Related Black History Biographies: 1  Jackie Robinson 1919-1972 The first African American in the twentieth century to play major league baseball, Jackie Robinson was undoubtedly one of... 2  Cool Papa Bell 1903-1991 Cool Papa Bell was a baseball player who was renowned for his speed and prowess on the field.
Still, it's not a huge industry. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 blacksmiths in the U.S., and of those, only about 10 percent do it professionally â they make things like custom railings or artistic hardware for homes. Back in the classroom, Scott Higgins is learning to punch a hole in metal.
A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. whitesmith). Steel is a mixture of Iron and between 0.3% to 1.7% Carbon by weight. 2  The presence of carbon allows steel to assume one of several different crystalline configurations. 3  Macroscopically, this is seen as the ability to turn the hardness of a piece of steel on and off through various processes of heat-treatment.