This is Betty Autumn's mom from Vermont, USA. We stumbled into some serious word snooping today at a museum of life in New England in the 1800's (The Shelburne Museum).
A favorite building is the working blacksmith shop, complete with the grubby blacksmith, his bellows, tools, and wooden bucket of water in which to dunk the red-hot metal to cool. I asked him, "In carpentry, there is a popular saying, 'Measure twice, cut once.' is there any parallel sayings in the blacksmith shop? "Yes," he said, "There are lots: Strike while the iron's hot. Don't have too many irons in the fire, and Pound the daylights out of it."
That last one was my favorite. It refers to using a tool called a mandrel to round out a metal ring. To know where to strike to get it perfectly round, you "Pound the daylights out of it." In other words, you pound wherever you can see between the ring and the tool. So fun.
From Betty Autumn's mom
Dear Betty Autumn's mom,
What a wonderful post! thank you so much. All fascinating - and a I learned a new word, "mandrel". Here is a photo of one, snoops and spies. (The thing in the middle).
I became so interested I started snooping around and found this site, with proverbs from blacksmiths. One I really like is "Blacksmith's children are not afraid of sparks". And what a marvelous museum that looks - watch out for it, spies and snoops, if you are ever in New England, USA.
Always a delight to be in touch, keep banging that anvil!
your pal, The Word Snoop (aka The Word Spy)
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