The ancient art of blacksmithing developed long before there was any electricity or power anything. Things were made by hand in the “backroom” but using techniques that could still be replicated tomorrow if our future was “off grid” and we were living on farms or villages cut off from the larger outside world. We could make our own garden tools.
Master blacksmith Jack Parks of Piedmont SD works on various projects with metallurgical engineering students at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City. Students in the Bladesmithing video are “using my place to forge their entry to a nationwide competition with other colleges,” he says.
Some of the equipment in the video is powered, of course, but based upon ancient practice, so the processes can be brought back. Students are working on a Viking sword, but the same techniques can produce a variety of garden tools if no manufactured ones were available.
