Aug. 17, 2011 - Nauvoo Tour - Blacksmith Shop
The blacksmith of Nauvoo would make nails...
But he could also make chains, meathooks, even a metal basket for the homemaker to store her milk bottles in as she let down the milk bottle into a stream to keep it cool -- a frontier version of the refrigerator.
Our narrator heated his forge with a small electric fan.
But he pointed out how original Nauvoo blacksmiths used a bellows like this one.
One job for the blacksmith was shoeing the oxen the saints used to pull the wagons west. A problem they had with the procedure is when they lifted the oxen's legs, they would simply lay down or roll over. To keep them from doing this, the blacksmith used a framework of timbers to support and hold the ox. The missionary narrator displayed a model of that frame.
After heating some bar stock, he pounded the hot iron into a semi-circle using a hammer.
Then he flattened it, clamped it in a vice, and bent the ends forming a tiny horseshoe. He said a horseshoe this small was too little to make holes in so he used a punch to indent marks in the hot iron.
After re-heating it to open the metal's "pores" to soak up oil, he dropped the horseshoe in hot linseed oil to coat it with rust protection then into cold water to temper and seal it.
After we left the blacksmith shop we drove down to the water's edge where I got a good photo of some of those shallow water plants we had seen so much of. In the distance are the American lotus plants. they looked like water lillies to us. Nearer were some sort of purple flower. I do not know what it is and I couldn't get close enough to smell it.
But he could also make chains, meathooks, even a metal basket for the homemaker to store her milk bottles in as she let down the milk bottle into a stream to keep it cool -- a frontier version of the refrigerator.
Our narrator heated his forge with a small electric fan.
But he pointed out how original Nauvoo blacksmiths used a bellows like this one.
One job for the blacksmith was shoeing the oxen the saints used to pull the wagons west. A problem they had with the procedure is when they lifted the oxen's legs, they would simply lay down or roll over. To keep them from doing this, the blacksmith used a framework of timbers to support and hold the ox. The missionary narrator displayed a model of that frame.
After heating some bar stock, he pounded the hot iron into a semi-circle using a hammer.
Then he flattened it, clamped it in a vice, and bent the ends forming a tiny horseshoe. He said a horseshoe this small was too little to make holes in so he used a punch to indent marks in the hot iron.
After re-heating it to open the metal's "pores" to soak up oil, he dropped the horseshoe in hot linseed oil to coat it with rust protection then into cold water to temper and seal it.
After we left the blacksmith shop we drove down to the water's edge where I got a good photo of some of those shallow water plants we had seen so much of. In the distance are the American lotus plants. they looked like water lillies to us. Nearer were some sort of purple flower. I do not know what it is and I couldn't get close enough to smell it.