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This book may be my personal record for how long it has taken me to read a book where I never considered myself to have actually put it on hiatus or given up.
My grossly never-finished novel o' doom concerns a lot of blacksmiths, and therefore I decided a few years ago that I should maybe learn a thing or two about blacksmithing, so I didn't totally fuck up any more than I needed to. If novel ever gets to Draft 2 I may see about taking a blacksmithing course, but that will be far in the future.
Anyway, The Art of Blacksmithing by Alex Bealer seemed to be one of the better respected publications about general blacksmithing that I could find on the Internet; apparently Tamora Pierce has also used it as a source for novel research, so that seemed like a good sign. I have, over the past slightly more than two years, slowly worked my way through it in small doses, usually reading a few pages here and a few pages there, on the subway to and from writing sessions, or sometimes between finishing one book and starting the next.
The book is not necessarily a rollicking good read, being pretty dry and technical, and it was written in the '70s and sometimes it just sounds dated (not in terrible ways, just ways that now sound stilted and not very vivid). Some of the information is inherently quite interesting, but much of it is interesting in exact proportion to how curious you already are about blacksmithing. It is extremely informative, though, covering a wide range of topics and going into pretty good detail, accompanied by a lot of diagrams and illustrations to clear up the things that are difficult to explain in just words. The most readable sections concern history, both the history of blacksmithing generally and the historical developments of certain categories of blackwork (swords, guns, etc.). While I do think these bits are especially interesting, I still wouldn't recommend the book overall for entertainment purposes. However, if you're genuinely curious about the subject and/or doing any writing where you want to be able to have some idea of what you're talking about, then I would recommend it pretty highly.
My grossly never-finished novel o' doom concerns a lot of blacksmiths, and therefore I decided a few years ago that I should maybe learn a thing or two about blacksmithing, so I didn't totally fuck up any more than I needed to. If novel ever gets to Draft 2 I may see about taking a blacksmithing course, but that will be far in the future.
Anyway, The Art of Blacksmithing by Alex Bealer seemed to be one of the better respected publications about general blacksmithing that I could find on the Internet; apparently Tamora Pierce has also used it as a source for novel research, so that seemed like a good sign. I have, over the past slightly more than two years, slowly worked my way through it in small doses, usually reading a few pages here and a few pages there, on the subway to and from writing sessions, or sometimes between finishing one book and starting the next.
The book is not necessarily a rollicking good read, being pretty dry and technical, and it was written in the '70s and sometimes it just sounds dated (not in terrible ways, just ways that now sound stilted and not very vivid). Some of the information is inherently quite interesting, but much of it is interesting in exact proportion to how curious you already are about blacksmithing. It is extremely informative, though, covering a wide range of topics and going into pretty good detail, accompanied by a lot of diagrams and illustrations to clear up the things that are difficult to explain in just words. The most readable sections concern history, both the history of blacksmithing generally and the historical developments of certain categories of blackwork (swords, guns, etc.). While I do think these bits are especially interesting, I still wouldn't recommend the book overall for entertainment purposes. However, if you're genuinely curious about the subject and/or doing any writing where you want to be able to have some idea of what you're talking about, then I would recommend it pretty highly.