rederiswrites:

Okay guys, for writing/general reference, a bit about what a ‘blacksmith’ is and isn’t:

A blacksmith is a generalist, a person who uses tools and fire to work iron.  Some blacksmiths work more specifically, so you get, say, an architectural blacksmith, who focuses more or less exclusively on things like gates, rails, fences, or an artist blacksmith, who makes wacky sculptures or what have you.  These days, though, that’s a pretty blurry line.  ‘Blacksmith’ is a pretty damn broad term, but it’s nowhere near broad enough to cover everything encompassed in ‘metalworker’, which is how I often see it used.  There are a LOT of different skills for working metal, and no one knows them all.  Some other terms:

A farrier shoes horses.  They may make the shoes, or they may buy them and then size them, but they actually do the shoeing.  Unless the blacksmith is also a farrier, they don’t know shit about horses’ hooves and are not qualified to deal with them and probably don’t want to.

A blacksmith works IRON (or steel), usually almost exclusively.  They might work with bronze or do a bit of brazing, but those are really separate skillsets.  If you work, say, tin and/or pewter, you are in fact a whitesmith.  You could also be a silversmith or a coppersmith, and so on.

Knifemakers and swordsmiths have their own highly specialized and fairly complex specialties, and usually a blacksmith wouldn’t mess with that unless they want to pick up a new skillset or if they’re really the only game going for a long way around.  By the same token, a swordsmith might never have learned the more general blacksmithing skills.  They’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say here.  Likewise armorers.  There’s overlap but it’s not the same thing.

If you make metal items via molds and casting, you work at a foundry and are a foundryman.

Look, when metalworkers and individual shops and masters were the height of industry, this shit got REALLY specific.  There were people who spent their whole lives making pins.  Just pins.  Foundries specialized and made only bells, only cannon, only cauldrons, etc.  This is scratching the surface, I just wanted to make the point that ‘blacksmith’ is not the same thing as ‘magical muscly person who knows how to do everything related to metal’.