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Experience the Life
: Trades
: Blacksmith
In a scene from Colonial Williamsburg's
Electronic Field Trip "A Day in the Life," an apprentice
learns the blacksmithing trade.
Click image to enlarge |
Items made for homes and other tradesmen
Blacksmiths in Williamsburg fashioned items from iron and steel
for the their fellow tradesmen to use in their work and also made
things for household use.
Among the tools blacksmiths used were the following:
- forge
- anvil
- hammer
- tongs
- vise
- file
New and repaired items kept shop busy
With
forge and anvil, hammer and tongs, blacksmiths made agricultural
tools for farmers and iron rims for wheelwrights. They also repaired
many iron objects used by Williamsburg residents. Their skills with
vise and file served customers as diverse as the miller, saddler,
coachmaker, and planter.
Flames, heat, smoke, and noise contribute
to the blacksmith's challenging work environment.
Click image to enlarge |
For the householder, blacksmiths cast, bent, welded, and riveted
fireplace racks, andirons, pothooks, locks, utensils, and decorative
wrought iron.
Coal fire heated iron bars
A blacksmith's forge, like those at the James Anderson Blacksmith
Shop, consisted of a raised brick hearth outfitted with bellows
to feed its soft-coal fire and a hood to carry away the smoke. The
forge heated bars of iron yellow-hot. With his journeymen and apprentices,
the blacksmith used sledges weighing as much as 12 pounds to hammer
the heated bars into various shapes.
From steel, he made tempered cutting edges for axes and smooth
faces for special hammers.
For further reading:
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Historic Triangle