Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009

Smithton Historical Society looking for anvil to go with blacksmith tools

The Smithton Historical Society recently received a donation of blacksmith shop tools from Judy Evans, the daughter of Gilbert Fischer who had a shop on his St. Clair County farm.

Bill Freeman said the society has hopes of establishing an exhibit of the tools complete with a re-created blacksmith shop. One of the first steps they have taken is to get an expert to tell them what they have and whether it is worth anything.

Russell Schleicher, of Belleville, a blacksmith and enthusiast of all things involved in blacksmithing, took a look at their collection and gave his opinion.

The verdict?

"You got a lot of good stuff here," Schleicher said. "This is really a conglomeration."

Even though the collection did not include an anvil, it did have some of the tools that fit on an anvil, such as chisels and splitters that would slide into the hardy hole, a small square hole in anvils used to support such tools.

"You have a cone mandrel and they're harder to find than anvils," Schleicher said.

The mandrel is a steel cone, about 12 inches across at the base and gradually tapering to a blunt point about 48 inches tall. It was used a lot for wagon wheel manufacturing, he said.

The jumbled lot of tools also included a blower for stoking a fire.

"Sears used to sell a lot of these," Schleicher said. "Usually they were on dirt floors and the legs would rot off."

He estimated that the handcranked blower was at least 100 years old. He pulled several sets of tongs from the jumble.

"What happened to most tongs is that they're hanging on restaurant walls," he said.

He pointed out some chisels with homemade metal handles that he said were dangerous because the metal would chip and fly off.

"That's how all those guys lost an eye," he said. "They used anything for a handle."

He said there were hot cutters, cold cutters, punches, rivet sets, a post vice, a drill and a bag of blacksmith coal and some things he couldn't identify in the donation.

"A lot of this stuff was made for special applications," he said.

Society members have a lot of questions about what they can do to rebuild the shop, Freeman said. They include whether the brick hearth can be moved, what they might have missed in their first trip to pick up tools and how to proceed in designing a display.

"We'll go back and take another look at the shop," Freeman said.

Schleicher said he would be glad to go along to advise them. Freeman said the society will be on the lookout for more donations, particularly an anvil.

"We would preserve everything for posterity," he said.

For more information you can call Freeman at 473-3446 or Bill Weber at 234-5943.