At the Forge and the Bench: Eight Metalworking Tools

A tuyere is the tube or nozzle that blows air under pressure from bellows or a blowing engine into a furnace or hearth, so the fire burns hot enough to smelt, melt and forge metal. The page records an Iron Age example dated to between about 770 and 515 BCE, and notes the word entered English around 1500 with the blast furnace and finery forge.

A trip hammer is a massive powered hammer, usually raised by a cam and released to fall under gravity, often driven by a water wheel. The page records it in Imperial China from the Western Han dynasty and better attested in medieval Europe from the twelfth century, where finery forges used it to draw wrought-iron blooms into bar iron.

A hardy tool has a square shank that stops it turning once it sits in the anvil's hardy hole. Used alone, the word hardy names the cutting chisel set in that hole, while other bottom tools, such as the swage, are named for their work and are paired with a matching top tool struck from above.

A fuller has a rounded nose and is set against hot stock and struck with a hammer, so it spreads metal more efficiently than a hammer face. A lower fuller fits its shank into the anvil's hardy hole, and the ridges it leaves are flattened afterward.

A set tool is a blacksmithing tool meant to be struck by a hammer, either a sledge or a power hammer, rather than swung itself. Its handle lets the smith hold and place it with one hand while the other hand strikes, and the handle differs for anvil work and for use under a power hammer.

A pritchel is a punch used in blacksmithing, most often to finish the nail holes in a horseshoe. A forepunch drives the hole through most of the heated shoe, then the pritchel is driven through from the other side to clear the rest, and it is cooled in water if it heats past a dull red.

A ball-peen hammer has a flat face for ordinary striking and a rounded peen for working, shaping or hardening metal and for rounding over the end of a rivet or pin. The term first saw print in 1874 in a mechanic's dictionary, which described a metal worker's hammer with a spherical peen.

Taps and dies are paired tools for cutting screw threads: a tap cuts the internal thread, such as the one inside a nut, and a die cuts the external thread, such as the one on a bolt. The page says users often made their own in the 16th and 17th centuries, and that Joseph Clement was an early commercial vendor starting in 1828.