Selects: Blacksmiths? You got that right!

Blacksmiths? You got that right. Learn all about this age old occupation in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:09Josh Clark?

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• 1:52Josh Clark?

  So I wasn't very familiar with this topic, but I found very quickly that I really enjoyed researching it and talking about it, too. And I came to admire all the blacksmiths on the videos that I watched. It's just kind of mesmerizing. And if you think about it, there aren't many things that people do today that are essentially unchanged over the last few thousand years, which is pretty cool. So I hope you like listening to this one as much as I liked researching it.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there and Jerry's out there somewhere and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Did I tell you about my new hobby that started yesterday?

• 2:51Josh Clark?

  I'll bet I can guess.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Watching blacksmithing videos.

• 2:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing, man. Like, I don't have any desire to blacksmith myself.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  I just like watching these videos. There's something really amazing about them.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's one, I don't know if you watched, it's on YouTube. It's called Blacksmithing: Forging a Bearded Axe.

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  No, I didn't see that one.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 3:14Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  It just reminds me of the, the sort of the lulling of that show, How It's Made. But I watched this video and, and most of them have some sped up stuff, too, because blacksmithing takes so long.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  That a 30 minute video, I mean, half of it is in fast motion. So it just goes to show you, and it's edited.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  And they always do, they always put it to yakety sacks.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  But it's just crazy, though, when you see how long it takes to make this one axe and then you think about outfitting armies.

• 3:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  It, it just feels like, was every other person a blacksmith? And did they just do that 24/7?

• 3:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I get the impression, there was a Walt Whitman poem about blacksmiths and he was basically like, they were the most important people in any community. Everybody loved them. They owed no one anything because they never had any debts because they were so vital that anything they did probably was worth 10 times what anybody else could do for them. They seem to have been pretty amazing people on the whole.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and we'll talk about this more, but when you think about just nails.

• 4:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And how many nails built this country and the world?

• 4:28Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Those nails had to be forged.

• 4:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, when you watch some of these blacksmith videos and like you're saying, when you do see how long it takes to just make an average thing that you would like buy in a second these days, it really gives you an appreciation for just what a sea change the Industrial Revolution was.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, amazing.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  Where this was automated and, and made, like converted to mass production. It just could have never happened before. And it didn't happen before, but it was up to the lone blacksmith to, to equip their entire communities with all this stuff. It's pretty cool.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  So are we gonna do blacksmith history first or the metal history first?

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  We'll do blacksmith history first, I think.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Okay, I guess we gotta look at the name, because if you, if you look at other smiths, they were all a little more specific. They were called bronze smiths. Blacksmiths are not called iron smiths.

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  No.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Even though they work with iron and most of the other smiths were named for the metal that they work with.

• 5:30Josh Clark?

  Silver smith, that's a good one.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, God, good silver smith.

• 5:34Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  It's worth their weight and it's gold.

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  Silver. Don't bring up gold to those guys.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no. But black comes from, well, we're not positive, but one explanation is blacksmith comes from the hammer scale or these scales. If you're watching these videos, you'll see when they're hammering this stuff, these little tiny chunky, thin, not chunky, actually, just little chunks of thin scales are falling off.

• 5:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Every time they hammer it, that's the hammer scale. And it is black and your hands get all black and your face gets black. Or it might've just been because iron is black.

• 6:07Josh Clark?

  Typically, it's, it's pretty dark. It's dark enough, especially wrought iron. It's, it tends to be black. So that's why they think, one of those two reasons is where blacksmith came from. And the, the name smith itself, we actually talk about this in our book that's coming out, you know, in the episode on Keeping Up with the Joneses.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right.

• 6:26Josh Clark?

  We talked about.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  You mean the chapter?

• 6:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, the chapter. In Keeping, in our book, we talk about how Keeping Up with the Joneses could have very easily been Keeping Up with the Smiths because the two names are so prevalent. And in fact, Smith is the most prevalent name in the United States and it's all derived from blacksmiths and just how many blacksmiths there were because every community needed one. And then if you were in a large enough community, you had multiple blacksmiths all working because one blacksmith had to do all this work to supply this one community with all this stuff. And they could only keep up with a certain size community, you know?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if you had a onsite thing that you were doing, you had a blacksmith with you. If you were out at war in battle, you had blacksmiths there because not only do they create these weapons and the armor, but they have to fix stuff. You know, after a big, long day of battle, you go in and trade in your sword and say, fix this thing.

• 7:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And those smithies gotta be working around the clock.

• 7:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they have like apprentices and help and all that kind of stuff. But, but yeah, I mean, like the, you get the impression that the, the community could come to a standstill when the, the blacksmith was sick for a week or something.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there were blacksmiths doing all kinds of work all over the place, so many that they eventually, and this makes sense, would become a little more specialized. And horses were a big deal back then. We still love horses today, but back then they did a lot more for humanity. They just look pretty and run around in fields now.

• 7:58Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  So they had to make horseshoes and it was a very specialized set of equipment for making horseshoes as opposed to just regular blacksmithing. So that was a very busy job. They were called farriers. And even when blacksmithing as a whole kind of went away, there were still farriers working because it's not like a shoe store where one size fits all, well, shoe stores aren't one size fits all, but.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  It's very specific to your foot size or your hoof size as a horse.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  So you can't just throw any old shoe that's close enough on there. You gotta make them à la carte, basically, made to order, I think in the fashion world. What's it called?

• 8:37Josh Clark?

  Pretaporte?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Bespoke.

• 8:39Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, that's the opposite of pretaporte.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  And so farriers continue to work for years and years and years. And I think there are people that still do farrier work today, aren't they?

• 8:49Josh Clark?

  Sure, sure, just to show off, sure. But I guess you kind of spoiled the ending. Blacksmiths aren't really around much today because of industrialization. But they were.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  They're around though. They're in Brooklyn, New York, I guarantee it.

• 9:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they are. For about 2,000 years, they were extraordinarily important to society. But, you know, society was around for a very long time before blacksmiths came around. So there's this really important window in the historical development of human society that blacksmiths, you know, existed in. Prior to that, you know, we had tools, but they were mostly made of stone. And then at some point, somebody said, hey, if you put tin and copper together, you can come up with a stuff called bronze.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Boom.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  And it's pretty great. You can make some pretty neat things with it. And one of the things about bronze is that it has a fairly low melting point, something like 1,742 degrees Fahrenheit, 950 degrees Celsius, which you could get a hot campfire to that temperature to melt, melt into molten liquid bronze, which means that you can create casts and molds and you can pour that molten bronze into it. And as it cools, you've got a handy sword that you can make over and over and over again. So bronze fulfilled this purpose for tools for many thousands of years. So much so that, and these metals were so important

• 10:18Josh Clark?

  that we go back and call these historical ages by the name of the metal tools that were being produced. So you got the bronze age, and then that was eventually followed by the iron age. And one thing that stuck out to me, Chuck, I hadn't realized before, is that you think of history as progressing, you know, constantly.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:38Josh Clark?

  But the bronze age, even though it was followed by the iron age, the iron age marked a period of cultural decline, where the bronze age, which had come previously, was a period of cultural blossoming. But for the first several centuries of the iron age, it was a step backwards. A lot of the classical or antiquity societies kind of crumbled at about the same time. They think possibly because of climate change or mass droughts and starvation, kind of like the Maya.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's not like the iron caused that, but iron, like really good bronze is probably superior to iron in a lot of ways. I think iron is a little softer. It might rust a little quicker.

• 11:20Josh Clark?

  It depends on what kind of iron you have, for sure.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Right, but the iron that they were using, basically, they started using, and you know, there's not like a demarcation line then. There is some overlap and no one knows exactly when the big switch happened. But it was cheaper and it was more readily available than bronze was. So they just started using iron, basically, and it surpassed bronze.

• 11:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the Greeks pin a semi-mythical group called the Chalobes, who supposedly were absorbed by the Hittites in Anatolia in Turkey, and that they were the ones who figured out how to mine iron. Because originally, there was iron stuff, like King Tut was found with a dagger made of iron. And it would have been even more highly prized than anything made of gold in his entire tomb, because iron was so rare at that time.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:11Josh Clark?

  Because the only source of iron on earth, as far as humans knew, came in the form of meteorites.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:17Josh Clark?

  So you had to find a meteorite above ground.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  To find your deposit of iron. So making a dagger out of that would have been, that would have been a very special dagger. And then eventually, they say, the Chalobes figured out, no, there's actually iron like in rock in the earth. And people started figuring out that you could take that rock and heat it to some pretty high temperatures, considering, and then hammer it. And you can hammer the other stuff out, the ore out, or hammer the iron from the ore, and you have something approaching what you would consider iron, something called bloom.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they just couldn't get the fire hot enough, basically, at first to get to the iron point.

• 12:55Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  But they could make it hot enough to get to the bloom, and they would put it in an oven known as a bloomery, and it would kind of just roast out those impurities. It had iron, it had slag, which is sort of a glass-like byproduct that you, you know, it's so funny that you can just hammer this stuff out. But bloom would eventually, when they, I mean, it worked okay. You could heat it up, you could hammer it, and it would get a lot of the slag out. And it was, it was useful enough for tools. But when the blast furnace came around, when you really got larger furnaces and hotter fires that incorporated bellows to really get that oxygen in there and get it super, super hot, that eventually allowed them to get that ore to pig iron.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  And pig iron was a pretty big advancement, because from pig iron, you could hammer that slag out to eventually get to wrought iron.

• 13:49Josh Clark?

  Right. I want to give a shout out to Harold the Smith, H A R A L D. He wrote an intro to iron smelting that talks all about making bloom himself with pictures. It's pretty cool. It's worth checking out, for sure.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  And the Grabster helped us with this one, right?

• 14:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, big time. Thank you, Grabster. But with pig iron, that was like, it was, like you said, like a pretty big change in that, like, you could suddenly make much purer iron, because we had a much hotter furnace that we were working with. And the thing about pig iron is, in very much the same way as bloom, you've got to hammer out those impurities. And so to make pig iron into wrought iron, you would take this pig iron, which is pretty impure, heat it up and hammer it with a sledgehammer over and over again. Heat it, hammer it, heat it, hammer it. Very much the same process as bloom, but this at higher temperatures and producing a much purer iron. And then eventually, you would have wrought iron.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  And they say that they figured out how to use water hammers, like water-powered hammers.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  In part because of the plague of the 13th century. It killed so many people that they didn't have the human power any longer that they needed to hammer pig iron. So it made people devise water hammers.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, water hammers, steam hammers. You know, if you look at these videos today, these people in their shops and their sheds that they have behind their house have, it looks like hydraulics, I guess.

• 15:19Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  That are pounding this stuff. And at first, when I saw that, I was disappointed. I was like, oh, man. But that's just the big initial work. Like, there's still tons of hammer work by hand,

• 15:32Speaker 02

  because there are many, many, there's a lot more to it than that initial hammering.

• 15:35Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  To get to the wrought iron stage. But I was, at first, I was kind of like, oh, man, what? Well, they don't use, they don't like swing a hammer anymore.

• 15:42Josh Clark?

  Right, no. No, they're definitely.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  They're very smart. They don't need to swing a hammer.

• 15:46Josh Clark?

  Right, it's called work smarter, not harder. But there are traditionalists who are like, no, you, I want to use a hammer. But so the different types of irons that humans have come up with over the ages, and this is a really important point, I think we should point out here, Chuck, like the blacksmithing and all of the information and knowledge and like ways of working with different types of iron, different techniques, and actually coming up with different types of iron. All of that started with those people who figured out that you could take rock from the earth and hammer the iron out of it.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  And just more and more people over the ages, as it spread and continued to be around for hundreds and then thousands of years, all the people working with metal contributed to that body of knowledge.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:34Josh Clark?

  And so that's, I think, one of the things that's so appealing about blacksmithing, is that it is a genuine human technology that was created by humanity, you know? Not just like a couple of people who had a really good idea. It was this, this group of humans, countless humans, all working together over thousands of years, contributing to one another's knowledge to create this body of knowledge. And I think that's what makes it so neat to me.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  So cool. And like such a brute way of doing it, you know? Those, the finesse comes in, for sure. And maybe that's what I like about it, is both. Like, it's swinging the heavy hammer, but it's also doing this really beautiful finesse work later on in the project.

• 17:18Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Really cool. So if we're gonna, well, maybe let's take a break and then talk about the types of iron. How about that?

• 17:24Josh Clark?

  Let's.

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• 21:12Speaker 02

  All right. We promised you talk of iron types. There's iron maiden.

• 21:17Josh Clark?

  Sure. There's, um, take your iron supplement.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 21:23Josh Clark?

  Uh, what else?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  There's really just iron maiden.

• 21:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  That's all. That's all you need to know. Iron types, they're based on the carbon content of the iron. So if you hear wrought iron, you might just think that's like the, the cool thing that your, your staircase spindles are made out of.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  They are not made of wrought iron.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  They aren't made out of wrought iron anymore, at least. They used to be back in the day.

• 21:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  But this is also called bar iron. It's about 0.8, I'm sorry, 0.08% or less, uh, carbon. And this is sort of, from what I saw, um, back in the day, just the main iron that they would mainly use for the most part.

• 22:05Josh Clark?

  The wrought iron?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, and the difference, the big difference between wrought iron and steel is that wrought iron has, um, silicates in it that kind of ends up as like these fibrous filaments that get hammered into order, basically, by the blacksmith, from pig iron, which, which gives it a certain structure. With steel, steel, um, like you said, all types of iron are basically based on their carbon content. Steel has a much higher carbon content than wrought iron does. And so it doesn't need to be hammered like wrought iron does because it doesn't have these iron silicates that need to be arranged just so, or else it'll make it brittle.

• 22:47Josh Clark?

  Um, instead, because of this carbon, um, in it, it forms this kind of crystalline structure in the iron that makes it hard and durable, way, way harder and more durable than wrought iron. The problem is, is because of that, that durability and the strength and hardness, it makes it more difficult for a blacksmith to work with down the line than it does wrought iron. But it's also a much more effective, say, battle axe than a wrought iron battle axe.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like you said, it's not what we use on our staircases and wrought iron these days. It's not wrought iron and the production of that in like a big way went out in, you know, the 20th, 20th century, pretty much altogether.

• 23:28Josh Clark?

  Went out with disco.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, I wish it lasted until the 70s.

• 23:32Josh Clark?

  So one thing we should say also to Chuck is we tend to think of steel as like a modern invention. Steel was perfected in, in the modern times. It was like basically the thing that kicked off the Industrial Revolution, if I remember from our robber barons episode. But that's not to say that people weren't experimenting with steel long before that. It was just the scientific understanding of it was lacking. Instead, that was replaced by an intuitive understanding among blacksmiths of, you know, what fuel did what to steel, what to iron to make it stronger. They weren't saying like, oh, if I use charcoal or coke, it's going to make this a, um, a better steel than say, you know, um, coal or something like that.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  That's right. Uh, then you've also got cast iron. If you have a, a nice cast iron collection in your kitchen, it's going to be 2% carbon or more. Uh, it's very brittle, so you're not going to hammer cast iron.

• 24:27Josh Clark?

  No.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Uh, it is formed into shape by casting it. That's why it's called cast iron. And use a mold while it's molten and pour it in there. And it's a great thing to cook with.

• 24:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And we would have never been able to make anything out of cast iron until those, those bellows were introduced to the forge to, to really bring that temperature up because iron has a very high melting point.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. If you're going to pour it, it's got to be super, super hot. And we'll get to these temperatures and the different kinds of hot later on, which is very interesting stuff.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So we've got like, the blacksmiths are, are working with this, they're figuring out that if you add like carbon or if you do this, like if you, if you, um, heat the, the iron to a certain temperature, um, it's, and, and then take it off and hammer it, and then let it cool on its own, it's going to form one type of, of finished product. If you, um, do something that was called quenching it, which is cooling it down in a bucket of water and usually mineral oil these days, it's going to cool differently. So its structure is going to form differently. And again, they didn't, they were passing this knowledge on, but they weren't using terms necessarily that we were using. But what's interesting to me is we use terms that they came up with, like quenching and slag and scale and that kind of stuff.

• 25:38Josh Clark?

  Like, those are all still very much around and it makes sense still, even after having made the transition to industrialization. They still use words very much like that, if not those same words.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Now, do you mean quenching as in, uh, how a human might quench their own thirst?

• 25:53Josh Clark?

  Um, kind of, kind of. But rather than turning up a bucket of water and mineral oil, you would plunge the iron, the hot iron, into that bucket of mineral oil and water.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  That's right. Very cool stuff.

• 26:07Josh Clark?

  Were you making a joke that I just missed? A reference?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:12Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  No, I didn't know, I didn't know if you were saying the etymology of the word quench was from smithing.

• 26:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, maybe.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  And that when we quench our thirst, it's taken from that.

• 26:21Josh Clark?

  Maybe. It's possible.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  I mean, smite, they think that the word smite and smith are from the same word.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Right, because smite means very biblical meaning, or not meaning, but they use a lot in Bible times to hit something, right?

• 26:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, to strike it, to smite something.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  That's right, and that's what a smith does.

• 26:41Josh Clark?

  Smithies.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Should we talk about tools?

• 26:43Josh Clark?

  I think so. One of the cool things about blacksmiths is that they, when you get good, you just start making your own tools.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Ah, man.

• 26:51Josh Clark?

  Isn't that neat?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Tools to make tools.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  You gotta start somewhere though.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you gotta lay down a little bit of money first. But I saw, I saw this one blog post by a blacksmith who's like, "Look, if you're just starting out, just, you know, get the bare minimum stuff, get some used things, see if you like it first, and then eventually, when you get good, you can invest a little money, then you can just start making your own stuff."

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Right, which is very cool. I did see there was one YouTube video that was like how to get going for less than a hundred bucks.

• 27:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, I'll bet, yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Some very basic stuff.

• 27:18Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  So, if you're gonna be a smithy, you're gonna need some things. It might be less than a hundred dollars to start. You're gonna need a forge, which is the heat. There are different kinds, you know, the one that I saw, the axe, this is sort of a, I don't know if it's old timey, but it was actually using coal. And that's very appealing to the eye if you're watching on YouTube. It seems like the backyard smithy these days uses a gas-powered oven, a gas-powered forge.

• 27:49Josh Clark?

  Were they using coal or charcoal? Because there's a big difference.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  It was coal.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  Okay. I didn't know much about charcoal until this, we'll talk about it later.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  But it seems like these days, the gas-powered forge is kind of what you use. They're not very big. It's sort of like a double size of a breadbox, because when you're making something, you're not making, you're not building a car out of iron. You're making a tool, you're making a dagger or an axe head. Like, they're all kind of small, something you can just sort of stick in there. You're gonna have your anvil, very key, very key piece.

• 28:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  You're gonna have a lot of other tools for like the more finesse work, grinders and files and stuff like that. And you're gonna have a nice collection of hammers, of course.

• 28:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you definitely, there's different hammers for different things. And like we said, you know, hammering pig iron and wrought iron, people don't do that these days, so you're not using a sledgehammer, and so you're using like a little more finesse and precision to, to kind of strike what's called the work piece, whatever you're working on is called the work piece. That's one thing that really stood out to me, watching some of these blacksmith videos, is like, these guys do not miss. At least if you're at the level where you're doing close-ups of your work on video and posting them to YouTube, you don't, your hammer's not missing. It's going exactly where you want it to every time, which is pretty cool, too.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  It is, but I also, and this is not to knock the smithies, it seems like a bit of a forgiving craft and art.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  So where you can sort of like, if something didn't, if you did strike in it and it kind of did something you didn't quite like, you can change that.

• 29:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  You can re-strike it, you can reheat it. But I'm sure there's a lot of trial and error involved when you're first getting started, you know?

• 29:34Josh Clark?

  First, yeah, I'm sure, too. And then, you know, as you keep advancing, you're figuring out new techniques and all that kind of thing. But like you were saying, the anvil is, it's, it's pretty neat. Like, I didn't realize all the different parts to it. Like, anybody who's seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon can recognize an anvil and tell you, probably draw one from memory, and you'd probably be pretty close. And it's a pretty accurate image of what an anvil does. But all the little different details, from like the point on the front to the feet of it, all of those serve this, this kind of group of purposes that come up pretty frequently in blacksmithing.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the anvil is super heavy. It is very hard, obviously. You don't want the anvil itself to be dented or start falling apart when you're swinging this heavy hammer on metal on this thing, or on iron. And so, you also want it so it doesn't like just absorb the hammer blows, too. So it's gotta be the right amount of hardness. Can't be breaking, can't be shattering. You've got a horn on the front, you talked about the pointy thing.

• 30:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  That's what's on the front of it. And usually, in all the anvils I saw, when I looked them up to buy one, just to have, although they were way too expensive, it's got a little dip right before the horn, where the horn juts out. So the horn isn't...

• 30:52Josh Clark?

  Like a step?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, the horn isn't exactly level with the regular base of the anvil. It's down just a bit. And that, and it's not by accident. That's very much, one of the big uses of the horn is that little step down.

• 31:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's, that's one of the neat things about anvils, is like, each little detail has a purpose, a larger purpose that's hidden until you understand what you're looking at or what it does.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  What about those holes?

• 31:14Josh Clark?

  There's like two holes in every anvil, pretty much. One's round and one's square. And the round one is called a pritchel hole. And it is basically a hole so that you can punch holes into whatever work piece you're working on. I saw that if you're punching a hole, you actually want to punch it on the face of the anvil, which is the top. Punch it on one side, almost all the way through, flip it over, punch it on the other side, almost all the way through, and then you move it to the pritchel hole. And then that's when you widen it to the shape you want. So it just allows you to punch a hole all the way through without harming the face of your anvil, really.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was one of my favorite parts of the video I saw, because that was where the axe head hole went, where you would, you know, put the axe handle.

• 31:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  So I was like, "How are you gonna do that?" And just to see it happen in front of your eyes, it was, it was pretty awesome.

• 32:05Josh Clark?

  And then what's the other hole, the hardy hole?

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the hardy hole is actually square.

• 32:10Josh Clark?

  With the D?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Yes, H-A-R-D-Y.

• 32:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yes, it's not hearty, because it's very tough, although it is very tough.

• 32:17Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  But it is a square hole, which sounds counterintuitive, but it's not. And you can put tools in there that allow you, like, you might stick something in there and then use that to then bend the hot iron around to make different bends and cuts and shapes and things.

• 32:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw this one tool in a couple of different videos that fit into the hardy hole. The hardy hole's almost like a Dremel tool, right? So like, there's all these different things you can put in that, that square...

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:45Josh Clark?

  ...hole, that hole in place. But the difference between them is what, what tool is attached to that square peg.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 32:52Josh Clark?

  Square peg, square, square peg.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 32:56Josh Clark?

  And one of the ones that I saw looked like a tuning fork. It's like two rods that are very close together.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I saw that.

• 33:01Josh Clark?

  And you could put like a hot work piece in between them, and then, you know, bend it, so you can make like an S-hook. It's used for like very tight, creating very tight curves in the work piece.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very, very cool.

• 33:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  You gotta have your tongs. Oh, and I think we should have mentioned, too, the anvil, it's not, it doesn't have a sharp edge, like the edge all the way around the, the main work base of the anvil is a little bit round. Because, you know, if you've got something super sharp and you're hammering away, it's gonna make little creases in the iron. You don't want that.

• 33:33Josh Clark?

  I think the step is the sharpest edge of the whole thing, between the horn and the face, the top of it.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's where you need it to be sharp.

• 33:42Josh Clark?

  One other thing I saw that, that I thought was really interesting is, when you buy an anvil, you want to actually fit it to a block of wood. And traditionally, people will use like a good tree stump of wood that doesn't split very easily. And like, man, you, you fasten it to that wood, that tree stump, and then you bury the tree stump whenever you can, about three feet into the ground, so that the, the anvil becomes part of the tree stump, becomes part of the ground.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:12Josh Clark?

  So it distributes that extra energy that, that gets lost, rather than back up at you, down into the ground where it's absorbed, which I just find absolutely fascinating. But you, you make it so well fastened to the stump, that the stump, the anvil, become basically one.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the anvil is essentially connected to the earth at that point.

• 34:31Josh Clark?

  So nice. This just, man, I just keep thinking of Thor and Led Zeppelin.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  I know, all the things.

• 34:39Josh Clark?

  J.R.R. Tolkien.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. The smithy, you gotta have those tongs, and these are not like grill tongs that you have on your back porch. These are those big, thick metal, iron, they look like, like, like gussied up nail clippers almost. And that's what you're gonna use to put stuff in the, in the forge, in that fire, pull it out. It's funny here, Ed says that pretty much no one wears gloves. I didn't see that. I saw plenty of videos with people wearing gloves.

• 35:10Josh Clark?

  I saw both.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  And I saw some where they didn't. I guess sometimes, if you're working really near the heat, you might want your gloves on, but you might also want to have the hand feel during that finesse work.

• 35:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because, and I think it's worth saying one more time, that, that forge, where the fire is, it's, I mean, it is very small. I saw as little as like a six by six inch, like little area of extraordinarily intense heat. So it's a small area of heat, but the heat that is there is so hot, it can turn iron white-hot. So, yeah, you want to not get too close to it. And even when you're wearing tongs, it's smart to wear gloves, from what I saw.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we, we never really talk much about the fuel. And I said, these days, they, they power it with gas mainly. Back in the day, back in the day, they would use charcoal, that was the first thing. And charcoal, apparently, if you're, you know, gonna be a Brooklyn hipster, you want to work with charcoal, because that is the superior product and the superior, superior fuel. But it's really messy.

• 36:10Josh Clark?

  It's very wasteful.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  It's very wasteful, it's expensive, a lot of, it takes a lot of wood to make charcoal. So then coal comes rolling around, and there was a lot of coal, and it was super cheap. And they had to kind of rebuild their forges. But coal, even though it has some impurities like sulfur and stuff in there, they basically kind of made the big switch to coal at a certain point in time.

• 36:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and, and even better is if you can get your hands on coke, which is a derivative of coal, just like charcoal is a derivative of wood. It's just wood with the sap and the water burned out, so it's a really energy-dense form of it. Coke is the same thing with coal, it's got the impurities generally burned out, so it's a pure, energy-dense form of, of coal. But both of them play a really important role, in that they produce really high temperatures, but they also introduce a lot of that carbon that gets absorbed into the iron at those high temperatures, which produces better, harder, stronger steel.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Can you cook with that stuff? Can you cook with coke?

• 37:10Josh Clark?

  Cook with coke? I don't know.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Like in a, in a kamata, like egg type cooker?

• 37:16Josh Clark?

  I don't know. That's one thing that I saw in one of these blog posts about different types of fuel. I think it was like the no BS, but they spell out the word BS, which I'm not gonna say here. Cause they're, they're blacksmiths. They, the, the no BS guide to different kinds of fuel. They said, one of the things to consider is what kind of environmental impact is your fuel having?

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:37Josh Clark?

  So that's a good question. If you're like, I'm not sure I should be cooking with this. Don't forget, you're going to be in a small enclosed room that your blacksmith shop with that same stuff. And you probably have a pretty high efficiency chimney, but some of it's still coming back. So that's definitely a consideration to think of. Your own health and the health of mother earth, who is absorbing the blows from your anvil.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  That's right. You do need good ventilation in your workshop, eye protection. Sometimes if you really want to kick it old school, you might have one of those leather aprons, like Leatherface. And then your quench, you know, we talked about quenching. It's called a quench or a quench bucket. And that is the bucket with the water. And like you said, sometimes mineral oil these days, where you'll plunge it in there, just like on TV and in movies, when it makes that great steamy sound and, and the steam rises everywhere. And they pull out a beautiful battle axe or longsword.

• 38:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Apparently the, so it's not that surprising when you consider Samurai, but the Japanese are really, really good at creating high carbon steel blades.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:42Josh Clark?

  And there is one guy named Goro, G O R O, who is like, well, widely considered the greatest Japanese swordsmith of all time from back in the 13th century.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  So he can throw together a katana, no problem?

• 38:54Josh Clark?

  No problem.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 38:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  All right. We're gonna take a break and talk a little bit about, and get quite a bit wrong, probably about techniques right after this.

• 39:26Josh Clark?

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• 39:49Josh Clark?

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• 40:05Speaker 02

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• 40:29Speaker 02

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• 40:36Josh Clark?

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• 40:50Speaker 02

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• 40:55Josh Clark?

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• 41:17Speaker 02

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• 41:36Josh Clark?

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• 41:59Speaker 02

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• 42:23Josh Clark?

  That's pretty awesome. And smart downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 42:53Josh Clark?

  All right. Let the parade of misinformation begin.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  You know, these worry me more than other episodes that we do, when it's something very technical and very specific.

• 43:04Josh Clark?

  Cause these guys make battle axes.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's, anytime it's a very specific craft or something that you haven't done, like we haven't done.

• 43:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  You can research it and watch videos and do your best, but until you've actually done it, you, you can't get it a hundred percent right. So.

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  I will say though, the videos help tremendously.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 43:22Josh Clark?

  If like, this is even remotely interesting to you, and hopefully it is if you're, you know, this many minutes, 33 minutes or so into this podcast, that, that it is, go watch some videos. There's a bunch of them on there. And I think you're gonna be like, oh, okay, I get what they were saying. Oh, that makes sense.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Forging a bearded, uh, forging a bearded axe. That's the one.

• 43:42Josh Clark?

  I've got one, Black Bear Forge.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 43:45Josh Clark?

  This giant man with a giant beard and a tiny little leather cap.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  And his name is Black Bear Forge?

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  Adorable. Yeah. He, he, the video I watched is called Scarf Theory and Making Chain, which we'll talk about that in a minute. But it's just amazing.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  So cool. And like you said, I don't want to do it. I want to have a friend that does it. I want to come over to their house.

• 44:09Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  And watch them do it.

• 44:11Josh Clark?

  Like, let's see if we can get John Hodgman into it.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, Hodgman. Although, he's got, he's got very strong forearms.

• 44:18Josh Clark?

  He does, freakishly, like Popeye.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Uh, all right. So here's some of the techniques. What you're doing, if you're a smithy, is you are shaping hot metal. That's what it comes down to. And this is where the temperature of the metal comes, uh, becomes really important, because certain metals have to be at certain temperatures to do certain things. These days, like I said, if you've got your, your gas powered forge, you can set that baby on whatever exact temperature you want. And it's not quite as, um, it's still very impressive, but back in the day when they were using coal and charcoal, there was, I feel like much more intuition and trial and error, and actually looking at the color, the color temperature, because the metal will turn different colors at different temperatures.

• 45:06Josh Clark?

  Right. So there's white hot, orange hot, yellow hot, red hot, different kinds of gradients of orange and yellow and white, too. There's glowing white, which is the hottest.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Those just, those aren't just expressions people say.

• 45:19Josh Clark?

  No. And that's, again, that's the etymology, etymology of, of, of blacksmith lingo, basically, that has made it into.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  White hot.

• 45:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Like.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Red hot.

• 45:32Josh Clark?

  Those abs of yours are white hot. Oh, wait, that was a different, different episode.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's all right.

• 45:38Josh Clark?

  So, um, and, but apparently, blue, white hot is the, the hottest of all, but you don't typically see that in blacksmithing. White hot is, is about as hot as you get.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  And how hot is white hot?

• 45:50Josh Clark?

  White hot, from what I saw, is 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit, which is super high in Celsius.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, yellow, I think is just below that.

• 46:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  And then you've got orange.

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  And then you've got lame-o red hot, which is.

• 46:06Josh Clark?

  So lame.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Which is only fourteen hundred degrees.

• 46:09Josh Clark?

  Seven hundred and sixty Celsius.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  And you can't do anything with red hot.

• 46:13Josh Clark?

  You can do some very, like, very limited stuff, but at that point, the iron is, is, I mean, it'll probably bend a little bit. I saw, um, uh, good old Black Bear Forge was making some chain with what looked to be red hot, um, iron at the time.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:29Josh Clark?

  And he was bending it pretty good, but I, I mean, I'm not the best judge of color.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  He was making chain?

• 46:35Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:36Josh Clark?

  Well, I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna wait any longer. This guy made a chain, a length of chain. Perfect. Each length was exactly the size of the last.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 46:45Josh Clark?

  He was making them like in threes and then connecting those threes to other threes. And he was using the hor- Chuck, are you?

• 46:52Speaker 02

  It's just.

• 46:52Josh Clark?

  Are you about to?

• 46:53Speaker 02

  It's so satisfying.

• 46:54Josh Clark?

  Climax or something?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  No, it's just so satisfying. It, it touches these, uh, parts of my body, you know, it's not sexual at all.

• 47:02Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying?

• 47:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, I know what you're saying. It's, um, it's, it's, I know exactly what you mean.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Although I haven't seen it, you never know what might happen.

• 47:09Josh Clark?

  Right. But this guy, so you know the horn of the anvil, right?

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Oh, do I.

• 47:13Josh Clark?

  He would make like, he would, he would bend the chain initially on kind of like a thick, about the middle part of the horn. And then he would bend it even further, moving it a little up the horn. And this guy just so expertly put it exactly where he needed it to be. I think one of the things I like about Black Bear Forge guy is that he doesn't seem the least bit pretentious. I'm pretty sure he lives in Minnesota.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Nah.

• 47:35Josh Clark?

  Uh, he's, he's not wearing his little leather cap ironically, like, he just, he seems very helpful.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  He was born in that cap.

• 47:42Josh Clark?

  Videos to help. Yeah, I think, I think you might be right. And with a white beard. I think he was born with a white beard as well.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Well, when you watch this, uh, bearded axe thing, what this guy does is he starts with a block of iron. And then eventually makes an axe head, but he's hammering this thing out. He's using this little rolling tool and hammering that as he's kind of rolling it forward. And it's almost like, it kind of reminded me of baking, like the way you would use a rolling pin to smooth out dough. And then when it came time to actually make the, the sharp part, I guess what he was doing was forge welding. And we're kind of jumping around, but this is one of the techniques, and it's also called fire welding. And that's when you combine different grades of iron and steel and you're joining these things together and multiple shapes together.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  I think that's what was going on because what he did, he had this axe head and the, the sharp part, he split. And I was like, well, dude, what kind of an axe is that? That's crazy looking. I thought he messed up. But then he put some other kind of metal in between and would use this. And from what I gathered, it's, uh, where is it? Flux? Is that what it is?

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  Flux, yeah, like sand. Did it look like sand?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Well, it was in a bottle and it looked like a little sandy chemical, so I guess that's what it was. And he would heat it up and then spray this stuff on it and hammer it together, heat it up, spray some of this and hammer it until that metal becomes one and the really.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  You know, the super specific metal that he needed for the sharp axe blade was melded with the rest of that iron. So where you couldn't even tell, it was just like, they became one with one another.

• 49:21Josh Clark?

  He was probably reinforcing the axe head with a stronger, um, a stronger type of iron.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Totally, yeah.

• 49:30Josh Clark?

  Slightly different carbon content. And then the outside was a harder kind, so it resisted surface deformities. But the interior stuff was, was strength, was strong, so it resisted breaking. Probably, but he was making these two, one. I saw Black Bear Forge do the same thing with the chains. He was, he was using a scarf weld where you make, um, one end angled. And then you make the other end that it's going to join to angled in the opposite direction. So they kind of fit tightly together. And then he would heat it up and hammer it together and it just became one. But he used, um, flux as well. And from what I could tell, when you use flux like sand or borax, I think is, is something you can use.

• 50:12Josh Clark?

  It prevents that joint from oxidizing, which makes it a stronger, a stronger joint, a stronger seam rather than, uh, kind of a compromised seam.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was also interesting to see how, uh, this guy would, sometimes that block was out for quite a long time of hammering and shaping and hammering and shaping. And then it looked like when he got into the little more detailed work as it became an axe head, he would, he would put it in the fire. And he would turn around very quickly and start hammering. You could tell he wanted to do it very fast.

• 50:44Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  And he would hammer it for like ten seconds and then put it right back in the fire.

• 50:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  And then pull it out and hammer it really fast for ten seconds. So whatever he was doing at that point required a super, super, super hot piece of, uh, what do you call it? Ground piece?

• 50:57Josh Clark?

  Work piece?

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Work piece?

• 50:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But I mean, so most, most blacksmiths, you'll notice in their shops, they set the forge and the anvil up within just twisting distance.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:07Josh Clark?

  Like you're standing in one place, moving from one to the other so that you can lose as little heat as possible when you transfer it out of the fire.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  You don't walk across your shop.

• 51:15Josh Clark?

  No, you don't stop and like make a sandwich or anything.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Uh, there's also drawing, which is, uh, drawing that metal out into a longer, thinner shape. Uh, you might be shaping something into a rod or a block into a blade like I saw. And that's sort of, um, it's sort of lengthening it without flattening it out.

• 51:36Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Cause you can also flatten it. That's another thing. That's called peening.

• 51:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, there's also upsetting, which is the opposite of drawing where you shorten the length of iron or steel.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:49Josh Clark?

  Um, by hammering it. And that's what happens when you make a nail, which you want to talk about making nails here?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we kind of mentioned earlier, you know, the, the foundation. I mean, there were things that were built with dovetail joints and corn cobs to keep log, logs together. And there were technologies like that, but if you really want to talk about the building of, of the world, you gotta talk about iron nails and how many millions and tens and millions of iron nails that were made in the world by hand, by people.

• 52:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, before industrialization, they were all made by hand. And it's apparently harder to make them than you would think. I watched a video by a blacksmith named Nick Kimball on Instructables. And I guess his brother writes for Instructables and interviewed him. And he's like a blacksmith at one of the colonial model farms.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:44Josh Clark?

  Think maybe Mount Vernon? They didn't say.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Oh, I've met that guy.

• 52:49Josh Clark?

  So he looks like it too. He looks like a cool dude. But he, he showed how to make a nail and he says he can make one a minute. And this guy is an advanced blacksmith, like he has a job as a blacksmith. That's how advanced this guy is in the 21st century. And he can make, he can make one a minute. Apparently blacksmiths of yore could make ten to a dozen of them a minute.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 53:13Josh Clark?

  And it's very involved, like it's, you would, you actually have to make the tool first to make, to make the nails. So you take an iron bar, flatten that, punch a hole in it using your pritchel hole and a punch. And then you take, um, nail rod, little strips of, of the iron that's gonna be nails. Um, heat it up, um, hammer a shoulder into it on the edge of the anvil so that there's like a, it's, it's narrower at the, in the, for the bulk of it. And then up top, it just kind of is a little wider and boxy. And then you put it into the hole of the tool that you made. And then you heat it up and you hammer the head a bunch of times to flatten it. That's what you have to do to make one single nail.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:55Josh Clark?

  And some blacksmiths in the days of yore could make a dozen of those in a minute. That's how good they were at it.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 54:03Josh Clark?

  I would have charged so much for nails, it would have been astronomical. I would have been like, no, I will, uh, you know, like, let's make you some chain mail instead. What do you need nails for? Let's do something cool. And, uh, they'd say, you know, I need to build a second story in my house. I'd be like, all right, it's gonna cost you.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  The Josh Nail?

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  The Josh Clark Special?

• 54:25Josh Clark?

  Because it would not be fun to make nails, for sure.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  No, but boy, they made a lot of them.

• 54:30Josh Clark?

  They did.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  There are also some other techniques. There's bending. We've kind of already talked about when you're creating, uh, curves and things. If you've, uh, I mentioned the, the staircase, uh, irons, how they're, how they're twisted around. That is done with a square bar, which is a bar with a square hole in it. And that's placed over a square rod of hot iron. And then you turn that square, you basically, sort of like that Dremel you were talking about. You stick that hot thing into the hole and you twist it around and you create those little twists.

• 55:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, every time it's a blacksmith tradition, you say, eh, voila.

• 55:11Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I don't have anything else. It's just, I know we got stuff not quite right, but hopefully the Smithies, hopefully our enthusiasm won them over.

• 55:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's hope so.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Or they're coming after us.

• 55:23Josh Clark?

  Our ignorance. Also, there's like a ton that we didn't talk about. It's a really, I mean, this is a countless human, thousands of year long body of knowledge that we just tried to do in 45 minutes and failed at that. But there's a lot to it. So if you're interested in it, go, go check it out. At the very least, go watch some videos. And since I said, go watch some videos, everybody, it's time for listener mail.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  All right, I'm going to call this Olympic torchbearer.

• 55:53Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Hey, guys, I was a torchbearer for the Winter Olympics, and it was a lot of fun. The amount of logistical coordination that went into it was incredible. I was told four months in advance, when down to the minute, I'd be carrying the lit torch, and it wasn't off by more than a few, actually. A guy came to our hotel with a bunch of toys, vehicles and action figures, and modeled exactly what would happen. That's so cool. I had to be reminded by my handlers to ensure that I kept it very high, high enough so as to not light my hat on fire. The torch is pretty light, but fairly top heavy. I'm sure we were wearing mittens to make it impossible for any of us to make any finger gestures, even accidentally, that could be seen by the world on the live feed. Didn't even think about that.

• 56:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  One term you didn't use that I thought you'd appreciate. When one torchbearer passes the flame to another, it's called a torch kiss. We went through training and practiced just this part. On the street, we did a little dance after we kissed, and then I and whoever just finished got back on the bus. As you mentioned, a guy took my torch and extinguished it right afterward. And since it was still hot, they stored it in a rack on the bus. When we got back to the starting point, they removed the fuel cell and gave it back to me.

• 57:03Josh Clark?

  Broke it in half.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  And that is from Matt Jones. We had quite a nice little exchange about this. He said he did get it through work, but he was not a C-level executive. He won it through a drawing at his work.

• 57:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's, that's totally great.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:17Josh Clark?

  That's great. He might as well have gotten it from contributing to society, as great as that is. Man, I gotta thanks for that, Matt. Also, I knew it was called the kiss. I thought I said it was the kiss. And if I left that out, that drives me crazy, man, when there's a fact that I know that I failed to put into the podcast, that somebody then comes and says, you left out this really awesome fact. And I just drop to my knees like the Liberty Mutual guy in the elevator and go, no.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  You know how much that bothers me when that happens to me?

• 57:47Josh Clark?

  How much?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  None.

• 57:49Josh Clark?

  Man, it's like, it'll ruin my week. My week's just toast now, thanks to Matt.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  There's the difference between you and I.

• 57:56Josh Clark?

  Well, if you want to ruin my week and have a neutral effect on Chuck's week, maybe even make it more positive, you can email us. Go ahead and type it out. After that, wrap it up. After that, spank it on the bottom, and then send it off to [email protected].

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 58:32Josh Clark?

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• 59:37Josh Clark?

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• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.