Chip McCoy

Thanks all for the help! I'd googled blacksmith tools for several hours and hadn't found anything remotely similar. I'll check out Sears Roebuck as suggested. The shop is located near a brook in a hillside about 150' from the original house. My father always pointed to the picture below and said, "that's where the two story blacksmith shop was..." In a number of the pictures below you can match up the elm and maple stumps on the left and right respectively. I'm down 20 courses of the three stacked stone walls and haven't gotten to the floor yet. I'm using a 1/2" hardware cloth sieve to go thru all the dirt and keeping track of where in the dig I find items. I've found one small piece of coal, a 6" knife with a wooden handle, 100+ nails, hooks, flat stock with holes--might have been for making nails. An item probably removed when the building fell in was the 6" vise pictured below which I use regularly. Profile updated... Daswulf, I'm in Independence Township, Beaver County about 10 miles west of the airport. Folks have had more luck finding arrowheads than metal items lately.

Excavating stone blacksmith shop on our farm near Pittsburgh, PA. My 3x great grandfather was a farmer and blacksmith. In addition to many nails, hinges, hooks and a wooden knife, just found a metal form of some sort. Shop was probably used from 1830-1900.