[BCMA] Blacksmith Shop Questions

Mon Dec 9 11:08:02 PST 2013

Burnaby Village Museum and Fort Langley NHS both have operating blacksmith shops and are close to you. I was curator for 18 years at Burnaby Village Museum and I had an operating blacksmith during that time.

Some issues to deal with:
Worker safety (burns, hearing protection, vision protection, coal dust and fresh air to breathe - all things they did not worry about 100 years ago.
Fire safety
Supplies of the correct coal and metal.
A good serviceable anvil. Anvils have a good ring to them if they are functional, but sound like a dead "clunk" when they are no longer functional. Also the upper surface needs to be dressed (ground) properly so that it is flat.

When school groups come they only have a short period of time to view the demonstration. Ideally one wants to show them the process from cutting the raw stock metal off of a rod for example, heating it up and then shaping it on the anvil, reheating, shaping, reheating, shaping and then quenching the final product in a water tub. Note - a blacksmith who strikes unheated metal goes straight to Hell ... so fire is essential.

A common, but misleading, mini-project is making a square nail. Fast, easy and the class can take a finished sample away with them. It is historically inaccurate however as we are not depicting 1700s historic sites and square nails were being mass produced in factories by the mid-1800s. For that reason at Burnaby Village Museum I changed the product to a small coat hook.

Due to the noise, coal smoke. (That is why London had such thick fog in the old days) and fire hazard, blacksmith shops should ideally be a stand-alone building. They should also not be in an historic structure because you're running a high risk of losing it to fire.

A big problem is the fire in the forge. It takes time to build a good fire and get it to the correct heat but then if the blacksmith has to go for a lunch break or a washroom break, then the fire is left unattended. 

If operating a blacksmith shop some of the equipment that you will need:
A good anvil
An upright log, dug into the ground like a fat fence post to attach the anvil to.
A quenching water bucket with a water supply tap nearby.
A dirt floor usually.
A forge,
A blower - the handcranked blower is typical for the  late 1800s- early 1900s whereas in the mid-1800s it was a bellows type. 
A chimney for the forge.
Ready storage for coal and for stock metal.
A powered hacksaw for cutting off chunks of metal from the stock supply.
Blacksmithing tools such as tongs, hammers and chisels.
Blacksmith leather apron and  gloves.
A mandrel is optional.
Barricades to keep the public a safe distance away from hot metal, fire and sparks. 
A work bench is handy.
First aid kit 
Eyewash station.
Fire extinguishers.
Supplier for the correct type of coal.
Supplier for the steel. At Burnaby Village Museum it came on a flatbed truck and was long strips of metal which were heavy and about 10 feet long as I recall. Delivery fees and one had to buy in quantity to make it economical.

I would suggest that one should buy new blacksmithing tools.  The reason is that although you may have free historical blacksmithing tools in your collection, they will wear out and you then have an ethical problem in that over time you are destroying artifacts in your collection.

Blacksmiths can be expensive  and very hard-to-find. So you are looking at finding one to train interpretive staff. You would need more than one in case of illness, one resigning, not available that day etc. There were times when I as Curator had to take off my blazer and tie and put on a blacksmith apron to act as blacksmith for a school program that was scheduled when the scheduled interpreter blacksmith did not show up for work.

Staffing is a problem because if you hire a well-qualified blacksmith, that is if you can find and afford one, they will likely turn out to be a terrible historical interpreter. I had one such person who could work miracles with the hot metal, but turned his back on groups as he was working and spoke very few words. The ideal is to have a good historical interpreter who can learn the basics of blacksmithing. The reality is that such a person is likely to be a university student who is looking to establish a career and will move on in a couple of years.

A common dream is to sell products from the blacksmith shop to recoup some costs via your museum's gift shop. As I recall our gift shop staff weren't overly happy with stocking a lot of wrought-iron metalwork. As I say they blacksmiths tended to be interpreters rather than magicians with metal so their products were simple.

You have the problem of downtime as well. How many school groups are coming through and do you have enough to justify keeping a "blacksmith" occupied. Do you have a steady flow of visitors during your peak season to keep a blacksmith occupied?

In summary running a blacksmith shop is complex, and expensive.

Sent from my iPhone so any unintelligible words are its fault !
 ;-)

Colin MacGregor Stevens, CD
Richmond,
British Columbia,
CANADA

> On Dec 7, 2013, at 3:52 PM, "Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv." <bcma at lists.vvv.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
>  
> Does your facility have a blacksmith shop set-up?  We have been offered the original local blacksmith’s shop (all the equipment, no building) and would like to accept it but we have no idea what this entails.  If your facility does run one, could you please answer the following questions to help me get an idea of what I am getting into?
>  
> 1.       What kind of structural requirements are in place in regards to housing such an object?  Do you have to have a ventilation system or is having an open structure enough?  Do you find it difficult to control the environment inside or do you even try?
> 2.       Who runs your blacksmith shop?  How much is this person paid and how did you find them?  What qualifications do they have?
> 3.       What kind of maintenance is required to keep equipment in working order?  How often is it needed and how expensive is it?
> 4.       How do you feel this aspect of your facility is received? (ie. How important is it to your facility that you have a blacksmith shop?  Does it draw visitors?)
> 5.       How often is your blacksmith shop in operation?  (During all open hours or is there a set schedule?)
> 6.       Is there anything else you can tell me that could help me in this endeavor?
>  
> Thank you in advance for all your help!
>  
> Hazel Godley
> Manager
>  <image002.jpg>
> Operated by the Mission District Historical Society
> 604-826-1011
> info at missionmuseum.com
> www.missionmuseum.com
>  
> 33201 2nd Avenue, Mission BC  V2V 1J9
> Thursday-Friday: 10-4
> Saturday: 1-4
>  
> _______________________________________________
> BCMA mailing list
> BCMA at lists.vvv.com
> http://lists.vvv.com/mailman/listinfo/bcma
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.vvv.com/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20131209/4528c882/attachment.htm 