Ancient power-hammers and the city that put steel in the world
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Power-hammers might be older than you thought. There might be more ways to make steel than you thought. Valkyries might have had less job security than you thought.
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Picture credits:
Roman anvil image:
By Gun Powder Ma - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Steam-powered drop hammer image:
By Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Ironbridge:
Christine Matthews / Iron Bridge and St Luke's Church, Ironbridge, Shropshire
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Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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It’s honestly a good thing Lindybiege videos are rare because otherwise I’d happily spend my whole day listening to him go on about stuff I’ve never heard before
That's the crazy thing about the internet, you can sit around and do nothing and still get an audience. Play video games? Big audience. Paint? Big audience. Talk about how you care for your lawn? I'm sure you'll get an audience. Post videos of paint drying? You'd be surprised how many people will watch that. You wanna spend a few minutes just whispering to people? Folks will follow that. An educated Englishman with a wide range of subjects to chin-wag about? You'd be surprised how compelling that is.
@@glenngriffon8032 I don't think the chin-wagging Englishman learned all this, nor took and edited the videos, by sitting around doing nothing
@@chrismiddleton398 my point was more that you don't need a big budget or production costs like you'd need for tv. Most videos are just Lloyd on camera talking about a subject. An average guy giving a lecture. Yeah he isn't doing literally "nothing" on camera but his presentations are pretty simple at their heart and that's what's so cool.
@@glenngriffon8032 I love that you say, "that's what's so cool." I, maybe only me, missed that sense in the original post. Well, these things happen.
You dont do that anyway?? Lol
Regarding your comment about making airplanes out of diamond, I'd like to point out that before electrolysis, aluminum was *absurdly* expensive, so what really happened still works as an analogy.
no doubt similar can be said regarding composites, with the majority of the 787 & a350s airframe being constructed with carbon fibre reinforced polymers
Aluminum production is fascinating. Considering the energy required is by far the largest cost, it's like that shiny metal is made out of frozen electricity or something!
@@WestCoastWheelman The Earth’s crust is approximately 8% aluminum, almost twice as abundant as iron.
Aluminum takes energy to make but is more plentiful than steel.
The Normandy from mass effect 2 has armor made from diamonds.
Tokyo has a district called Sheffield. This was done so they could make and export 'Sheffield Steel'. Some things never change.
The world changes but man stays the same
5:00 Fun factoid about the Iron Bridge: As it was the first time cast iron was used as a building material (up to then everything was timber, brick or stone), there was no established 'language' of joints and connections to draw upon. The whole thing is thus assembled using carpentry joints - dovetails, wedged tenons and so on - it was the best they could do until the industry matured enough to develop better ways to use the material. There are modern parallels with new materials like composites - at first they are simply used in place of an existing material (fibre-glass instead of plywood in boats, carbon-fibre tubing instead of chrome-moly tubing in lugged bicycle frames) - it took a while for the material to influence the design to the point where a full-carbon bike frame is nothing like a lugged tube frame.
It took them a while to figure out how to make big nuts, bolts and rivets then how to snug them up.
Tell me more oh wise bike tube lug man. I love little weird trivia bits like this. I am an engineering student, mechanical mostly, and love history and bikes so this is awesome.
Very good explanation.
I am a working blacksmith, to me, nothing there seemed "old" or antique. Rather, the tools I use today are not much different than those. I would have little problem just showing up and going to work there today.
This is a "swage block" Yep, those are still a thing. Id love to see a modern made set of trip hammers, direct drive from a water wheel.
As long as you would take a penny a week and numerous first degree burns without complaining. Ah then theres the cherished white lung disease. The past truly was better than today.
Indeed a modern hydraulic forge is just a retrofit of the steam forges, the only difference was fitting an absolute encoder, and trip hammers are still used in industry.
I don't know about you, but I would probably replace most of the wooden parts. Nothing is more annoying than a broken hammer handle, and those rather sizeable hammers could do some seriously damage if they catastrophically failed.
@@rogersmith7396 PPE consisted of "legs wrapped in water-soaked cloth" (15:39) - It's Health and Safety gone mad!
My grandmother had knives stamped with Sheffield. She lived in Newcastle, Australia. They were some of her best knives.
The style of stamping SHEFFIELD as well as often Co.Ltd. and the name of whoever made the tools, supposedly in Sheffield is certainly recognizable and found all around the world. I wish the chinese had such style in the samping, instead of just hastily stamping "MADE IN CHINA" with only half of it properly imprinted.
Newcastle, Australia was a steel town itself.
@@MrAnperm was being the operative word☹️ But unlike Sheffield their was very little actual manufacturing going on, at least in my time anyway. There was a rod and bar works a pipe works and a wire rope works but nothing like the finished goods that this video depicts. As far as i know they produced bulk steel that was sold to other industries most of which were probably over seas.
@@gearloose703 I've noticed that some of the very best stuff from China bears the province and city of origin instead of simply 'China.' Or even the full name of the factory. One of the longest-lived grinding wheels I've ever had came from the 'Ningbo Resinoid Grinding Wheel Co.' Sold under a house brand here in the US.
On a humorous note, my German grandparents would refuse any English made tools. It was either Solingen-made or brazilian national, because "English ones and shit and dull and N O A N G L O inside our home"
I can never decide whether it's a blessing or a curse that Lloyd didn't end up making documentaries and educational programmes for TV. On the one hand he has a brilliant style for it, but on the other, we get all this great youtube content.
I think it would be a waste to put this marvellous content on daytime tv where no one would see it
I doubt he'd get as much freedom being in "the system" as opposed to what he's doing now. Regarding entertainment quality, bosses rarely know wtf they're talking about.
I'd choose this over Top Gear any day 👍
Every TV episode would have to include numerous repetitive recaps, to allow for ad breaks and the presumed idiocy of the viewers. Lloyd would soon be joined by another presenter, either recruited from children's TV or a relative of the producer. Scripted jokes and laborious banter would soon follow to add "chemistry" to the combination. As ratings fell elements of jeopardy would be added to the format, with only 24 hours to complete a site visit or constant references to a nearby volcano supposedly due to explode imminently. In urgent search of the sizeable American market the Lindybeige production team would move to California, and visit important US historical sites such as Disneyland. More presenters would be added to the team to more accurately reflect the expectations and demographic composition of the target American market. Conflict between the presenters would be introduced, as well as emotional episodes devoted to their back stories and struggles. Lloyd himself would be quietly retired, with a veteran American character actor appearing instead in the role of a much more interesting eccentric English aristocrat or royal. Or lovable Cockney rocker or singing chimney sweep. Or heavily-accented French detective. After all, who needs the tedious British historical connection - this is entertainment.
@@ianstobie Did you have fun? Lol.
"Gravity is kept switched on at all times". I laughed pretty hard at that. Love your presentation style and have been watching you for years.
Yeah I laughed really hard at that too.. imagine all that mass they waste in Sheffield, keeping the gravity switched on all the time. Ha ha.
@@wyndhamcoffman8961 I'm sure there's a few Gregg's patrons putting it to good use! lol
@@wyndhamcoffman8961 Think, If they turned the gravity off they could easily walk the water back up to the top of the hill and then turn it back on and use all that energy again.
Not true though is it
If I recall correctly there is a similar joke in one of the Dirk Gently books by Douglas Adams - the backdrop is that Newton's discovery of gravity is not that impressive. Its there to be discovered. One of the characters then drops a pen - "Look, they even leave it on in the weekends". 😆
I'm glad I have a Google alert set up for "Ancient power hammers".
same here!
I do not have alerts set. I actively search for it every day until now!
Google Alerts are the Ancient Power Hammers of the modern world.
I don't get it.
No you don’t
I'm from Sheffield so I enjoy the recognition for a bit of local history, and I'm enjoying the recent trend of industrial history with this video and the one on the waggon ways.
I have a handforged knife from there, greetings from New Zealand
Where do you stand in Sheffield being northern or southern
@@THE3FATGUYS Since we're a part of Yorkshire we're technically nothern, but if you look on a map we look like we're part of the midlands.
@@ChannelHandlePending Also, Sheffield used to be part of Mercia (like the rest of the Midlands) rather than Northumbria (like the rest of the North).
@@THE3FATGUYS Sheffield is quite clearly in the Midlands. As is Manchester.
Love your videos mate. Sheffield bloke here. The suspended seat was to isolate the operator from the massive jolts through the ground the hammer makes. My dad worked in the steel industry in Sheffield (a bit later than the middle ages ;-) and they still used something similar for the really big hammers)
My grandad worked in the steel industry in Sheffield. Unfortunately I don't know which company. He was a floor manager & he was a small fella with a small mustache, the workers on the shop floor used to call him little Hitler (this was the seventies) but never to his face. He was ex Black Watch & you could tell he was ex military, he ran a tight ship.
@@50caliber29 My dad was a little fella too. It's a pretty well known trait of Sheffielders at the time. I've heard it put down to the poor air quality and diet.
4:30 Saying the switch from charcoal to coke "saved a lot of forests" is probably misleading. British charcoal was largely made from coppicing, which is a process that is beneficial for wildlife and arguably the trees themselves. Reducing the value of forests also probably contributing to increased clearing of woodland for other land uses like grazing and arable farming, though the deforestation of the UK had been going on for a long time before this change. Great video!
In Sweden, the end of charcoal certainly saved forests. With our abundant forests, we used whole trees, and we exported lots and lots of charcoal before the invention of coke.
@@carlcramer9269 Yes, but the swedish system was based on whole tree harvests of species that don't grow back from the stump and predated reforestation laws. But I suppose the british invention of coke saved forests from the countries they imported charcoal from. On the other hand, it was part of the transition away from biofuels toward fossil fuels.
@@Theorimlig On the latter part: kind of. The fact that Oil can be wrought from Crops was lesswell understood back then. Heck: for most of Human history Crude Oil - where-ever it was found - was considered an irritation, a useless obstacle to mining / excavating for other stuff. (until some bright chap found out Oil was both far more thermally efficient thsn even Coal, and there were billions of gallons of it below ground / the seabed.
@@jimtaylor294 Dr. Abraham Gessner, the German father of petroleum chemistry (which succeeded wood-based chemistry) once stated that burning petroleum for fuel was as wasteful as burning paper currency for fuel, as it was too valuable for other industrial uses. (Note that in the Weimar Republic, it actually was more efficient to burn paper money, as there were more BTUs in the paper than in the amount of coal or wood it would purchase.)
It’s amazing how fast a coppiced maple or here in the States a sweetgum tree grows. Especially if you graze livestock in between them to to build up the nitrogen. You can get a about the same amount of wood in around half the time.
I love how you start off thinking "why would I even?" and by the end wondering how you ever coped without this knowledge! Long live Lindybeige!
Are you describing all of his material or just this one?
I clicked because I've used a modern power hammer
@@joeblowgoes . I got some plans to make one, then thought it might upset the neighbours.😟
@@python27au well I'm sure there's other uses for your river 😉
Long live Lindybeige!!!
HMS Sheffield had stainless steel fittings donated by the city! She stood out from her Town-class cruiser sisters and was nicknamed "Shiny Sheff"
Not necessarily a good idea to be 'shiny' in war, but then again, I think that Sheffield was victim to friendly fire from allied aircraft so perhaps it did not make it more identifiable/visible.
I'm not sure if they did this anywhere else in the country but in sheffield it's not uncommon to see stumps of metal outside of people's homes where a metal fence would normally be. During the war they went around and cut them off so they could make weapons
@@EdMcF1 any evidence for the friendly fire claim? Edit: I take that back, you're talking about the - unsunk - WWII vessel, not the - sunk - Falklands one.
(5:15) Naval historian *Drachinifel* made a video about the transition to iron and steel ships, and how it was not as straight forward as one might think. I highly recommend his channel; he covers various periods, but concentrates on WWI & WWII.
I will second that recommendation. Drach really knows what he's talking about!
Thanks :)
@@Drachinifel Crikey! You never know who's hiding in the woodwork!
@@Drachinifel You are some kind of immortal legend. Not only doing all of the research, writing and editing for your own prodigious output; but also engaging with your own comments; then taking downtime, somehow, to watch other channels; and apparently also scrolling *their* comments. I'm starting to wonder if you're actually triplets.
@@johnladuke6475 I have to watch other channels to stay sane 😀
As an American, after learning about Sheffield's long history of steel production advancements, I'm prouder than ever to have a set of DeWalt woodworking chisels with a "Made in Sheffield, England" sticker on the package.
The amount of victim complex hate we get from Americans is mental so I just want to say i really appreciate what you just said.
@@chadfreestyle4371 americans hate brits?
these things give good overview of how incredibly shortlived big factories and huge things like that have been.... 10 years may sound long time but human life is way longer and some random thing can move it in just 3-5years. And if it stays for longer time, it has evolved and changed many times over like coke steel.
5:33 Henry Bessemer steel making process truly changed the world during the second industrial revolution in the town of Sheffield. Bessemer being from a French Huguenot family which was kicked out of France during the revolution had a rough start in life but he still managed to become successful. Bessemer also made hundreds of other inventions in the fields of iron, steel and glass and became quite rich with them unlike many inventors at the time.
His autobiography is available on the Gutenberg project it's really good and quite readable
Isn't most steel today still made by a variant of the Bessemer process? I remember reading once that, other than blowing pure oxygen through the molten pig iron instead of air, a nearly-identical process still produces most of the world's steel today.
@@maddie9602 yeah and Bessemer experimented with that process back in the 1850s but pure oxygen was far too expensive to make the process economic
Andrew Carnegie went to the UK to learn the Bessemer process. He went back to the US to created the steel industry and became the richest man in America.
@@maddie9602 it is pretty close to the optimal method.
The Bessemer process made Pittsburgh an industrial powerhouse. Sheffield made all that possible. Thank for a fine video from all your friends in Western Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgher here too.
Fun fact: the industrial area within a fifty mile radius of Pittsburgh - including the Monongahela River valley and parts of West Virginia - produced more steel than the entire Third Reich during the years 1942-1945. Pittsburgh wasn't bombed or invaded, so the comparison is a bit unfair to Germany, but it does show how the US was able to bury the Axis under an almost literal hail of steel and fire.
@@Ensign_Nemo And that doesn't even count the significant production at Gary, IN or Birmingham, AL.👍
@@Ensign_Nemo And the city of Detroit used that steel to make more than half of all vehicles fielded by the US during the war. Absolutely insane how the Axis managed to hold on for as long as they did.
carnegie - primordial robber baron - did that.
Lindy, Sir, if you made a channel only for ads I bet it would swiftly become one of my favorite channels ever!
A Jackson Crawford cameo in a Lindybeige video! He's a great lecturer, definitely worth checking out his KZhead channel.
That's who I thought it was! Definitely recommend his channel, as well. ✌️😎🍀
100% would reconmend, hell I'll go one step further and reconmend his copy of the Poetic Edda
"Gravity is kept switched on at all times" The best line I've heard all day.
Halfway through this video, I had to remind myself that I'm watching a LB video on power hammers and not Norse Mythology. One of the many, many reasons why I love your channel Lindybeige
Best sponsor reads on all of youtube, bar none. The video about sleep sponsored by the mattress company was spectacular.
I recently visited such hammers in sweden, in Östhammar, where they did hammer iron bars to be exported to Sheffield from the port of Öregrund (In England I believe the iron was called 'Oregrounds Iron' after the name of the port).
I've been grinding my teeth ever since the comment about Sheffield not been in the north, which has a certain irony in that I live in a village that used to supply Sheffield with grindstones :-)
As a young kid growing up in South Western Ontario, in a brand new subdivision on the edge of town, I never thought of my area having any "history". But, in the woods and ponds, along an uncharacteristically winding road for here, used to be a water powered mill, operating from before the mid 1800's to probably around 1920 or so. I suspect it was supplanted not by steam, but electricity. Today, if I showed any newcomer the spot where the mill was, they wouldn't believe it. The mill, used to grind grain, would have been in operation at the time the latest incarnation of this featured mill was running.
A 19th century gristmill is preserved at Black Creek Pioneer Village in north Toronto.
I remember seeing a lot of water powered mills growing up, but when you're young and you see the wheel, it doesn't mean that much. You don't understand just how important and central they were to society. We can spend parts of our lives just amazed at some thing that we use,, like cell-towers , but it's harder to really understand what things like water-wheels must have been like.
@@kevinlove4356 There's one in Arva, Ontario that is still operating and turning a profit. They had to get an exemption from the Ministry of Labour because, surprisingly, 19th Century Mills don't do well with current H&S laws.
My father worked in a water mill up to 1945, then went to the university. And indeed H&S, he claims grain sacks went up to 120 kg back then.
@@2adamast Since retiring, I've kept working at this job and that, for both economic reasons and because I like to work. One job I did a few times was "lumping", helping an injured truck driver on light duty to unload stuff to fast food joints. I can attest that industrial sacks of flour still weigh a hell of a lot and are not fun to move manually.
Oh hey. The professor in the sponsor reel is doctor jackson crawford who IS on KZhead after all haha. Good content
The gentleman at 7:32 is Jackson Crawford who, in spite of his purportedly lackluster gesturing, has his own KZhead channel with a lot of great educational content.
It's a shame Sheffield didn't keep up with it's tradition, I'd love it if we still made some of the best pocket knives in the world. So sad what happened to British industry, I hate outsourcing.
Same in American. It’s sad.
Well it's not about you, it's about the companies that set up the businesses.
Just keep voting....
Calling Sheffield the Midlands shook me to my core.
I mean tbf, it is more south than Manchester and Liverpool plus it did used to be part of the Kingdom of Mercia rather than Northumbria, so it makes sense even if it also doesn't make sense.
Sorry but you are the Midlands, As is Manchester and liverpool, look at a map you are in line with "Wales"!
@@Neion8 yes it makes sense, your Almost Southerners 😯
@@dogwalker666 Hey wait a minute! I'm from the West Midlands which is even further south than Sheffield and I'm not a Southener! *MID-LANDS!* It feels like the only thing more forgotten than the North of England, is the bit in-between the South and the North :(
@@Neion8 🤣😉
Oh, we have similar old machinery on display in my city in Russia. Which is not surprize, this city was literally build to work metals from local mines
Good to see a new video, Lindy. I'm a Steel City boy myself, and my sister is "the voice of Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet". Having been an industrial archaeologist for 17 years, and now a professional poet, I suppose she was the ideal choice. Great to see this video. Thanks.
Funny you mentioned goods going to Australia. My grandfather worked in the Sheffield steel industry as a metallurgist and met my grandmother on a work trip to Australia!
The wooden teeth pinned onto the iron hub was something I've never seen, but that really impressed me. A serviceable modular gear. I guess in an era where skilled carpenters are plentiful, that makes even more sense. You probably don't even have to be as precise as a cast or machined metal gear, the wood would probably immediately wear down any imperfections and break itself in to fit the mating gear.
I'd bet they had a whole process for this, like soak the teeth for a couple days before installing them and then run it all night to break 'em in.
Not to mention that you can have quite a few spare prepared for change whenever you need it. And it makes sense to make it as serviceable as possible, it was a vital part of this wealth making industry, so you do not want it to stop for a minute unless it is 100% necessary.
@@the20thDoctor soaking the teeth prior to installation would cause shrinkage and a loose fit in the hub(which could cause premature breakage), it would probably be best to just design the teeth to allow a wide enough spacing that the imperfections don't matter.
@@garethbaus5471 Depending on the wood and the part, some of them would hold up to weeks or months of work before they needed tweaking. The seasonal shift in the wood means you wouldn't want it too tight for fear it might split.
According to my Granddad (master machinist, patternmaker and coremaker) a set of wooden teeth will actually wear itself into alignment, unlike metal gears.
I really think Lindybiege could produce his own docuseries on various historic topics. I for one would certainly pay to see such a thing.
You've been watching one right now
i love the guy but i would not trust him with such a project, just look at his graphic novel kickstarter.
He should do "Harlots of New Orleans".
It sounds a lovely idea, but I feel that certain not-so-recent events in Lloyd's history show that he's probably better off without deadlines. Also he's fairly controversial on history-youtube, not for political reasons but because plenty consider him to be spinning yarns (to put it politely) more than recounting history. I have no opinion to share on this, I've learned useful and interesting things from Lindybeige and get great entertainment from these videos - but again, I'm not sure that surrounding him with a bunch of producers, researchers, writers and editors would be harmonious. I may be being deeply unfair on the chap, but everything about his content screams to me that he's the type best left alone to follow the currents of his own mind without supervision.
@@fadedjem I both agree and very much enjoyed the phrase "follow the currents of his own mind"
From Sheffield Thankyou for the recognition ☺️ my great great grandfather Cornelius is mentioned at abbeydale for his invention of a certain style of scythe blade
Brilliant , fantastic to see all that machinery, incredible to think they are still in working order today. I used to work in a foundry in the Black Country, seeing something like this brings back memories , one thing you must know and that is whenever we went on our ten day summer shutdown it was always interesting to notice how clean we all looked after ten days of not working in the foundry as it was difficult to get really clean working every day👍
I visited a similar ancient waterwheel mallet workshop in the valleys north of Brescia (Val Camonica and especially Val Trompia are notorious for their iron/steel and arms production since the middle age). Nowadays a few ancient waterwheel mallet workshop turned into sort of working museums. I visited the one in Bienno alongside the water mill. The ancient machines there are run (not full time I hope) to show the process to visitors but aside that at the same time they act as a school to teach forgin to students and a day a week is available for associates who want to do forging as hobby (some are also professional blacksmiths, of which the town is full, who enjoy do it the traditional way, or maybe retired ones).
Saw a video awhile back that claimed that the aqueduct system was used not only for water supply but also for water power. A Roman smithy might be located alongside an aqueduct, with a small undershot wheel set in the channel powering a single small triphammer and bellows.
In new zealand the old sheffield knives are prized possessions to this day. A lot of them have been worn down to small razor sharp blades over the years from the old round butter knives.
Many razors have probably been made from Sheffield butter knives :)
I have a 1907 vintage Enfield bayonet made by Wilkinson in Sheffield. The blade is amazing.
My grandmother had several like it, with antler horn handles. When she died my father took over her house and still uses them now! UK
My family had some miscellaneous Sheffield pieces when I was growing up, definitely bore the signs of generations of wear & sharpening, Lol. ✌️😎
I had no idea such mechanical hammers existed. Thanks Lloyd for educating me further.
Probably derived from watermills, it's interesting to know in those days it wasn't all done by hand
Thanks for the video. The amount of engineering that went into those "simple" machines is just incredible. I've never given a thought to the idea that they could change teeth to alter the hammer speed. And all the adjustments, just amazing.
"Gravity is kept switched on at all times" Well isn't that fortunate
You may not be impressed with his gestures, but Jackson Crawford has some of the best content on KZhead. :)
There is just NOTHING like Lindybeige's channel on KZhead, as far as quality and scope content. Even my wife (teacher) has used his videos in the classroom. Good on ya Lloyd!! We do appreciate it!
I live a 10 minute walk from here and have been several times. Despite my familiarity with the setup, I still sound myself fascinated with your commentary. Nice to see AIH getting some love!
Well what do you know, a Lindybeige video with a Dr. Jackson Crawford cameo.
From Sheffield myself. Love this video. I highly recommend you visit Kelham Island and look at the steam engines there. I'm fairly sure it has the largest still operating Steam Engine in the world.
The River Don engine is majestic, I would never get tired of watching a steam engine the size of a building change direction in half a second.
I grew up two miles away in Ecclesall and never visited here.... Unbelievable.
I dig up my garden with my grandfather's spade, the head's eighty plus years old and when I see "MADE IN SHEFFIELD" on it, it feels good. Living all the way down in the midlands in a floodplain; every bridge in the canalways has "SHEFFIELD" stamped on the bottom.
@@jonathonjubb6626 There's also the Shepherds Wheel in the Porter valley. I visited both with school back in the 80's.
As a fitter in the early 1970s at River Don I got to work on that engine. I remember it was piled with hazel sticks, that were used on the rolling mill to break up the black surface.
You are such a good story teller ... I learn things about things I'd never thought I'd be interested in. Gravity is kept switched on at all times. Love that! Well done sir.
The early industrial manufacturing of Iron, steel and the further production into tools of any kind is just do incredibly interesting! In my hometown Hagen we have a old scythe Smith where now a Table top club resides.
i like when you do maps very informative and interesting
Yeah I was actually impressed by the presentation of it all
Did they really keep the gravity switched-on at all times? How wasteful. God, the gravity bill must have been astronomical! No wonder turnip hooks were so expensive.
I came for the interest in steel; I stayed for the entertaining delivery. Heck, I even enjoyed the informative commercial for Wondrium. Bravo, Lindybeige! I'll be back!
Your ad spots are the only ones I don't skip on you tube... entertaining and educational throughout. Kudos!
Just finished a lindybeige binge and this comes out. Perfect timing
We love you LindyBeige! These videos just keep giving.
Ight one of the most interesting historical info videos I've seen, the wise cracks do a great job breaking up the info about the subject without taking you away from it, I think I'm gonna be around this channel for a while lol
Thank you Lindybeige, nothing like watching a casual Sunday video about ancient power hammers.
Always a marvelous journey and I'm excited to see where we go next.
I was just thinking "man I miss Lindy, I hope he uploads soon".
I'm a Sheffield lad and Abbeydale industrial hamlet was a regular school visit, it's an overlooked national treasure. As I mentioned I was born in Sheffield in1965 & was raised & lived there until 1995 & I now live in the Yorkshire capital York. Let me tell you this, Sheffield is far more northern than York, even the accent in York is less Yorkshire than Sheffield. I look at Sheffield as the final wall that defends Yorkshire from those unfortunates in Derbyshire etc.
I was given a Sheffield steel putty knife from a client in his 80s. He was moving home and didn’t need his tools anymore. It’s 1940 era and it’s one of my most loved and used tools .
There is a really old Walloon forge in Sweden that has one of these. It's supposed to be the only Walloon forge still in existance. Pretty cool. A huge amount of Swedish ore was imported to England and Sheffield as well.
At first I was immensely Impressed by the fact Power Hammers were over 2000 years old. Then the 3 piece swinging blacksmith seat showed It's hand. Brilliant.
Fascinating!, Love the way they used to make stuff all those years ago. The machinery are amazing especially when you see them in action, great video, well done lindybeige.
This is some great information we'll delivered, keep up the good work lindy
Thanks for the fascinating videos, keep it up! 🙂
wow, I found this very interesting. I hade no idea that such complex machines let alone steel were being made that long ago. Thank you!
It used to be a guy, an anvil, and a hammer.
Steel has been made for around 3,000 years, and windmills have existed for longer.
@@rogersmith7396 it was never "a" guy, it was always a blacksmith and.. bellows monkey, spotter, 2nd hammer, charcoal burners, bog miners, grinder, polisher etc etc.
@@bloodvue Always a guy in the westerns I've seen.
This is the only channel that has me as excited for the commercial as I am for the content! Well done, Mr. Beige
Very, very informative. Answered questions I got when watching these water mills and their use. Thx
Interesting. Round my way they had, up until the coke processes came online, been making iron and steel from before the Romans arrived. They built some of their first roads here with clinker from Sussex iron workings. Back in Tudor times and before the water hammers and fires could be heard and seen for miles. All gone now though the hammer ponds and furnace woods are still about. Plentiful iron ore and wood for charcoal around here.
Interesting. I live just outside Sheffield on the Sheffield/Rotherham border in a village called Thorpe Hesley. There are old ironstone pits all way along the ridgeline towards Rotherham. Evidence of iron working was found at the Roman fort at Rotherham (when it was excavated to build a new steelworks) so I imagine it had been going on prior to that. A lot of the local woods were once coppice woods.
@@antonycharnock2993 I wonder how much iron ore was imported then? Interesting. Sussex and the High Weald used to be the centre of Tudor iron workings as well. (Or so I am told)
@@BensWorkshop I know a lot came from Sweden as it was better quality than the locally mined ironstone. I recently discovered that a lot also came from Northern Spain from the Bilbao area.
@@antonycharnock2993 There were working open cast iron mines around my way till 1908. I wonder where they shipped their iron?
We Brit's have such an awesome history, makes me proud to be a Brit! :)
Lindy's ad reads are so good I forgot he was doing an ad read halfway through the bit about valkyries. Then, "Oh right, this was a video about steel".
Great video thanks, very interesting, love hearing people talk about things so passionately, makes all the difference.
Whenever I watch Lindy, I cant help but think if he had come up a few decades earlier he would be hosting a documentary show. That being said all things happen for a reason and perhaps that would not have worked out. Its just strange that he is able to write, produce, and star in documentaries that are really better than anything being produced in legacy media.
Thanks for the awesome content!!
This is for me. 11:18 So I can skip the wondirum ad when I binge watch this later.
Not interested in valkyries?
Skipping some of the best bits, mate.
@@robwalker4452 I watched it when it came out. And I do love his ad reads. But, I binge watch ALOT of his videos.
I've seen a lot of ads for Wondrium from Lindybeige, but this one has to be the most entertaining I've seen yet! Also really interesting topic - had no idea they had power hammers back then!
One of Lindybeige's best...a tight, well edited, focused presentation. A +++ . Well done!
Henry Cort was from my town, Gosport - but the only recognition he has from most Gosportonians these days is a school named in his honour, and a road likewise. He was taken advantage of, brutally in fact, by other men whose business nous far exceeded his and trumped his engineering genius, and he died in poverty, a virtual unknown. If their integrity had matched his industry and intelligence, he would have been a national treasure. Alas, it was not meant to be.
This is something I have been interested in for years ,if you had to outfit a army back in the day ,you would be better off in some respects having water powered hammers and blacksmiths all working around a large forge instead of having a couple of different blacksmiths with there own little forges spread out Around your city or fort
I think that these power hammers were probably part of what made certain smithing locations what they were, and there were a bunch of them in various places,, actually water-wheel powered manufacturing was all over europe and is all very interesting. It's mostly just mills and saws though.
I adore your sence of humor, keep on doing what you do. You've made an astonishing ammount of nights intresting for me with the content you do. Wishing all the best to come this year
I was raised in Southern California and in the mid-1950's parents bought me a beautiful red bicycle with hand brakes. "Ride awheel on Sheffield Steel" was painted on the top frame tube. Great Video!
big old machines are always cool
That’s a really technologically advanced factory. I like it’s concepts of modularity and ability to modify working presets on the go, against old fashioned ideas of having to pull the whole machine to bits to change something, which must have been highly revolutionary at the time. It must have been a hive of activity when it was running and made it’s owner comparatively rich. I like to imagine the Owner having a ‘HotRod’ horse and the hottest side-chicks and music pumping at his Crib!
This one video has left a great impression on me, I can't wait to watch more.
Lindybeige, your videos are so good. Even your sponsor ads are really entertaining. That is comedic talent right there.
It's amazing how close the Romans came to an industrial revolution. Can you imagine how things would have turned out in Europe if they'd have figured out how to connect the waterwheel with an off-center crankshaft or a piston?
Id argue they did have an industrial revolution. Just not as we would narrow the term today. But i mean the aqueducts. The first real recognized and maintained road system. They definitely did things at an industrial scale in that essence. Now if you mean how much further it could have gone, absolutely a fair point and an interesting what if.
@@drizzt102 I was always taught that their dependence on slave labor was really the only thing keeping them from modern industrialization. It is indeed interesting to imagine what if. Big fan of drizzt Do'Urdan by the way.
I think the main limitation was a lack of access to high quality iron, metallurgy only really started to take off as a science in its own right in the early modern period and it was especially the early 18th century advancements in metallurgy that allowed the industrial revolution to take off.
See the two toldinstone videos for explanations why it wouldn't have happened, very interesting. I too wonder how the world would've looked if they managed to industrialise, but we'll never know... :(
What on earth is a TURNIP HOOK ?!? I never realised that en England people needed those to fight against the evil turnip kingdom... more seriously, I never seen those before, and did'nt even could imagine that one needed something else than a kitchen knife to prepare turnips. Or maybe its related to turnip agriculture ?
from the shape of it i would asume that it was used to both pull them out of the ground and cut of the leafy top.
You should see a rutabaga spear.
Turnips became a major part of British agriculture with the four-field system, in which they were used as animal fodder. A turnip hook made it much faster and easier to pull them out of the ground for winter feed.
@@fontinalishealth724 thanks !
Seeing old machinery like this is awesome and saddening as they remain unused, thus unmaintained they tend to rust solid. Making a live show-off every few years or so would keep the machines in shape and bring lot of people to watch
Spent 3 years living in Sheffield. Just outside the city is the rivelin valley nature trail. Walking along it, you realize the entire river was being used for water power. The weirs and millponds are still there, and if you look for them you can see the head and tail races for the mill. The trail race of one mill is nearly discharging into the head race off the next. Then you can do the five weirs walk along the Don. That's more or less in the city center so the millponds are gone, though in some cases you can see where the mills were. There were a LOT of water powered trip hammers in Sheffield. Look at a map of the city, wherever you see river, there was probably a mill.
You definitely need to follow this up with a video on how the VIKINGS made their bog iron. If you don’t have the relevant footage already (your archives scare me, there must still be unused Greek stuff in there), well, that’s an excuse to visit Sweden again.
Or Newfoundland.
When he started talking about the course on Norse Mythology I immediately thought "Dr Jackson Crawford on KZhead does incredible stuff and has the credentials" and then he is actually the one holding this particular lecture. What a coincidence.
Lindybeige, Love the cut of your jib! Back in the last century I lucked out having a couple teachers from your country. Wacky and inspiring! Went on a five decade life journey building a hands on experience in the trades.
Hahaha. Dr. Crawford's lack of cradling skills comes into question. Great show. Amazing how these power hammers worked. Thank you Lindy Beige
A grand looking steam engine there. Be nice to see that in operation.
I've been paying attention to a lot of video game technology lately, and unreal engine 5 is the big special effects engine now,, some of the short videos people are making are really astounding. I think that it would be an incredible video if there was an unreal engine 5 production to show all of the steps of steel manufacture from that museum. It's just too bad that so much of the equipment is too old and can't really be demonstrated fully,,
I'd love to see something similar to David Macaulay's old cartoons redone with Unreal 5 graphics. kzhead.info/sun/p9OPadmBe3uAgKs/bejne.html
Most of those tools look like they would be fairly easy to restore, getting the shop back in working order for live demonstrations would also be great.
@@garethbaus5471 - I don't think a live demonstration would work in this case, think of the MANY dangers for both the viewer and the demonstrator, the noise alone would be bad enough.
@@TSZatoichi They aren't that much more dangerous than a modern power hammer, so as long as the audience is separated from the actual shop by a divider(ideally polycarbonate) and the people working in the museum are properly trained and using the appropriate PPE the risks really aren't all that unreasonable. Glass blowing is potentially dangerous, but demonstrations are pretty common you just need to take a few precautions to manage the risk.
Somebody did a complete "working" digital model of the Titanic, focusing on her engines.
Your wild gesticulations and deliciously mad advert just gained you a sub. Well done sir
I love watching your videos, you show such enthusiasm and passion in your story telling. You should be everywhere on the History Channel.
The burning question: Do you preserve the entire works in situ, or get the whole apparatus working? I would prefer the latter. You mentioned that most of it had been replaced or upgraded at some point. That reminds me of my Granddad's hammer. Supposedly belonged to his great-great grandfather. In that time, it had had the handle replaced seven times, and the head once. ;-)
Museum of Theseus. Though its probably not operating for liability reasons see: the missing top blade of the metal snipper enough left to gawk at but no teens can break in and lose an arm.
Even just conserve it, none of that appears to be happening either, the place is dissolving.
Sheffield was only ever a steel city. Everything left in Sheffield now is incredibly specialist producing steel & castings for the aerospace, car & defence industry. Any iron was produced down the road in Rotherham - The famous Parkgate works rolling iron plates for the SS Great Britain & Walkers foundry producing the cannon for the Royal Navy.
Saw this design while Playing Kingdome Come and ended up here, it's really neat to see it in real life, also they did a good job re-creating the device!
Extremely interesting! Straight forward and effective. I'm in the machine manufacturing arena and even with all the change certain things remain the same.