's a regular envelope. We are so you know and you look there's 13 or 14 animals here. And the wealth of iron and steel in these is bonkers compared to traditional Viking anvils. And yes, in some big cities in castles with blacksmiths who are owned by the king, they would have bigger hexagonal anvils that are a good, you know, 20 inches across and have multiple people working on it and multiple workstation, things like that. But for the grand majority, your village blacksmiths, they are 1415 pounds on the on the high end.

Justin Lewis 5:38

Wow. That's really cool. Totally makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah,

Matt 5:41

you your hammer face is not going to do work on the entire anvil surface. So why would you have more of that incredibly valuable item. And it's not the fact that Well, I have it great. So I have one. And my apprentice has one not I have a big one. You know, you look at that face, it's four square inches.

Stan 6:06

Yeah. And that's a relatively large,

Matt 6:08

and that's a pretty good sized hammer. And so you can work all that entire surface of that relatively small anvil and get really good work done. I have every intent of using an old gravestone as a granite anvil and forging out a blade on it. And Holland anvil actually recently gave me one of their little Vikings dump animals. And I really want to make a high end, great looking knife off of it and go, you don't need an anvil, you need a piece of steel to hit.

Justin Lewis 6:44

So with your gravestone blade, don't kill me and send my soul to a furnace. I would rather avoid that. Also, if you could try and send close together because there is just one mic. Just that way, we don't want to lose what you're saying. Okay, so they would have an anvil. Not exactly looking like this. This is the stuff of cartoons not d&d. Correct. Right.

Matt 7:11

And And 19th century and

Justin Lewis 7:13

19th century and 19th century, what else would they have in their d&d shop?

Matt 7:18

So you've got to have a forge? You've got to have a capability to heat the metal up to 2000 3000 degrees and 3000 hertz melting? Yes, I

Justin Lewis 7:28

know. But I didn't know that. So. So 2450

Matt 7:31

is where steel melts, okay. Wrought iron melts closer to 27. If memory serves, so you've got to have something to hit it on, you've got to have something to heat it, and you've got to have something to hit it with. So you need a couple of hammers. In my opinion, a blacksmith shop must have three hammers, you've got to have a hand hammer that does most of your work, you've got to have a fine work hammer. And then you've got to have a hammer that is wielded by your apprentice. Now keep in mind, basically every blacksmith shop is going to have an apprentice. How much do apprentices cost? Nothing, food and board. And to get the small capability of a hydraulic press or a power hammer. In a go warm in a 14 year old kid, wielding a two handed hammer. There will always be one there's always some kid that will take up the apprenticeship and do work for you for food for food and board and it's easy to get apprentices as a blacksmith, so forth.

Justin Lewis 8:50

Is that even true today?

Matt 8:51

Oh, yeah. Oh, that there's nothing that someone's 14 year old kids like a hammer and anvil and fire. Yeah, and fire. That's awesome. So you got to have an anvil. You got to have three hammers, you got to have several sets of tongs. Now over here. In my shop, I have a large duplicate amount of tongs. But that's because I do lots of classes. Wow. So there are eight or 10 of this style of tone and this style of tone, which are the ones we mostly do in the class, but then everything else is for specific purposes. Wow. And once again, we have a large variety of hammers here. All of these are basically student hammers. That's actually one of my personal hangers. Everything else is for student use. So you don't need more than three hammers. Okay. Now keep in mind that when you have an apprentice wielding a is a sledge sledge hammer, the capability to use top tools. They're not hammers, so those rests on the item being forged, and the anvil and then I strike that surface there. And it lets me do finer work.

Stan: 10:23

Interesting. And the specifics of these two tools. This one here has got a nice flat edge, which is not typical of most hammers, most hammers have a little bit of a rounded edge, it helps you move material a little bit better. And then this one, this one would be used for making rounds, or making even stock if you want to have a particular I'm trying to find a specific example. But maybe gates that need a cylindrical rod, you'd be using this on the top of your bar. Well, you've got your 14 year old striker in the back. Yeah.

Cayden: 10:53

And for listeners, this hammer that we're looking at, what did you call this top tool shop? It was top tool we're looking at almost looks like a Lego hand. Really? Presents.

Stan: 11:04

It's an excellent way to describe that. But yeah, it's a it's a steel Lego hand. That's a struck tool. Yeah.

Matt: 11:09

So you've got a surface that puts the intent that you're aiming for and then a tall end on it that can take the can take the abuse of being struck.

Justin Lewis: 11:22

So theoretically, within the within any world, really. There is a Smith who makes the hammers that Smith's use. Absolutely. And that could that could be a really cool adventure to go find that Smith. Right. The guy who makes the hammers for everyone, you know.

Matt: 11:40

And I've always wanted to. So how many gods of smithing are there? Oh, gosh, just about everywhere. All right, has one. Yeah. Because it is so important. Yeah. And so you got some really cool opportunities there. And, you know, just think about the tools that he would have and the tools that he would use. And how that could. Oh, man, I could imagine you do a campaign where his hammer has been stolen and broken. And therefore every other Smith's hammer breaks. Yeah.

Justin Lewis: 12:19

Just chaos. That would be like Google breaking. Yeah, maybe a little bit worse. Yeah, that's crazy. That's wonderful. So they would have the forge. They would have something to heat the metal to hit the metal. Something that hit the metal on Yep. Also an apprentice. Is there anything else that like you think if you put this in people would be kind of impressed or like, wow, that's that seems. Interesting.

Matt: 12:48

Okay, so first thing we'll we'll talk about one of my pet peeves. Under no circumstances do you cast iron? No, no spell, including in a blacksmith shop. So under no circumstances is somebody pouring steel into a mold and making a sword like they do in movie like they do in movies. Literally, I watched that and I'm like, I'm out. Yeah, I'm done. My suspension of disbelief has completely broken. And I can't handle this. Sorry, Lord of the Rings. I mean, okay. Magic is magic. Yeah, yeah. But the problem when you get iron up to that temperature, and you're in an oxygen rich environment, it will literally burn. It won't melt. It'll burn. So it doesn't work.

Justin Lewis: 13:32

That's interesting. Okay, so for all of you at home, don't have your your iron poured into these molds. They would take it for swords for swords. Yeah. Was it do that for anything else? Or did arrowheads,

Matt: 13:45

arrowheads, arrowheads you can make out of bronze, copper. Okay, brass tin. And you can pour that into a wooden mold. So, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves actually poured shitty arrowheads into wooden casks. And I'm like, yep, that's how you could do that. Because you got to remember, we're not turning arrowheads. We're not making arrowheads out of steel to last forever. Under what circumstances would I ever give my enemy? quality steel or quality iron?

Stan: 14:20

It doesn't take a whole lot of material either. I mean, we're talking about a quarters worth, like a US quarters worth of material for an arrowhead.

Matt: 14:27

Yeah. Wow. So we've done some post apocalyptic. I did he go experiments? Or it's like, wait a minute, is this is this real? Can we make a deadly point? On the end of an arrow with a quarters worth of material or a quarter? Did

Stan: 14:43

you absolutely I've got a little doesn't have any fletchings but I got a little arrow back there.

Justin Lewis: 14:49

That's sounds like a really cool video.

Matt: 14:51

So that's one of the biggest problems that Wasatch Ford has and we do all this cool stuff. And we don't have anybody there's no there's no videographer apprentice, like comes in and says, so yeah, I will, I will do all the things I'm

Stan: 15:04

actually a little bit upset with that right now I've been, we're doing a little challenge among some of the employees at work. Right now, we've all been given about 20 grams of 40 grams. It is in between 20. And 30, is what the paper says, of meteorite. And our task is to incorporate that into a blade somehow. Everybody's very surface.

Matt: 15:27

It's literally celestial iron.

Stan: 15:31

So with that little challenge, most of the other participants have been making it into kind of a Damascus thing. They're, they're putting it in a canister with powders and welding together, I'm going significantly more traditional on it, I'm taking a really, it's wrought iron, but it's 200 year old wrought iron. And it's every little piece of wrought iron I've ever failed on which means that I hit it hot, it's split apart, and I went, I'm not good enough to put this back together, I'm going to set this up at side and cut off the little pieces. So I'm off to the side, took out that bag. Now I've got a lot more skill on hand to do that. So I consolidated all this together, it's now one block of iron. And then I've put the media right into that. And that's becoming my blade. But the hard part is that that's a poor quality iron. So I'm going through a couple of historical processes where I'm going to upgrade upgrade my material by other processes more or less baking my iron with carbon rich materials, and that carbon will seep in and diffuse into my material. And I'll choose some unique carbon sources. If I really want to get weird with it, I can even use my own hair. If I wanted to. I could use wood from the hat from the house I grew up in I could use a bear Pelton something that was historically done before. Yeah. Yeah, you've got the strength of a bear in some of your materials. So they would just be taking anything that's gotten a carbon source to it. That's interesting, turning it into more or less charcoal, however gross the charcoal may be, and then infusing that into materials. So something that Master has brought out here is something that's really really cool. This here is while it may just look like a hunk of iron that's kind of vaguely sword shaped some texture in it. Yeah.

Justin Lewis: 17:19

So for listeners, it looks about the shape of the giant superstar destroyer from episodes. If you look close, you can almost see like the turrets and everything, but

Stan: 17:33

there's some No. So um, the really cool part about this material is that it's been diffused with some extra special materials. You want to go over that a little bit.

Matt: 17:47

Yeah. So I had a guy reached out to me four months ago, six months ago, and says my dad's on his deathbed. And I want to have him and he wants to have him put into a sword. Wow, how do we make that happen? So what this is, is literally using his cremains and actually diffusing some of the primarily phosphorus, because that's what will diffuse in. Everybody thinks it's carbon. But the whole point of cremains is to get rid of the carbon, all of that literally turns into carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and goes out the chimney at the crematorium. So you're left with ash, which is not carbon, which is not carbon fascinating by by definition. And so I did multiple bullets of Damascus, laminated steel and diffused the phosphorus into that steel and etc, etc. And now have a what we call Memorial blade that is made out of this gentleman's father, which is kind of weird, but dang cool. That is

Justin Lewis: 19:01

super cool. All you need to do now is go get some holy water and just bathed and holy water. And that thing is like ready to kill vampires are

Stan: 19:11

actually a lot of cool things you do with that. I mean, the process that we described, I imagine could be used for if you're wanting to go down a necromantic path, you could totally have something along those lines. You could do something along the lines of it being blessed. You could have all sorts of different cool stuff. But while yeah, a lot of times we're bringing a little bit more back down to earth being like okay, well, we see your magic and say done. You can totally do stuff that is that seems kind of magical. I'm putting a meteorite into a knife. It's not a lot of meteorite because meter it is kind of expensive. But that's totally something that I'm doing and I'm only binding it with materials that are hundreds of years old, but it's still very special. Very special. Very cool. I can't claim that it's magical. I'm sure some people would think that that's really cool and but you can't claim claim that but I can. Yeah, I don't think it has any special, it probably will not be the best performing knife out of that competition that we're doing. But you know, it's something that's really cool. Where if you could imagine magic being a real thing, you could totally apply rules to that in your game.

Matt: 20:20

Yeah, I mean, we're talking about power components a little bit before. And, you know, taking the bare pelt or taking the bones of a barrier to carburizing your steel. With that is something that was done. And we could really get into a lot of the ritual of, of blacksmithing with the time and the quench and things of that nature. Well, that's, that's a heck of a rabbit hole to history,

Stan: 20:46

a history lesson to go down into? Yeah,

Justin Lewis: 20:49

I gotta say, I have just enjoyed our time together so much. Unfortunately, we have come to the end, we've been here actually longer than I planned.

Matt: 20:57

I think I warned you.

Justin Lewis: 20:59

I mean, I gotta say I was I was drawn in a little bit too much myself. But before we give our listener, just just one last tip from each of you, on blacksmiths in the end, or dtrpg. How can people connect with Wasatch Forge, see what's going on here and just get more involved if they're interested?

Matt: 21:18

So the you know, as was mentioned before, one of the big things that we do is we are a teaching school, and we've got the Wasatch forge discord, you can find it on my web page. And there's multiple different little tiers for that, where you will have access to us as professional blacksmiths, if you have any questions like that, that is the best place to reach out to us. And of course, if you're in town, take a class. It is. We've been doing this for we just had our 10 year anniversary. Oh, wow. We've been doing it forever. And it's it's remarkable to watch these individuals who have no craft. Go, wait a minute. I can make anything. Yeah, yeah, you can basically make anything. Steel's on Yeah, absolutely. And now you have steel as one of the spokes on your Craftsman his wheel. A lot of people have leather, a lot of people have woodwork. But as soon as you're like, wait a minute, I can forge all of my own tools. I can forge all of my own metal components. It's like, wait a minute, I can, I can make that six board chest with real traditional hinges and things. It's remarkably fulfilling. To be able to go I made this for you. Oh, wow. What do you mean, you made that? I put it in my Forge. I heated it up. And I shaped this for you. It's uniquely fulfilling to have an heirloom that you give somebody. Wow.

Justin Lewis: 22:53

Dang, that is awesome. Yeah. So if you want any more information, check out the website. We'll put the links in the show notes. Also, we have encouraged Matt to make some sort of online offering for those of you outside the Utah so continually check the website and,

Matt: 23:06

and reach out to us Yes, because I would love to be able to service that need. Because if you know, back at the very beginning of the episode, my first experience with the blacksmithing community was a good old boys club. And it drove me crazy, it broke my heart to one degree or another. And so I try my absolute best to not have any barrier to entry. That's why I'm talking about a light duty anvil and three hammers and a friend. Go get to work.

Justin Lewis: 23:43

I love it. I love it. All right, let's finish up with one last tip for blacksmithing or smithing. Really, because it can be anything goldsmithing and all the other things in a TTRPG from both of you. Oh, that's

Stan: 23:57

a that's a hard one. Okay, handed off to me. So you can think here.

Justin Lewis: 24:00

It could just as in this is more important than a lot of things.

Stan: 24:05

And I think the big thing is I hate to you know, limit the players. But yeah, not all blacksmiths are going to be very available to do all of the things just because he's a blacksmith. doesn't mean he's gonna make your suit of armor doesn't mean he's gonna make your sword. He might have some pretty okay iron and he might be able to repair some fire equipment adds his limitations. So that's kind of its kind of where most of them are gonna be at, especially for your first few levels. Perfect.

Matt: 24:33

And I can't help but beat the drum of I would love to see the quest given by the blacksmiths. You want this suit of plate mill you want me to take this time? Great. I need this material. And I need these power components. make this happen for me bring the magic into the steel and into the craft. By accepting quests from blacksmiths I think that is a woefully underrated quest giver. I

Justin Lewis: 25:02

love that. I love that. I think one of the biggest themes of today's episode really and something that you as the DM should take away is that at its core, the blacksmith is a crafts men or crafts woman. They are dedicated to making things and they love their craft more often than not, otherwise they wouldn't do it right. I'm guessing it's somewhat tiring. Yeah, absolutely.

Matt: 25:25

And so one of the things that I didn't really mention is that all of these additional pieces of equipment, add years to my craft, because my wrist, my elbow, my shoulder, only has so many hammer swings in it. So you, you know, we were talking about you have to have an apprentice. And that's why No, because that's somebody else's pieces of art that you get to wear out as well.

Justin Lewis: 25:50

Absolutely. So remember with everything you do that the blacksmith or the Smith in any situation in your game, that are craftsmen. We really appreciate you just taking your time and and showing us and letting us have this really cool experience in our pleasure. I can't speak for Caden. But I know I had tons of fun here. Kane if you want to say anything else as well, you can well I had no fun.

Cayden: 26:13

No, thanks. Thanks for showing me around before Justin gotten here. I showed up a little bit early. Yeah, I had a blast watching you guys actually work?

Matt: 26:21

Yeah. Well, we're here. We're gonna put stuff in the fire. Yeah.

Justin Lewis: 26:25

Excellent. Well, we'll let you get back to it. Listener. We'll be back next week with another awesome episode. Until then, let's go ahead and roll initiative.