Blacksmith Shop Restoration

[Fratty]

I am president of the Raymond-Casco Historical Society. We are in the beginning stages of moving and restoring a shop that has been in existence since the late 1700’s. It is our intention to bring it back to a working shop. Since we are new to this we may need some help. Would you look at the enclosed video and give me some feedback?

 https://vimeo.com/655885442

Thanks

[Stash]

Hey Fratty- welcome aboard. Wow- that looks like a real challenge, but also a lot of fun. If I was in the area I would surely want to be part of the project. Obviously, the first phase is moving and restoring the structure and salvaging anything blacksmith- related. Lots of info on this site although not as much from the time period you are aiming for, but it might give you a start. It would probably help to visit old restored or recreated forges to get an idea of the setup ,for example Sturbridge Village, Williamsburg and places like that. The people there might also be a good resource for you. Anyway, those were just a few initial thoughts. Please keep updating your progress, and if you find something you can't identify, reach out to us. I'd enjoy watching this project come to life.

Steve

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

What a great endeavor I wish I were closer as I would love to be involved. Thank you for the video it was enjoyable to watch and I learned some things from it. Never heard of having a sling to shoe oxen. I wish you all the best in getting this off the ground.

[Frosty]

That's a worthwhile project, maybe someday the wife and I will be close enough to visit and maybe even be a living history blacksmith for a little while.

What sort of feedback are you looking for? Do you have any still pics of the shop in it's day? Maybe contemporary news paper articles and pics? 

That level and type of blacksmithing is out of my league but a shop is a shop. If we know what his bread and butter jobs were they would dictate aspects of the workspace and tool arrangement. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

First of all: is your intention to restore it as a museum exhibit or to restore it to working condition---which may involve replacing a lot of original materials that no longer are competent for the stresses involved in actual work?

Second as a shop that has been around a long time; what time period are you going to restore it too?  (The narrator keeps talking about fixing things in the shop; earlier times *making* things would be a major part of the shop.  As more and more factory stuff crept in fixing became more and more important as well as the "farm support tasks".)

It needs a through cleaning and the reasoned choice about what goes back into it. Dumping all "blacksmith made clutter" back into it may interfere with how it looked when being used---the film will help you there!  Perhaps an exhibit outside of the shop of "Blacksmith Made/Repaired objects can then lead into the actual "working" shop.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

“Blacksmith made clutter” What’s that?

My shop only has precious an useful stuff in it, an everything has its own home, I would never clutter my shop!  Lol

I agree with Irondragon! That ox sling is pretty cool,

my father told me I had a great great grandpa who raised, trained and sold ox teams but I didn’t know that they shoed them like they did horses, 

[ThomasPowers]

The tendency to throw anything that looks forged into the "historic" shop soon filling it beyond usability.  I was associated with a historic farm at one time that was quite well done (at that time.)  They had a small "rivet forge" for doing simple repairs but no more as a large professional blacksmith shop had been 2 miles down the road and so would have been used for most smithing jobs.

It's part of the "Just because you can; doesn't mean you should!"