Cool historical Blacksmith gear

[Lou L]

So, recently I’ve made a connection with a local guild of tool collectors.  One of their members is a curator/officer of the Simsbury Historical Society near me.  He has an enormous tool collection that started when he was 10 years old (and is willing to part with some of his blacksmithing collection!).  His personal collection has fully outfitted a blacksmithing display at the society but they are intent upon creating a working blacksmithing shop out of an old barn they may be acquiring.  He is offering me and anyone I know the opportunity to help design and plan the shop and displays as well as to use the shop and sell goods out of it (sharing profits with the society).   They are looking at spending 60K on this building project....this town has serious money.  

Aside from this cool connection I’ve made I wanted to share something from Joe’s collection I saw today.  It is apparently a blacksmith apprentices work station for making nails.  The hardy stump originally had a nail header on it.  He got it with a small stake anvil instead.  I think it’s a pretty cool piece of blacksmithing history.

 

Just thought some might appreciate this,

Lou

[SFC Snuffy]

Wow, Lou, that's a really fantastic opportunity. Thanks for sharing the good news and the cool photo. I'd love to see some more pictures of the collection. Do they have a website?

[Lou L]

Joe's collection wouldn’t be on the website.  It is packed into storage containers for the most part.  I haven’t seen it yet but I have the invitation.

[JHCC]

That’s very cool. 

[Chris Williams]

I'm not saying it isn't a nail making bench, but it looks just like a scythe peening bench, too. 

 

http://wrenwoodmeadow.blogspot.com/2016/08/haymaking-2016-good-to-see-meadow.html?m=1

[HojPoj]

15 hours ago, Blue Duck Forge said:

...but it looks just like a scythe peening bench, too. 

 

Huh, most of the scythe peening anvils I've seen look like a bottom fuller.  Learn something new everyday.

[JHCC]

Same here. Now that I think of it, most of those were portable ones that one would hammer into a stump for ad hoc sharpening, appropriate for one or two reapers. However, before Rev. Patrick Bell invented the reaper machine, you'd need large numbers of reapers to harvest a large crop (as well as workers to bind and stack the sheaves), and it would make sense to have a dedicated scythe maintenance person with such a bench.

[ThomasPowers]

Sand and oil and a hone stick was common for each worker too.

[JHCC]

Or either a whetstone or a finger steel, depending on place and period.

[Chris Williams]

2 hours ago, HojPoj said:

Huh, most of the scythe peening anvils I've seen look like a bottom fuller.  Learn something new everyday.

If you'll type "scythe peening anvil" into your favorite search engine and look at images, you will find 3 general types. One is a more modern design with a cap that fits over a central cylinder; we'll ignore that one for this discussion. The other two types are either flat top (often a slight radius) or a fuller shape. The hammer used is the opposite of the anvil - cross-peen on flat or flat on fuller (think "peen"). 

You will notice on the taller anvils that the spike sometimes has cross-pieces a little ways up from the bottom. These cross pieces provide a stop when using the anvil in the dirt between one's legs. The short anvils are driven into a stump or peening bench. 

Edited October 30, 2018 by Blue Duck Forge
Clarified fuller shape = peen for these peening anvils

[ThomasPowers]

You may want to compare that bench with the nailmaking bench in Sloane's "A Museum of Early American Tools".

Looking at both of them I wonder if that scythe bench was a back derivation. (Unfortunately very common in living history contexts; folks try to use modern interpretations on period scenarios.  Roy Underhill mentions early builders at Colonial Williamsburg toe nailing beams using trunnels as that is what they did currently only using nails and "back then they used wooden pegs" and so...)

[JHCC]

I can see the bench in the OP being a nailer's bench, especially with that tray around the stump. No need for that in a mowing context.

[Marc1]

I grew up on an orchard and we sharpened the scythe every day on a peening anvil and a seat just like that one. On that particular one you use the cross peen hammer, on the smaller wedged shaped ones  just a flat hammer. If you google Picard scythe anvil you will find both kinds. The flat anvil is useful to flatten a bent edge and also easier to use than the wedge shaped peening anvil since it is easier to see what you are doing

Picard was the prevalent brand sold  to a point that Spanish speaking countries call the tool "Picador", and the action of peening the scythe, "picar". 

[Steamboat]

The concept of a workstation/workbench with interchangeable accessories, rather than a single-purpose "dedicated" workstation, may have been a fairly common adaptation encouraged by the need or desire for more economical use of physical or economic resources, and perhaps also by the lack of adequate available space to accommodate multiple workstations, the latter situation being a hugely important factor in some of my own tool designs. When winter drives certain activities indoors, space often comes at a premium.

Equipped with the anvil shown in Lou’s original post photos, the workstation certainly could have been used for peening scythes or other blade-type tools.

Equipped with a nail-header, as Lou said it “originally” came with (and the existing wooden tray that JHCC mentioned), it could have been used for that phase of the nail-making process.

Other types of stake anvils made for inserting in stumps/posts could have added other functions to the repertoire of possibilities.

This thread in general, plus a comment by Thomas about the potential for problems in interpretation, has prompted me to recall some interpretation issues that I’ve run across in the past when I’ve been investigating or excavating historic sites. That might be a subject suited to a thread of its own, however, so I’ll give it some thought before rambling on about it here.

By the way, it looks like the historical reenactor in the video may have forgotten to remove her wristwatch, unless it’s actually a bracelet that just happens to look like a Timex.

Al (Steamboat)

[ThomasPowers]

Another modifying aspect might be the number of people working at the same time in a shop. The American "frontier" culture warps our viewpoint on how things might be handled in more "built up" places.  A historical farm in Ohio we used to visit had a small blacksmithing set up---but mentioned that it was for simple repairs and any major work went to the professional smith 2 miles down the road.

[Steamboat]

4 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Another modifying aspect might be the number of people working at the same time in a shop.

True.

Portability for field use is yet another factor that could promote the use of interchangeable accessories for a workbench/workstation, so as to avoid having to lug around too many workstations.

Al (Steamboat)