February 2012
Editorial
Dear friends,
As I prepared the final draft of this newsletter, I quickly realized that we just had more information than the newsletter spacing allowed us to use! The only solution was to eliminate many of the beautiful photos which were submitted with each article, especially Paul Bogaard’s remarkable collection of photos of the reconstruction of a working forge for the renovated blacksmith shop (described in detail in The White Fence No. 54)! This accurate and very detailed reconstruction was an effort requiring the efforts of many talented people. I agonized over how this could possibly be accomplished since each one of these excellent photographs was worth “a thousand words”! Then a bolt of light (“inspiration” would be the correct word here) struck me. We can include all the photos but just divide the single newsletter into two issues! So, dear readers, enjoy the efforts of Paul Bogaard documenting the remarkable renaissance of the Job Anderson/Campbell blacksmith shop’s forge and see for yourself how our valued donor contributions have been used to accomplish this and preserve Tantramar’s heritage. And once you have absorbed all this detailed information, just prepare yourself for another wonderful issue with more of Jeff Ward’s fascinating contributions about many of the region’s inventive characters. If you derive as much pleasure reading both issues as I did editing them, you will not only remember them for many years to come but, like me, will read them many times over, before putting them away… if ever!
Enjoy!
Peter Hicklin
The late Hum Amos fashioning a horseshoe at his forge
By Paul Bogaard
In The White Fence No. 52 (October, 2011), Al Smith’s article (“Our Blacksmith Shop”) explained how the old Job Anderson Blacksmith Shop came to replace the shop that once was a crucial feature of the Campbell Carriage Factory. My article in February (“Resurrecting the Campbell Carriage Factory Blacksmith Shop,” The White Fence No. 54) detailed the steps leading to the Anderson Shop’s thorough renovation. All these efforts were aimed at providing a home for a brand new blacksmith’s forge. This story is the last in the series.
The forge we wanted to reconstruct was meant to be new… but also old. The masonry and fit-up of our forge are all brand new, and the work was completed last summer. But we also did everything we could to make it as “old” as possible. We set quite a challenge for ourselves by insisting that today’s Museum should have an operating forge just like the two that would have served Jimmie O’Neal and Herb Beal and all the other blacksmiths who fitted out carriages, wagons and sleighs with a remarkable array of wrought iron fittings at the original Campbell Carriage Factory. Part of our challenge arose from no one being able to remember exactly what the two Campbell forges were like, certainly not in the kind of detail we would need to rely upon. The other part of our challenge was not being able to find anyone who had actually built an old-style masonry “side-draft” forge. Actually, that’s not quite fair. Our mason — Darrel Morice — had many years of brick-laying experience including fireplaces, and he certainly understood the principles that applied to forges. But he told us, up front, that he had never actually constructed a working forge. We also made contact with one the handiest blacksmiths around — Paul Fontaine — a working blacksmith specializing in heritage wrought iron. Paul had very successfully designed and constructed a working forge of his own. But he had chosen to construct the key inner chambers for his forge out of the material he knew best — iron. A jacket of bricks was added around the outside, but it works well because of its iron interior, not because of the handsome bricks. We owe a lot to the experience and generosity of both these fellows.
Our other sources of inspiration and advice were completely local. Dick MacLeod — author of one of THT’s very first publications, Tales of the Horse – and a long-time friend to the Trust, grew up in a family of blacksmiths. Over a century ago, his grandfather had served as blacksmith at the Purdy shipyard. Dick and others around town had much to teach us and forewarned us of possible pitfalls. Everyone local agreed that, in the old days, the side-draft forge was the style most blacksmiths relied upon. The final stroke of luck was being able to locate photographs of the Hum Amos blacksmith shop, the last old-style shop to keep a fire in its forge anywhere near Sackville. Sure enough, the photo showed clearly a side-draft forge and that settled the matter as far as what we hoped to reconstruct.
In a typical fireplace, the fire (and most of its heat!) goes straight up through a “smoke chamber” and then up the chimney. With a side-draft forge, the fire is located on a workbench and there is no masonry chimney directly above it to get in the way of larger items the smithy might need to heat up. The iron rims being welded for a 52” cartwheel, for example, would need lots of space above. Some blacksmiths who know they will only be working on smaller items, might place a hood and chimney directly above the fire… but not at a carriage factory! As must have been the case with the two forges the Campbells had built by 1860 (and at the Hum Amos blacksmith shop), the chimneys were constructed to one side of the fire. They could get away with this only if the opening in the masonry was just beside the fire, the size of the opening was just right, the distance up to the smoke chamber had to be just so, and even the height of the chimney was critical. If everything is just right, something quite wonderful, almost magical, happens. The fire leaping up from blazing coal turns abruptly to the side and is completely drawn up the chimney. When everything goes just so… there is little or no flame and smoke going, as you might fear, out into the shop.
This was all a very exciting prospect, but the gamble was whether we could construct everything so that all the proportions and correlations were just what was needed. By mid-August, when Paul Fontaine helped me light the first fire in our forge, we knew (and only then!) that we had managed it. It was truly a beautiful sight, watching that flame blaze forth, the bellows encouraging it to leap out of the coal, only to turn precisely into the masonry opening waiting for it, and disappearing safely up the chimney.
So let me take us through some of the steps that led to this happy conclusion: Relying on the best technical specifications we could find, we worked out detailed plans. Dick MacLeod pointed out that the Hum Amos forge made use of local sandstone for the base, so we incorporated that feature into our plans.
We also needed the means for securing in place a “fire pot” with the traditional device hidden underneath — still called a tuyere — which directs the forced air from bellows up into the fire pot. Our biggest problem here was finding a fire pot. The only ones still around were the wrong style or broken. Paul Fontaine was willing to lend us one he was not currently using… but the plan was to have a replacement re-cast for our own forge at the local foundry. Darren Wheaton confirmed they would be able to do this for us, but as most readers will appreciate, our local foundry — the only foundry still in operation throughout the Maritimes — had a roof fall in from snow load last winter. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, more recently there’s been a huge fire. There is still some hope the foundry will spring back from these ashes, but in the meantime we have Fontaine’s fire pot and tuyere installed.
Darrel Morice was confident all these features could be built into a masonry forge and once EnerGreen’s carpenters completed renovations on the old Anderson Blacksmith Shop, we were eager to get started. This sequence of photos, with captions, will take you through the highpoints of this reconstruction.
By August we had reached the point where there was nothing left but to give it a try. We were able to obtain a supply of “smithing coal” which has to be of a particularly high grade and ground into bits of the right size. This makes it easier to handle, and more likely that the coal will efficiently burn off its impurities, leaving “coke.” It is the burning coke, at the centre of the fire pot, that produces the temperatures required to forge iron.
Our very first fire was tried out on August 12th (just in time for the grand opening on the 14th!) and that afternoon made all our planning and a summer’s work worthwhile. Dan Lund, whose generosity (along with his brother, Ken) made this project possible, was there that afternoon, and he and I could not have been more pleased. Paul Fontaine was on hand to help light the fire, and then to make the anvil ring. Dan made sure that the very first iron object “wrought” in the new forge and hammered out on Hum Amos’s old anvil — a simple hook, handsomely twisted, and brought to a point permitting it to be nailed into a beam — has been saved, so that we can put in on display. Paul Fontaine made it all look so simple, just as Darrel Morice had made it seem like just a job of bricklaying. But we knew better!
Selecting foundation stones for base
Placing the working parts which will be hidden
Beginning the first course of brick
Six courses up the worktable is set, as is the base of the chimney
As the chimney (with its flue liners) begins to lift towards the roof, extra support will be needed
EnerGreen carpenters returned to add support for the chimney
An opening in the roof is created
Darrel lays up the chimney until it reaches its new supporting beams
Chimney reaches up through the roof
Chimney is capped off a full 4′ above the ridge of the roof
The anvil, bellows and many other blacksmith tools that belonged to Hum Amos…
…are set up around the new forge
With smoke chamber complete, Darrel begins to place flue liners
Aug 12th, Paul Bogaard helps start up the first fire in the new forge
Paul Fontaine shows us how quickly a skilled blacksmith can fashion a simple device
Paul Fontaine fits out the chimney opening with a steel hood, and the work table with a water trough (to wet the coal).
Dan Lund was on hand to see how well the forge he made possible worked.
Pleased with the simple hook, he has asked that this the first item ever to be forged in the renovated Blacksmith Shop be proudly displayed.Rescheduled Heritage Day on March 3 (New Date)
The Tantramar Heritage Trust will be presenting their popular annual Heritage Day celebrations, this year with a theme of “Glimpses From our 250 Years”, referring to the 250th anniversary of the founding of Sackville Township in 1762. Activities were originally scheduled for February 11, but because of a winter storm they had to be rescheduled to Saturday, March 3rd.
The day will begin in the morning with a breakfast, displays and other activities, at Tantramar Regional High School. The delicious breakfast will feature eggs, bacon, sausage, home-baked beans, toast, orange juice, tea, and coffee from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Tickets for the breakfast are $7 for adults and $4 for those 10 years old and under, and they can be purchased at the Trust office or at the door.
In addition to the usual roster of interesting and fun activities that occur at every Trust Heritage Day, this year a special set of activities (from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.) have been designed to allow young people to have fun while their parents visit the displays and enjoy other aspects of the morning.
The Owens Art Gallery will be on hand to present an activity centred around Colville House, using a computer where people can explore the interactive timeline of Alex Colville’s life and work that the Owens is developing, and she will have copies of the Colville House Sketchbook to give to anyone interested in doing some drawing. Along with this activity, the Trust will present activities especially aimed at young people and families.
The morning part of Heritage Day will also feature displays by the Tantramar Heritage Trust, the Town of Sackville Heritage Board, Fort Beausejour/Fort Cumberland NHS, Marshview Middle School, Westmorland Historical Society, and several others from 8 a.m. to noon. And Tantramar’s own popular version of the Antiques Roadshow will be hosted by Ray Dixon from 10:30 a.m. to noon. Members of the public can bring in their antiques and have them appraised for only $5.
Afternoon activities for Heritage Day will feature interesting talks on local history, and the launching of a new Trust publication. Starting at 1:30 p.m., at the Sackville Visitor Centre on Mallard Drive, Paul Bogaard will present a talk titled “The Struggle for Sackville” which will kick-off the Trust’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Sackville Township with some historical highlights and an overview of Trust events for the year. The book The Store and More — History of J.L. Black and Sons, by Larry Black will also be launched, and Sandy Burnett will speak on the book and related history.
The Trust is also still looking for volunteers for the day, for a wide variety of activities ranging from kitchen work to selling books and everything in between. For information on these events, or to volunteer, please contact the Trust at 536-2541.
