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Forging New Experiences out of the Old
By Ian Robert Ross
This time
of year it’s common and comforting to see wafts of smoke rising from
chimneys of houses, where we can imagine curling up next to a
woodstove, or reposing in front of a fiery fireplace. Yet underneath
one of those lofty Cole Harbour plumes is a flurry of activity not
seen in over a century.
Blacksmith Mike
Lockhart, together with apprentice blacksmith Jacqueline Jardine, set
up shop at the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum two and a half years
ago. The farm had previously had a smithy that was mostly for
display, and certainly not working. Lockhart approached the farm and
in exchange for being able to use the space, offered a means to make
the museum even more authentic.
A native of
Dartmouth, the idea came to Lockhart while he was working in Ontario.
“I was born just
down over the hill,” Lockhart says. “I always made and sold stuff to
live off,” he explains, “and I bought and sold antiques… It was while
I was working on the railway that I first got an idea of this stuff.”
Lockhart then
went on to spend his following summer as a military artificer at
Niagara-on-the-Lake.
“At Fort George,
I got the idea to come back here. So I spoke with Elizabeth Corser
and we set up this arrangement.”
“It sounded great
and my interest was having someone on site to bring the thing to
life,” says Corser. “Whereas Mike had worked for Parks Canada before,
as an interpreter, he had the ability to talk to visitors.”
The building that
houses the blacksmith shop required a great deal of work before it
would hear the sounds of pounding metal and feel the heat of a
2,200-degree Fahrenheit forge; but frugality, hard work, and the
cooperation of the museum and members of the community saw it
realized.
Jardine
remembers, “When we first came here this place was all dirt floor,
with a rickety old bench; the forge was crumbling.”
Jardine took care
of putting in a new floor, brick by brick. The forge was given a new
top and the chimney reconstructed. Tools were largely made in-house.
Each one would go on to help craft the next one until a collection of
tools had been assembled that continues to grow with each new
project. Improvisation was paramount. A large vice was even
manufactured from the remnants of the bow of an old icebreaker.
Some items would
be next to impossible to recreate however and finding originals was
the only way to go. A large swage block, used to form metals into
various shapes, dates to 1860 as does a cone mandrel for shaping
rings. One can only imagine how many jobs they performed before
entering Lockhart’s possession. The shop also has two anvils: a cast
anvil that dates to the nineteenth century and a hand-made anvil that
dates back to the 1750s.
“You have to be
good at scrounging because there’s nowhere you can buy this gear,”
Lockhart says.
A steel wall was
put in to satisfy fire codes. Getting insurance made for an
interesting experience as the adjustors had nothing on paper to handle
a blacksmith’s forge.
“They hadn’t had
a claim in 120 years,” Lockhart points out, so many things, in
relation to this trade, having been forgotten from memory.
More help came
from the community, such as with the all-important firewood that keeps
operations running.
“After Hurricane
Juan, one of the people clearing wood brought wood for weeks later,”
Jardine recalls. “And some local boy scouts -- who were working to
earn one of their badges -- chopped it for us.”
Tourists,
schoolchildren, and other visitors now have the opportunity to see a
working forge that operates strictly in the manner of those in the
nineteenth century. Locating in the city turned out to be
advantageous, as opposed to selecting a more rural setting.
“Being close to
the city, it means we get a lot of school tours and we could never do
that in the country,” Lockhart explains. “Being in the city, we’re
close to people who enjoy it and learn from it.”
With heritage
funding always limited, many museums have had to evolve to stay
viable. “Museums now are 50 per cent entertainment -- always changing
and hitting new challenges,” says Lockhart. “The heritage farm is a
small museum and has managed to do without for so long. It really is
a community museum. I’ve seen people bring in paper towel, cat food…
That tells you it’s the local people that want this place to be here.”
Elizabeth Corser
also appreciated that they could include a working shop in the museum
that didn’t involve hiring staff. “We don’t have funding for wages,”
she says, “…and Mike offered to work at the farm for no wage.”
Corser was very
pleased with the “air of reality” that the blacksmith shop brought.
“They support and
help us, and we support and help them,” says Lockhart.
Though summer is
the busiest tourist season, the smithy operates year-round. However,
in the last year it has begun the transformation from an experiment
into a legitimate business that offers replica metalwork and period
carpentry, fashioned in the traditional way. A typical customer might
be a homebuilder who is seeking authentic-styled hinges for a heritage
property, or it could be a collector seeking reproductions of rare or
hard to find treasures. Lockhart and Jardine busily craft for them
all, without the aid of power tools or modern conveniences.
As in any shop,
safety is a concern but they are happy to report no injuries to date.
In actuality, Lockhart says his operation is safer than a modern shop.
“It’s not
particularly that dangerous. Power tools are unpredictable, while the
dangers here are predictable.”
The environmental
impact is also negligible. As a further consideration, wood is used
in place of coal to fire the forge, so even the smoke has a reduced
impact compared to the average traditional operation.
“We’re not
polluting,” Lockhart says, “and I feel good at the end of day. We fill
one garbage bag all summer and we recycle metal.” He adds, “Our tools
last forever -- that’s the durability of the equipment -- for some
people, it’s a hard thing to consider a chisel as more cost-effective
than a mini grinder.”
Lockhart sees
modern production as having other costs and downsides as well, most
markedly in the loss of self-sufficiency and simplicity, but paid for
ecologically.
“In America, it’s
very much machine-tool oriented. In central Germany, for example, a
forge is still a very known thing. By industry taking away this
knowledge, they’ve guaranteed themselves more sales. We live in a
world dominated by steel and injection molding. The cost is on the
environment.”
The personal
benefit, Lockhart says, “is to be comfortably removed from the world
and still make money. At first it was really daunting… but in the
end, all the little details that worried me through the years took
care of themselves. Doing something different isn’t always going out
on a limb.”
- Published in "The Dartmouth Laker", February, 2006 |
