By Satiman Jamin

If you have clothes that were stained by the rust from a rusty steel clothes hanger, you can remove the stain by using products or methods for removing bloodstains from clothing. The reason behind this is that both stains have the same main ingredient; iron oxides, or in simple English, rust. Which also explains why if one was anaemic, the doctor will tell you to eat more food with high iron content or prescribe iron supplements. But please don’t go about swallowing bolts and nails to bolster your body’s iron intake, as the iron that is in our body is in the ionic form, not the metallic one.

As my intention is to tell a story, not write a scientific paper, I’ll leave all the medical, scientific and chemistry details to the experts. Thirty four years ago I learnt that a sentence full of chemistry jargons and symbols on the blackboard is a good way to drive some students to sleep. I know because I was one of those who fell asleep. Sorry Cikgu Balkis!

You may wonder how the change from being lulled to sleep by chemistry equations to harping about ferric and ferrous iron happened. Well, in short, life happened. And the biggest influence in my life is my late father, Haji Jamin bin Mansor. Although he passed away in 2018, I speak about his influence in my life in the present tense as it never diminished and grew even stronger after his passing.

Haji Jamin Mansor

My father got through all the hardship of his life by being a real-life MacGyver. A casual observer may see him as a rubber tapper and palm oil plantation labourer but he was also a mechanic, carpenter and blacksmith, just to mention a few of the skills that he had.

He had a room full of parangs, knives, swords, spears, kris that he made from scrap steel over the years. One day a South African man came to buy some of my father’s knives collection. It turned out he was referred to my father by a friend of a friend. I don’t know the full story as I had lived on my own when it happened. In fact I don’t even know the South African man’s name. And I don’t know if the man knows how to pronounce my father’s name.

In the olden days, tradesmen were given names according to their trade. Going by this, it would have been fitting if the South African gentleman had called my father Smith, short for blacksmith.  Smith has the same origin as smite, smitten and smote, that is to hit with force. While the tradesmen hammering on silver and gold are respectively called silversmith and goldsmith,  those working with iron and steel are called blacksmith due to the environment they work in being covered by the black dust of coal or charcoal.

Haji Jamin at work

Granted, there are those who preferred to be called ironsmith or blade smith, but these still are subdivisions of  blacksmith. By comparison, locksmiths still retain their name despite making mostly keys. I have never come across a key smith. Except maybe in Malay, where locksmiths are called “tukang kunci” which literally means key smith.

Since I had taken up blacksmithing, I am by definition, a blacksmith or smith for short. Not even half as good as my father was but a blacksmith nonetheless.

Naming tradesmen according to their trade was not limited to the English language. In Poland and Polish-speaking regions the name Kowalski originated from kowal, which means blacksmith. This is also true for the name Kuznetsov in Russia and Russian-speaking regions. That is how Smith, Kowalski and Kuznetsov are related: they are people of the same trade. However, I am proud of my Javanese descent and would prefer to be called by the name my father had given me, or just Wakman for short.

I took on blacksmithing like all other skills, I started at the very basic. I learned about the types of iron ores, iron oxides, steel and what happen to them as they were heated, hammered, shaped and plated. And in the process of doing so, I revived and relearned what my teachers had thought me years ago, including the lesson of the chemistry class that I fell asleep in.

I have many more stories to tell but the wordsmith in me knows that this piece is already too long. Thank you for reading this far and see you again in the next story.

My family…the writer sits on the far left

NOTE: Journalist, writer, retro bike enthusiast, blacksmith, tinkerer.. not necessarily in that order. Spent 20 years in the manufacturing sector before joining NST as a journalist.