Steamboat

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't had much luck with deeds or probate records, but a neighbor who has been working in reorganizing the town archives may be helpful in finding documents that never made their way to the county recorder's office. I'm also trying to get a descendant of an early owner to check their personal records. I won't go into detail at this time, but the census records really didn't shed any light on the situation (so far), due to several factors that would take a while to describe, such as town ownership of the property, the home's function as a parsonage for the town meetinghouse, etc. I think the best bet would be any documents that may have been hiding in the town archives or documents from the descendants of early owners. This might seem a bit off topic, perhaps, but not totally, since the home's history helps establish dates for determining stylistic motifs for the hardware that I'd like to reproduce. I can duplicate existing original hardware, but in some cases there may be no original remaining pieces of certain items, in which case it's important to be able to refer to known styles for a specific period for recreating those pieces.

Thanks for the welcome, and good suggestion. We actually did some metal detecting around the house when we were restoring the foundation, since we figured that the backhoe work around the foundation would destroy any location context of things found in the soil, and so I did some quick 'emergency' detecting with my old Tesoro unit to see if I could at least establish some accurate location data for some artifacts before the backhoe work began. We found a pretty good-sized pile of iron objects, pretty much all utilitarian stuff like chain links, broken hooks, a lock, broken tools, etc., but only two coins, and those were later (mid 1800s) and very near the surface. One of the coins might be worth about 50 dollars, so maybe dinner for two. I keep hoping to stumble across an old "fencepost safe" somewhere.

Like you, Thomas, I get really involved with the past. I went back to school later in life and did my grad work in historical archaeology, concentrating on the ancient Near East, and did a couple of seasons of excavation work on the Temple of the Winged Lions at the Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan, but haven't worked in that region for some time. I did contract archaeology for a while in Utah, before going back to teaching in the communcation field, and now that I'm retired, I still get involved on a volunteer basis in local archaeology projects, both historical and prehistoric. Creating Renaissance cooking gear sounds like an intriguing area for a blacksmith. I would think it would require a good deal of research. On the subject of historical cooking, my wife attended a "Colonial Cooking" workshop at Old Sturbridge Village a couple of years ago and had a great time. She may do it again sometime. One of the larger remaining projects in the restoration of our old house is to rebuild the original kitchen fireplace, with its accompanying beehive oven (which could involve blacksmithing). Unfortunately, the original kitchen fireplace had fallen down before we bought the house, but we have restored the other four fireplaces to good working order. You are correct that dendrochronology might be able to provide at least a terminus post quem on our house, but of course there are some caveats for secure dating of the structure, such as the possibility that some trees may have been felled a number of years before being used in the house construction, or if an earlier structure had been torn down and the lumber recycled in our house, although I haven't seen any signs of that. I like old cars, too. I've been involved in automotive restoration work for years. Currently restoring a 1954 Dodge M37.

Thanks for the link, Lou. The Williamsburg Blacksmiths catalog has some really good examples of repro work. There are a number of pieces in their catalog that very closely resemble hardware and fixtures in our house. Much of their catalog hardware is earlier, but it crosses over into the Federal era as well. We 'think' that our house was built sometime between 1797 and 1805, but documentation is sparse, so we have to rely primarily upon the home's physical features and local oral tradition for dating purposes.

Thanks for the welcoming words. I think that as my better half gets into blacksmithing she'll want to join the IFI forum. She's really quite artistic, and I think that she'd adapt well to working with iron. I'll mention that Frosty invited her personally. I've read through many posts in the gas forge section of the forum already, as well as several other areas, and have gotten a number of very good ideas. I've been checking it regularly. You should be seeing some project posts from me before too long. I seem to recall checking out the Schiffer's book some years ago from a library before I started the current house project. I'll have to revisit that one and also look into the Lindsay book as well, which I'm not familiar with. Thanks for the suggestions!

Yes! I picked up a nice used copy of Early American Wrought Iron, Three Volumes in One a few years back. It's a really wonderful reference book...tons of well-executed illustrations and some valuable provenance information as well. I'd like to produce some highly accurate reproduction hardware. As to material, sometime in the next couple of weeks I hope to stop by the New England School of Metalwork and see if I can purchase some wrought iron bar stock that they pulled out of an old mill in Lewiston. I haven't worked much with real wrought iron...just a few pieces a long time ago, but I'm looking forward to working with it again.

Hello everyone, Long ago...about when the discovery of fire made mastodon steaks less chewy, and the first Pong game appeared in the local pub...I took a couple of evening courses in blacksmithing from a talented smith whose name has faded in memory, but whose lessons have remained with me...pretty much, anyway. It was great fun, but life and other projects intervened, so I haven’t stood in front of a forge for a while, although I’ve been involved with other technical pursuits requiring skills, knowledge, equipment, etc., that should cross over quite well into the realm of hot iron. My renewed interest in blacksmithing stems from two sources. The first is the gradual (as time and budget allow) restoration of a 225-year-old house, which has a good deal of hand-wrought hardware, but is missing a number of items ranging from shutter hooks to andirons, fireplace cranes, light fixtures, etc. I’d like to create authentic-looking reproduction hardware that would be compatible with the home’s Federal-period style. As to the other stimulus, my wife recently attended a blacksmithing workshop, which got her fired up, so to speak, about the hot metal scene, so I said I’d build a forge for her (which I also plan to use). We decided that the spousal forge would be of the propane persuasion. My equipment and tools are currently divided between our restoration project house and our ‘regular’ home in Brunswick, but I've been getting things together on the forge project, which I plan to post in the Gas Forges section. I’ve been building upon my existing knowledge by researching gas forges via books, articles, trade pubs, individuals, and of course this forum, which is a very good source of information, with informed members who actually agree on things...pretty often, at least. I’m looking forward to some helpful discussions. I’m good at listening to advice, and I take criticism well as long as it’s constructive and not mean spirited. That said, I also have a tendency to question what I would call “popular wisdom” and have often strayed from the straight and narrow path to experiment with non-conforming ideas and approaches, some of which have actually worked very well...others, well, let's just say they were educational. I also hope to draw on my varied background (one might say my “checkered past”) to contribute to the communal knowledge base from time to time. By the way, my “Steamboat” moniker stems from my interest in 18th and 19th century steam technology. Cheers, Steamboat