Build 42 Blacksmithing — Furnaces, Forges, Anvils and the Full Progression Path

Blacksmithing is Build 42's deepest crafting chain. Forget Build 41's Metalworking — that skill is now Welding. Blacksmithing is new: furnaces, forges, anvils, and casting, ending at plate armor, sledgehammers, swords, and maces that match anything you can loot. This guide maps the full workstation chain and progression path on stable 42.20, from PZwiki's Blacksmithing page (42.18.0 stamp). Checked 2026-08-04.

The workstation chain: furnaces

Furnaces smelt metal and melt glass. Better furnaces inherit every recipe of the lesser ones, so you never lose access by upgrading.

The charcoal pile is the fuel engine of the whole skill: every blacksmithing recipe burns charcoal, often in double digits, so burn logs into wood charcoal before anything else. Note the stone-block requirements — that's why blacksmithing leans on Masonry and a stockpiled stone supply (see the division of labor below).

The workstation chain: forges

A forge is a furnace plus an anvil working together; it's the station where actual forging happens. Better forges also inherit lesser recipes.

The grindstone sharpens blades — it serves every melee build, not just smiths. The dome kiln fires ceramics, which matters because…

The anvil bottleneck: why pottery is a prerequisite

You cannot reach the simple forge without a blacksmith anvil, and you cannot buy one — you cast it:

1. Craft a wooden blacksmith anvil mold, then use a hand press with clay to make the clay anvil mold.
2. Build a pottery wheel and grind Pottery to level 1 (roughly 75 XP — cheap) to unlock crucibles. Make two large or four small clay crucibles from clay and sand.
3. Build a pottery kiln (the advanced kiln currently has the same requirements as the primitive one, so build the advanced one outright) and fire the mold and crucibles into ceramic.
4. Melt iron in the crucibles at any furnace, then cast the anvil from the ceramic mold.

This is the most clay-intensive stretch of the skill, so pair your first foraging runs for clay with this plan. Casting in general runs on ceramic molds and crucibles, which means pottery permanently feeds blacksmithing.

The other advanced-gate item is the large bellows, and its bottleneck is crude tanned medium leather:

1. Kill medium animals (pigs, sheep, deer) and skin/behead them with a butcher's hook — the large hook itself can be forged at the primitive forge from Blacksmithing 2.
2. Deflesh and defur the hide on a softening beam with a fleshing tool. Skip defurring and you get furred leather, which cannot make bellows.
3. Tan it in a tannin barrel using brain tan (animal brains + bowl of water).
4. Dry the wet leather on a medium leather drying rack — keep the rack indoors so weather can't stall it.

Primitive → simple → advanced: how to actually level

The wiki's own verdict: blacksmithing is a late-game skill, and taking weeks of game time to reach high levels is normal. The route:

• Level 0–1: burn logs to charcoal, get crude tongs or tongs, then forge small iron bands at the primitive forge with scavenged metal and a hammer — no skill level required, 10 XP each. Repeat.
• Early crafting verbs: cut bar, forge bar from chunks, forge scrap into bar quarters/chunks, pierce block/chunk — all primitive-forge recipes worth 10 XP each.
• Smelting: the primitive furnace smelts iron from scrap by size class (small/medium/medium-plus/large) and extracts iron bloom from iron ore. Steel is an advanced-furnace business: converting iron to steel consumes coke and limestone (e.g., 6 of each per steel bar, 18 per ingot), which is why foraging limestone matters.
• Forging sheets and coins: silver/gold sheets and coins appear from Blacksmithing 1 at the primitive forge; steel sheets need Blacksmithing 4 at a simple forge (45 XP each).
• Books: read the matching skill book tier to multiply XP — Blacksmithing I–V cover levels 1–10.

For the raw recipe tables, see our recipes guide.

What blacksmithing ultimately makes

Per the skill page, high-level smithing covers plate armor, tools such as axes and sledgehammers, and weapons such as swords and maces; forged tool heads and blades are stated to be as good as their lootable counterparts, and improvised weapons come out high quality. Representative recipe families along the way include forged hooks, forks, spoons, needles, and fishing hooks (early furnace work), bars/ingots/sheets (the material backbone), and cookware and armor via dedicated schematics.

Division of labor: blacksmithing vs welding vs masonry

Practically: masonry supplies the stone blocks, blacksmithing the metal, and welding turns sheet metal into base defenses. A serious base runs all three.

Verified on 42.20 · Last checked 2026-08-04

Workstation materials, recipe gates, the anvil/bellows walkthrough, and leveling route come from PZwiki's Blacksmithing, Welding, and Masonry pages, each stamped 42.18.0 at check time, re-checked against stable 42.20.0 (July 29, 2026). Exact end-game weapon stats are not published on the wiki pages yet, so treat damage numbers as unverified until they appear.