Newsletter  http://tidewaterblacksmiths.com/

Volume Number 1                                                                 Issue Number 1                                                                 Date February 2008

Inside this Edition: Tool Donation * Safety * 2007 Scholarship Report * Safety * Tips & Techs * Blacksmith Interview * Editor’s Note *

19th Century Tool Donation

by Vince Nakovics

Mr and Mrs. William Zeno pictured here donating his grandfather’s tools to Tidewater Blacksmiths Guild via
Vince Nakovics.

     Mr. William Zeno called me this past Friday, Jan 4th, 2008 after seeing our article in the Beacon. Mr. Zeno wanted to know if we were interested in some tools that his Grandfather Edson Wisell had used in his Shoreham, Vermont blacksmith shop in the late 1800’s, at least 1898 or before. I agreed to meet him at his home on Saturday Jan 6th.
     Mr. Zeno presented me with a board holding 2 styles of nippers, 3 tongs, 1 chain tong, 1 cobbler hammer, 1 wrench and 1 lid handle. While tools have no maker’s mark on them, they do appear to be in good condition. Mr. Zeno had them on display in his workshop up until his generous donation to the Tidewater Blacksmith’s Guild.

     Mr. Zeno’s grandfather Edson Wisel was born in Shoreham Oct. 13 1856 and died in Middlebury, VT in 1924. He married Sarah Shackett of Shoreham on Jan. 20, 1878. They had eight children, all born in Shoreham.

     I contacted Sue MacIntire of the Shoreham Historical Society and she was able to add that Edson opened his blacksmith shop in 1877 and ran it till 1906 when his son Wilbur Edson Wisell, who had been working with his Dad, took it over. At that time Edson & Sarah retired and moved 12 miles away to the county seat in Middlebury (most urban area in Addison County).
     Shoreham was a very active town and had about 14 Blacksmiths working in the area from the late 1700’s to well after the Civil War.

    I extend my sincere thanks to Sue MacIntire for her rapid dispatch of this information to me for this article. Sue was also able to send a photograph of the original Blacksmith shop, still standing on the town green. The town, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your view point, uses it for storage at this time. Sue also provided the ad pictured below. On behalf of the Tidewater Blacksmith’s Guild Thank You! Mr. & Mrs. Zeno for your donation of these hand forged tools by your Grandfather: Edson Wisell.

Above:an ad for Edson Wisell’s Blacksmith Shop posted

 in the Addison County Gazetteer & Directory, 1881 -. 1882

Edson Wisell’s Blacksmith Shop, pictured to the right. 
                                                                                                  

 Vince Nakovics turns the Tool Board over to Tim Edney,                                                                                                                                                                                                   President of TBG on behalf of Mr. & Mrs. William Zeno.

Safety, Safety, Safety:

     This is a true story. Do not attempt this as this stunt was performed by the “Original Tuff Guy”.                                                                         One afternoon we had a pump go bad at work. A person, who remains unnamed, was in a large hurry, and heating a shaft to get a bearing off. Three of us were watching. Keep in mind; I said this person was in a large hurry. When the shaft was glowing red before anyone could move this person reached over and picked the shaft up with his bare hand! It didn't take him long to look at it! He walked around the rest of the day with a frozen water bottle in his hand. He said he slept with one all night. Unbelievably the next morning his hand wasn't even red.                                                                He told us later that "If you’re gonna be stupid you got to be tuff" . --
Travis Covington

Ouch That Really Hurt!!!!
By Vince Nakovics

Well let me tell you a story about a man named Vin, who went to work one day just to weld a thing or two, He just changed his shoes about 4 months prior, and rearranged his work bench two months prior. He was a welding fast and furious; just to make the day productive, when it hit him that something was a miss! Hopping and yelling he discovered that those 6 inch tie up sneaker type, steel toe hiking type shoes didn’t have a leather tongue on them. Nope, they didn’t and sure as Mom’s pie the special hiking socks made of the finest man made poly something and that tongue will melt really fast! Faster than you can get to the larger than life piece of hot slag that zinged through that tongue and sock only to settle between his toes! Ooooouccchhh! Obviously a hot time was had.                                                                                                                                                                    Seriously several things contributed to this embarrassing injury, all of which should have been avoided. The boots and the socks are obvious and there are many reasons that I had switched, weight and I don’t do welding every day and I have welded on and off with sneakers on for years in a different setting. Well after looking at my sneakers, I have bought the same ones for few years now; I realized they are all leather. Duh! Another factor that really changed the risks of getting burnt wasn’t as obvious until after the fact. I had changed the location of my welding station to facilitate better exhaust ventilation. This move changed the way I stood at the vise that I use for almost all of my welding. I stood with my right foot directly underneath the vice instead of to the side as I had at the old station. This simple change of position, assured that a problem of some sort as all the slag and sparks followed gravity to its natural resting spot on the ground and my foot.                                                                                                                                                                  Luckily it was not all that severe and I have now changed back to my old standby of 30 years, steel toes, full leather and electrically safe boots. Heavier, yeah, but I don’t have to worry about cinders and slag anymore. I wanted to share this tale of woe so that you can have one more thing to remind you of why the proper personal protective gear is so important, even if you don’t do it every day.

This picture was taken about a week and a half after I burned myself. Initially the burn areas were all black. It was painful for about three weeks and healed completely in about 2 months.

2007 Scholarship Report

Making Woodworking Tools

John C. Campbell Folk School

October 14-20, 2007

I attended this class as a part of the Guild's scholarship program and want to thank the Guild for awarding me that opportunity. It was a great experience and would encourage others to seek opportunities to either apply for the Guild scholarship or attend The Folk School on their own.

The focus of the class was the making of wood working tools of various types with a significant emphasis on the properties and heat treatment of various steels which are used in tool making.

The primary instructor was Dave Smucker,a blacksmith and former metals engineer at Alcoa. He also lives in Brasstown. The assistant instructor was Anthony Goodrum, a blacksmith from Irvington, AL. These two instructors did a great job in their instruction and also providing individual attention to the students who wanted or needed special help because of the project or experience level. They both created a relaxed atmosphere for learning.

 We had 11 students in our class that came from as far away as Oregon and New York. The skill levels of the students ranged from Intermediate level blacksmith to beginner.

 Each day's classes started at 9 AM and generally ran until 9PM.The classes were structured so that there were practical smithing exercises as well as instructional periods on the topic of the day.

The first day or so was a refresher and warm up period to learn and/or refine our existing skills by making tapers and twists and hooks out of mild steel.

There was a significant emphasis on safety for the blacksmith. Fire management was reviewed there was discussion about the controversial issue of whether to put water on coal in the forge. We discussed this issue at length and the two primary concerns seemed to be loss of BTU's in the fire and the cracking of firepots. In the end it was agreed that the adding of water actually made better coke since gases and other impurities were expelled prior to actual coke combustion. The cracking of fire pots is a universal problem and it seemed that certain firepots eventually cracked regardless of the water due to different thicknesses in the firepot casting or the incorrect preparation of the forge pots on cast rivet type forges.

Our first projects using hardening steel was to forge, harden and finish a cold chisel, a punch and a scratch awl out of O-1 steel. We went through the process of forging, normalizing, bringing to critical temperature, quenching in oil and then tempering. In making the smaller tools we heated the tools and drew the temper to color. We also used a tempering plate to draw the temper colors on small items.

Temper plate

In our other projects we generally used an oven for tempering according to charts and procedures provided in the attachments. (These attachments also give the properties and specifications for the other steels we discussed and worked with.) I found it really important in all the exercises to make sure I paid attention to the "critical" temperatures prior to quenching, if not getting an item too hot resulted most times in cracking when quenched. We also discussed the importance of paying attention to both temper temperatures and times. Dave demonstrated that the physical structure of the steel did change if we left the item in the oven longer than specified and even though it was at a correct temperature, regardless of steel type.

From strictly a tool making perspective, Anthony suggested that we form the points of our center punches to a shape other than just a conical shape. His point was that, when using a conically shaped center punch to mark a spot for punching after heating, many times the punch mark was hard to see in the heat. I made mine square then drew to a pyramid point and amazingly you really could see the mark better in the heat.

                                                      Sample tools:            

Our next projects were the making of a set of wood chisels drawn from a  3/4" piece of O-1 round stock

 Thanks goodness that we had access to power hammers in the shop, which quickened the drawing and shaping process. Once drawn out to a rough shape final shaping was done by hand and then the tang was set and drawn out. The next steps were normalizing, rough grinding, filing /sanding, rough sharpening, flattening, ,heating to critical temperature , quenching ,tempering and final sharpening .As much care as we exercised in the grinding and sanding stages it was amazing the amount of flattening of the surfaces left to be done. We did our flattening on a lapping stone which was a 1'x1' piece of polished marble tile mounted on a plywood back and our abrasive was emory cloth held to the marble by the surface tension of the water being used. It is an inexpensive neat device, which surely improved tool quality. Anyone wanting to make quality tools should have one in their shop. I now have one in mine.

The final stage was making handles and ferrules for the chisels. Dave showed us how to make great handles with fitted ferrules without the need for a lathe.

During the last part of the week our projects were of our own choosing. Some students chose to make draw knives, some others made more chisels, some made specialty tools specifically for their home shops and I along with a couple of others chose to make small hand adzes from claw hammer heads.

In the classroom, Dave and Anthony tested our skills at identifying various steel types and properties by performing , the spark test, file test, break test before and after heat treating, quenching and tempering. We learned that the best way to accurately identify tool steels is to mark the types when purchased. Unless you are a metallurgist it is extremely difficult to identify certain types of steels under the best of conditions. 

Our Class

We finished the week with a closing ceremony and had the opportunity to display the items we had made to the entire student body.

The class was fun and a great learning opportunity. The school itself is a wonderful experience regardless of the class taken. I hope to be able attend again in the future.

Many thanks to TBG, the Instructors - Dave and Anthony and The School.

Due to the size and abundant information in the attachments that Vince mentions in his report on annealing, normalizing, tempering steel and other topics have been posted to our website; http//tidewaterblacksmiths.com. There you will find a link to these articles under Tips and Techniques. 
 

John C. Campbell Folk School course catalog can be seen at http//:www.folkschool.org

Join Today! Keep the Tradition Alive!

 Blacksmith’s Near and Far: This is what I hope to be a continuing article from Blacksmith’s some nearer and some farther away. The idea being to hear what is going on in the world of Blacksmithing from as many different view points as possible. Each Blacksmith will answer the same 7 questions and the answers may be as long or short as the Smith desires. This month I am very excited to have been able to begin this series with:

Peat Oberon 

  Blacksmith and Teacher from England.

 Visit Peat Oberon’s website at: http://www.school-of-blacksmithing.co.uk

Peat Oberon is an artist blacksmith based at a forge in the grounds of Preston Hall Museum near Stockton-on-Tees in the North-East of England. In his former career as a schoolteacher he taught various crafts subjects for 15 years before becoming a full-time blacksmith in 1980. Since then he has earned his living and an esteemed reputation producing a wealth of architectural, sculptural and decorative ironwork.
These questions were emailed to Peat Oberon so that he could answer them as he wished at his leisure. I did not try to break up his answers to meet my questions so what you are reading is exactly what he submitted in response to my request for which I am very appreciative of his time and consideration that he provided. Vince Nakovics

1. What was your very first blacksmithing experience?

My first experience was at a Teacher Training College (Venerable Bede, at Durham University, in 1962), where I studied “Craft” which was already being phased out of schools. I caught ‘The Disease’ immediately, though I did enjoy the silversmithing and cabinet making, and which taught me an appreciation of fine craftsmanship in all genres.

2. What made you think “I would like to be a full time Blacksmith?”

3. What was your background prior to becoming a full time Smith?

4. There is often much discussion about traditional methods versus modern methods and the merits that go with both. How do you, personally define the difference?

5. This is a question with several parts on some of your favorite tools if you have one or several. Which hammer style do you prefer? How much does it weigh? How big is the anvil that you use most? What special tools do you use on a regular basis?

6. What is your advice/recommendations to Smiths thinking about going full time?

7. What do you get out of being a Blacksmith?

The spin off from college was a job in teaching, and as previously mentioned, ‘craft’ was being phased out, and its place taken by Engineering and subsequently Design and Technology. This left an enormous gap in my life, having wanted to pursue excellence and fine techniques, which, it seemed to me, were of little importance in the new regime. Therefore I did what I could in spare time to improve my blacksmithing skills – making brackets, pub signs, house names, etc. for a hobby. An article in my newspaper in 1974, about the migration of professionals towards “The crafts”, in seeking more job-satisfaction in return for a lower standard of living, made me think seriously about smithing for a living. As I had 4 kids, a wife and a mortgage to support, it was out of the question at the time. There had been terrible inflation during this period, and I had been increasing my mortgage payments. At the same time, a blacksmiths shop was created in a local museum, in a ‘Victorian’ street in 1972, and I had been pestering the museum to let me go in and ‘play’. It took me 6 years before they let me in, but when they did, I showed them that I could do it, and could communicate with the visitors. In 1980, I paid off the house, and left teaching.

My first job after leaving school was an apprenticeship at Dorman, Long & co. as a mechanical engineering draughtsman. My inability to master math had been overlooked in my selection (father pushed me), and ultimately it hit me in the face, telling me that the others in the same situation were growing old rapidly with frustration. I retired at 22 and trained as a teacher.

I like both traditional and modern, though I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the latter is an excuse for poor workmanship. Traditional work requires much study of the forms and methods of the past, and to do it with conviction needs much practice and time to acquire the necessary skills. Good modern work requires a vivid imagination, which is not the privilege of everybody. The ability to take risks, and occasionally to have one’s hopes dashed, is part of the job. Otherwise, one produces mundane mish-mash, not worthy of a second glance. It’s hard to be good at anything, but concert pianists get more money for being good.

I have been in ‘my’ shop in the museum for nearly 30 years. During that time I must have spent almost 3 years making tools. The place is full of them. I have a rack at arm’s length with hammers: a home-made cross-pein about 5lb, a Peddinghaus 2kg (4 ½ lb), a Peddinghaus 1.5kg (3 ¼), P 1kg, 800g, 600g and 400g, and a 2lb made by my friend Stan Gregory with a ¾” cross pein for getting inside radii. Also, in various parts of the forge, I have 14lb, 10lb and 7lb sledges and fore hammers, and 8 different leaf hammers. All of these have their uses, and thus have shiny faces. I use, for general forging, the 1.5kg and the 1kg, though, as time overtakes me, I do find that my arm gets tired with the bigger one sooner nowadays. I also have a Sahinler 50kg, which I bought in 1990 when something went haywire and I made a profit! Obviously, I use that whenever possible, and I have also made quite a few special tools for it. I have no preference for hammer style. To have a selection of weights for use at the appropriate time is important to me. There are ball-faces and barrel-shaped ones available too.

The anvil I use most was given to the museum when they were collecting shops and contents to make the Victorian street, about 1970. It was bought in 1942 by Ernie Alsopp, the blacksmith of Crathorne, North Yorkshire, which is 5 miles from Eaglescliffe, County Durham, where the Preston Hall Museum is situated. (The boundary between Yorkshire and Durham is the River Tees, which forms the border of the Preston Park). It weighs 5cwt (560lb), and I had it machined flat when I knew I was going to be there ‘for some time’. The face is imperceptibly cracked in two places, which, mercifully, quiets it noticeably.

Special tools in use are the 50kg hammer and the No.6 deep-throat flypress mainly. There are racks and racks of special jigs for use on the flypress, and many more thrown under benches – lost. If I think that there will be several components to be made the same, I will make a jig. Any more than 5 makes it worth while. I have great fun designing and making jigs – good mental exercise. (I do prefer ‘someone else’ to then do the work). Finally: there’s a conundrum: “how do you become a wealthy blacksmith?” Answer: “start by being a VERY wealthy blacksmith”. There ARE other ways to lose money, such as farming, but I don’t know if they are as enjoyable as smithing. Advice: make sure you have SOME cushion behind you (I had paid off my house). Make sure you know how to do quite a lot of techniques. Preferably work with somebody else more experienced than you, who is willing to show you ‘the ropes’, not only techniques, but book keeping. Do your homework regarding marketing and likelihood of actually being able to sell your wares. Try to find a gap in the market. Try to find some ‘bread and butter’ work which comes in regularly. It’s usually boring or otherwise somewhat unpleasant, but in comes boring old money. Try to make time for ‘pushing the frontiers’, acquiring new techniques and tricks which will make YOUR work more desirable.

BE PATIENT.

I get out of blacksmithing lots and lots of things, but I have put into blacksmithing lots and lots of things as well. I have spent years of unproductive time practicing techniques in many different facets of moving hot metal (and cold metal). I have got off the gluteus maximus and gone to meetings all over Britain and Europe – in many cases demonstrating, and winning competitions – and, perhaps more importantly, meeting smiths from all over the world, who have widened my perception of the human race and given me an understanding of other countries which only comes from talking to the natives. I have been to places and met people which, in a teaching career, would not have been in the thought process. My horizons have been broadened by it. And now, by the new medium of email, I spend hours in my attic talking to the rest of the world.

 Once again a world of Thanks to our fellow Blacksmith Peat Oberon of Stockton – On – Trees in England. Checkout his website                                          http://www.school-of-blacksmithing.co.uk.

Don’t forget to support those suppliers that support our Guild.

http://www.blacksmithsupply.com/

Tips and Techniques
This months comes from an issue of the Florida Clinker Breaker, Florida Artist Blacksmith Association. Copyright S.A. Bloom.

Editor’s Note:  This is our first monthly edition and I encourage each and every one of you to submit suggestions, articles and items of interest to me on a regular basis. I especially want those Safety stories of which there are many that we have either been involved in or know the people involved in. I hope that you enjoy this edition and I look forward to publishing many more for you.
Vince Nakovics

Tidewater Blacksmiths Guild Mission Statement
“The Tidewater Blacksmiths Guild is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the craft of Blacksmithing and to increasing the public awareness of the history of Blacksmithing while at the same time demonstrating that in this world, things hand made still exist and remain objects of art”

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