[Music] From belt buckles to horseshoes, nails, tools, and wagon repair, growing communities in the frontier high plains depended on the hammer and forge of the local blacksmith.

[Music] We're in Tribune, Kansas, in extreme western Kansas and Greeley County.

And we're talking to Donald Walter today, who is a traditional blacksmith and has demonstrated at various events throughout western Kansas and Colorado.

He does it the old-fashioned way.

You don't see a trip hammer in here to pound stuff.

He uses a hammer.

Blacksmith's shop had the hammer ringing a lot throughout the town.

You always knew where they were because there was a smell of the burning coal and the hammering.

And blacksmiths were very important in all towns and even small towns.

And even a lot of the farmers did blacksmithing inside.

But you had blacksmith shops in the towns, but a lot of times on the farms, I'd noticed in my childhood where they would do simple blacksmithing things to repair farm implements and stuff.

But sparks flew on it and you had to have a source of coal.

You could use wood to burn, but it took a whole lot of wood to... Charcoal.

Yeah, it wood reduced down to charcoal.

So with that, where do you get your coal for this?

Most of this coal comes from Pennsylvania.

It is what they call nut coal.

Your coal fires are an awful lot hotter.

This is just seven times hotter than a regular campfire.

Well, right now I'm bringing this iron up to plastic stage.

And you can see how hot it is.

And we'll work that down.

[hammering] I know blacksmiths did everything.

Anything made of metal.

Belt buckles, your shoe buckles, your hasps, your hinges.

That's fun trying to make hinges so they work.

Blacksmiths sharpen plowshares.

And people don't understand about sharpening plowshares.

They know turning swords into plowshares, but the plowshares had to be sharpened so they could get into the tough soil in western Kansas.

Well, your plowshares, the blacksmith would ask the farmer what kind of soil he had, whether it was sandy loam or clay.

And he would set that plowshare at a certain angle when he sharpened it.

Now sharpening it, he would heat it in the forge and then beat that edge out thin.

He didn't grind that to sharpen it.

And others built branding irons.

I'm looking at some of the tools in your rack.

And most blacksmiths made their own tools.

Nail tongs.

Making nails.

And I just used a couple pieces of quarter inch square stock.

And I made the rivet.

I forged the jaws out.

And if the jaws get bent a little bit, stick it in the fire.

Straighten them out.

So why the long handle on it?

If you're doing nails.

Sometimes things get a little warm.

Heat kind of goes from this end to this end.

Fairly fast.

Faster than a guy would like.

In the old days, yeah, they made their own nails.

Yeah.

The apprentices made the nails.

Because the master smith was generally working on something heavier.

That was pretty much a blacksmith's bread and butter.

I think he had nails sitting out here for people to buy.

And back on the east coast, like you make out a well, which are going to pass on to your your kin, a bucket of nails was on that will.

They were that important.

Well, I've heard of people moving and burning is they had a cabin or a frame building, burning the building when they moved so they could get the nails and take them to the next place.

Yeah.

That valuable.

Now that did two things.

Number one, it got your nails so that you'd take them with you.

But when that burned down, those nails cooled slowly.

Now what does iron do when you cool it slowly?

It softens it.

Yeah, it softens it.

And takes the stresses out of it.

That way they could straighten them without breaking them.

Buying a bucket of nails is a big deal and it was.

Every one of them was handmade.

Oh, yeah.

This is a set of bolt tongs.

It's got the round part where the round piece and then the head of the bolt back in here.

But the blacksmiths even made the rivets to hold it together.

Oh, yeah.

Now rasps and files were made back then.

They were made out of a high carbon steel.

But they were clamped in something and the blacksmith took a very sharp chisel and he put each one of those in that file.

And then he hardened the file.

And if you've ever dropped a file, you know that if it's dropped wrong, it would just shatter.

And we'll bring in it up to heat and we'll use the cut off.

Cut the iron.

I made some fancier S-hooks and a rack and I gave it to my wife for her birthday.

It's been quite a few years ago, but I still have the rack and the S-hooks and all of her cast iron frying pans are hanging on that.

How familiar are you with the freight coming out of St.

Louis?

It wound up a lot of times out here at Bent's Fort.

Yeah, there were smiths there at Bent's Fort.

But in between, if your wagon broke down, some of the iron furniture broke or whatever.

What do you do?

There you are.

Most of the time they brought smiths with them with all their tools.

[hammering] What I'm doing is I am drawing that out, making it smaller.

You don't necessarily have to, but if you're hanging something on it, it helps.

And you've got to watch fairly closely because the thinner it gets, the quicker it gets hot.

And after just so long, you can burn that up.

They have horseshoes and these are mostly factory made now.

Yeah.

We had the groove around it, we had the nail holes in it.

But the horseshoes, just like your feet and my feet, we wear different size boots, different size horses, different size shoes.

And the bigger draft horses, some of those shoes are huge.

The groove is for those nail heads so that they won't wear off and the shoe falls off.

But there is a specifically made punch.

These are not drilled.

These are hot punched.

The holes are stronger, a hot punched hole.

And the punch is tapered.

So that the shaft of the nail will go through, but the head will stop, usually flush with the outside.

I've got a bit of trivia for you, Mr.

Lowry.

How many shoes do you put on your oxen?

Eight.

Bingo, you've studied a little.

Most people say, "Oh, four."

Well, if you put a single shoe on those cloven hooves, you'll lame your oxen because there's a shoe that goes on each split of that hoof.

What I'm doing now is I am squaring that round iron up.

[clanking] And I'll show you the reason for that here in a few minutes.

It's amazing all the stuff that the blacksmith did over the years.

Well, and making gears for big engines and stuff.

Or not for the engine itself, but something engine driven.

The gear ratios that you had to have to get the wheels to work and to lift up elevators and all sorts of things.

And they had blacksmiths specialized in mechanicing on these steam engines.

Because if something broke, they had to be able to repair it.

[clanking] So while you're pumping that, Don, you have a wheel and you have a fan down here that fans up and brings the air up from the bottom of your coal.

Yeah.

Get that hot.

The more air you put the coal, the hotter it gets.

Yeah, because in the old blacksmith shop, a lot of them had the big bellows to do that.

[clanking] For a wonderful example of a historic bellows forge in action, take a trip to Fort Larned National Historic Site My name is Pete Bethke.

I'm the blacksmith here at Fort Larned National Historic Site.

And we're in the original blacksmith shop that was used here.

Today it's one of areas that's original inside and out.

The wall rafters from the under-sheathing on the roof is still original.

The forge in the center of the wall with the fire was built in 1867 with the building.

The topside bellows in the rack between the two forges were used here.

We just don't have a documented time, but we know why they were here.

The forge in the corner has been rebuilt.

For some reason, when this was converted into a farm and ranch, that forge was removed.

But it's been rebuilt on the original foundations.

And the blacksmiths were civilians hired through the quartermaster department as skilled labor.

They were blacksmiths by occupation.

So where they were skilled, they were expected to be able to handle any job first day.

And they were responsible for repairing and making all items ordered by the quartermaster.

He was in charge of all the equipment used by the army, as well as maintenance and upkeep on the building.

So it could be anything from a gate latch to hinge to wagon repair.

The wagon repair was the primary job done here.

And they earned on the average between $70 to $80 a month, about the same pay as the second lieutenant.

And he could do work for traders traveling on the Santa Fe Trail, but the army orders came first.

And then if he had spare time, he could do it for them.

Traders or whoever they did some special work for would pay the blacksmith direct.

So he had a chance of making a little extra money on the side too.

Historically, blacksmiths were middle middle class.

You weren't going to get rich, but you weren't going to starve either.

So it was a pretty good occupation.

And a town couldn't live or survive without one.

So they were pretty important all through history.

We've got the forge.

And yeah, just to take a piece of steel cold and try to shape it is difficult.

But I can heat it up in the forge, soften some metal.

Then I can shape it on the anvil with a hammer.

However, I need to.

And the bellows.

Pump the bellows and it forces air into the tube that's attached to the bellow nozzle.

The other end's attached to a fire pot.

It blows up through a hole in the bottom of the fire pot.

And I get a column of superheated air coming up through the center.

And the heat in that air column ranges between two to three thousand degrees.

So if I'm not careful, I can melt steel off in that fire pretty easy.

You've got hammers for the shaping.

The anvil also for the shaping.

And the anvil has all sorts of uses.

On the top side, on the flat area, you can use that for like if you want to flatten something or if you want to draw it out to a point.

And the anvil face acts like a second hammer.

So while you're shaping the top with a hammer, the anvil face is shaping the piece on the bottom.

The horn here on the end that's tapered.

I can use that to make my curls or bends.

If I want to make a 90 degree angle, I just run it over to the edge of the anvil to where I want the bend and then just bring it down against the side of the anvil.

On the back end here, you've got different pieces too to use.

The square hole is called the hardy hole and you've got different tools that will fit in that square hole.

That's a fuller.

Then I've got hot cuts.

That I can cut through a hot piece of metal.

The round hole here is called the pritchel.

And I can use that to like if I'm punching a hole.

Then you have tongs.

You've got different types of tongs for specific uses.

This is a round nose tong for holding a round or square piece of quarter inch rod.

This is a round nose for 5/16.

But it's like all the tongs here on the outside of that work table.

Each one has a special use and a lot of old blacksmiths, they had walls just full of tongs.

You may only use it for one special project, but you've got it if you ever need it again.

I just finished up a small length of chain and I made the round ring and a demonstration.

And then I just added another ring to it.

And that's how they made chain back in this time period.

It was all done by hand.

You would form and weld the first length and then forge and shape the oblong.

And before I close the weld joint, slip the finished one on, close it and weld it.

And then it was just the same thing one after another.

So you only did one link at a time.

A couple feet of chain could take a good chunk of a day.

Yeah, you get to a certain length and it's too heavy to hold with one hand to work it.

So that's why God made apprentices.

They got the heavy end.

So I took it up as a hobby just to make things to sell for gas money.

Then I did custom work for a while and then this job opened up.

Well, I started as a volunteer and then I got hired on as a ranger.

And I've been here now 29 years.

So it's been a good experience for me.

Yeah, and I'm in the original shop.

It's just like walking back in time when I come in.

So yeah, it's been a great experience.

[Music] Putting some pretty in it.

The blacksmith vice is a specialized tool too.

You can put something in this vice, crank it down.

You can use a 12 pound maul on it to move it, bend it, whatever you need to do.

This'll just sat there and at you.

This is a steel vice.

If you do that to a regular machinist's vice, that cast iron vice, you're going to break it and then all you've got is a boat anchor.

But these are made out of forged steel.

Post vice and that's what they're called.

That had the reason that for the post vice is it puts the whack into the floor.

Yeah.

A lot of the time you can take and depending on what the metal is, was beforehand.

Well, like this.

This is a tool steel.

Your coil springs are spring steel.

But you can take and use a grinder.

And if you know what the sparks look like, you can determine whether that is mild steel or high carbon steel.

The high carbon steel, the sparks will explode bigger and hotter.

Now you know why most of the blacksmiths work in the dark like this.

So you can see the color of your metal.

See how hot it's getting.

Out there in a bright sunlight, even though it's bright cherry, you can't tell.

It's bright cherry.

You don't want to touch it.

Third degree burns and I mean it just instantly.

There again, the blacksmith, he generally didn't have as much cash as some of the rest of them.

But he never went without.

Because even if you brought your stuff in and you didn't have cash, they would trade or barter.

And he might, if he fixed the housewife's skillet, depending on if he was a bachelor or not, she could either mend his clothes or eggs or chickens.

And if the man of the house needed something done, he would, if it was expensive enough, he'd trade him a calf or a cow.

Flatten it back out a little bit.

The blacksmith was one of the more important people in town and he was pretty much protected.

The bad guys come to town, they left the blacksmith alone because he was a very important and a very needed man.

There's always going to be a need for blacksmiths.

They can repair stuff, they can make stuff out of scratch basically.

They can modify things and a blacksmith has a different, to me, a different thought process.

They can pick up a piece of steel and see that they can make a fancy S hook out of it.

And that's kind of lost because we're so used to ordering things all pre-made that we don't use our mind enough to innovate or invent.

Not only for functional activities but also for artwork.

A blacksmith makes functional artwork out of something as simple as an S hook.

Well that's the fun thing about smithing.

You've got your fire and you've got whatever you're making and you have to build it in your mind before you build it out here in your hands.

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