Old iron stuff and who made it ... or How I got from the Grand Canyon to Jamestown

I fell down the rabbit hole. I'll admit I'm not much of a scholar.  Takes too much attention to detail.  Plus there's all that footnoting and bibliography that has to be dealt with.  As anyone who actually knows me, primarily my children will tell you, I'm much more likely to just pull it out of my pocket. (and yes, I did clean that statement up so I could appeal to a wider audience..........?) The three of you who found this blog can go ahead and share it with your friends. 

Where was I?  Oh yeah...the rabbit hole.  Actually I didn't fall so much as throw myself in.  A week or so ago I hiked from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to Phantom Ranch and back up.  South Kaibab down.  Bright Angel up.  I had a great time and learned a massive amount[1] and really just want to go back.  NOW.  I have thanked the appropriate people in the footnotes.[2]

Anyway, part of the Grand Canyon experience is recent history and that includes Mary Colter[3], the Fred Harvey Company[4], the need for water[5], El Tovar[6], mining[7], telephones[8], and transportation[9].  This is a partial list, but you know, the junk I'm interested in, in an everyday sort of way.  And I was asked questions. I had no answers.  Perhaps there are no answers, but that is what I want to find out.  I don't know who did the metalwork in El Tovar, or for Bright Angel Lodge[10], or for that matter any of the other metalwork.  My task, as I see it, is to try to discover what I can about the metalwork of the Grand Canyon.  

So here I am.  Deep in the rabbit hole with very little information about the things I was originally looking for.  As yet I have few answers to the questions about the Grand Canyon, but I did find this.

These are architectural fragments from excavations at Jamestown, Virginia.  The excavations took place in 1934 and 1935, Jamestown Island Colonial National Monument. [11]  The excavation uncovered fragments of old wrought iron hardware.  One of the two buildings was thought to be a warehouse.  It was long and narrow, near the shore and, of course, erected in the 17th century.  Not much of it remained.  The other was a house built by Edward Champion Travis after 1755.  It is possible it stood until 1803. 

This is the description from the original report filed of the hardware in the house. I wish I could touch it.

Hardware from the house

Hardware from the house

Picture of hardware from the house

This is the description of the warehouse.  

Hardware from the warehouse. There were no pictures.

The thing is, there are records of blacksmiths in colonial Virginia. I am hoping the same is true of the Grand Canyon.  I will keep searching and will keep posting asides as well.  This will be a long and winding road. 

As I  discover more, I will share it with my fan...Hi Bob!  How's the family?  If anyone else stumbles on this, ...hey! How's it going?  I hope you enjoyed this and come back ....please.

Now back to work.

j

---

---

[1] The hike was with the Grand Canyon Field Institute and was lead by a geologist named Brian Gootee with the assistance of Thea Gavin who is a poet.  They had so much information about the canyon.  Historical information from geological to original occupants to later occupant, as well as, an enormous amount of knowledge about the plants, animals and almost anything you could think of really in and around the canyon. 

[2] In addition to Brian and Thea (you should look them up, although I could make them links to themselves) I want to thank the rest of the very small staff at GCFI and my fellow hikers. 

[3] MaryColter was an architect and designer who worked for The Fred Harvey Company and the Sante Fe Railroad and did a lot of work at the Grand Canyon, including designing Phantom Ranch.  This is the Wikipedia link to information on her but look further.  She was interesting.

[4] TheFred Harvey Company was basically a hospitality company that worked with the Santa Fe Railroad to create restaurants and hotels along the rail lines and in the rail stations.  Again this is a linkto the Grand Canyon Lodges page.  It has a bit about Fred Harvey.  Again...this stuff is interesting.  Go look it up.

[5] The history of water in the desert and the history of water at the Grand Canyon are way too complicated for this footnote but as part of my process and my look into technology at the Canyon, I will be revisiting this topic.

[6] ElTovar is a former Harvey House.  It has an incredible history and is actually probably the place where I found the rabbit hole.  There is metalwork and part of this is trying to find out who did it.

[7] Mining is a huge part of the history of the Grand Canyon.  On the hike down the south Kaibab, Brian showed us a breccia pipe.  This one was radioactive which I learned after I peed on it.  Hey, it's hiking.

[8] The trans-canyon telephone line is another story I will follow while here in the rabbit hole.  All I will say at this point is it in the National Register of Historic Places. 

[9] All the ways that people arrived at the Grand Canyon and traveled the Canyon are fascinating.  Again, you will have to wait for this.

[10]Virginia L. Gratton Mary Colter Builder Upon the Red Earth.(1992)  There are some artisans who worked with Mary Colter who are named.  Earl Altaire painted furniture for La Fonda in Santa Fe. Olive Rush did murals and painted glass.  Colter used a master carpenter named E.V. Birt.  Arnold Ronnebeck did sculptured tiles.   Dorothy Stauffer did a mural.  Guy Gowan was a ceramic sculptor who worked with Colter on the Fred Harvey tableware.  Colter's secretary was named Sadie Rubins.  Fred Greer painted decorative motifs of sand paintings.  Fred Kabotie painted Hopi Room in the Watchtower.  Hildreth Meiere painted murals in Kansas City Union Station.  Interestingly the tinsmith goes unnamed, and the only mention of a blacksmith is in reference to aprons being used to upholster furniture.

[11] Architectural Remains, Unit B, Sub-unit 62, Jamestown, James City County, VA. Library of Congress. (1933)  HABS VA,48-JAM,4- and HABS VA,48-JAM,3-

 

Let's all get hammered

I haven't posted in a while.  Not because I have nothing to say, as people who know me will tell you, but because I haven't had the time to stop and say it.  

Recently, I was sucked back into theater...or theatre...or ...I don't know....back into making set pieces and props.  And not just for one show either, because those theat..errr people can smell blood.  Plus when you are a micro manufacturer, you can't be picky.  One of the interesting things about the experience, among many, is acknowledging the way we generally learn the craft.  I think this applies to most crafts.  Since the dissolution of guilds and apprenticeships, we tend to learn through brief and minor exposure followed by years of trial and error.  And just about the time we have begun to master our craft our bodies give out.  It's a beautiful process. 

 

I will be cremated.  I think it's appropriate. 

The whole mind body relationship is a joy to experience.  One of the shows I made props for includes a one woman trapeze act.  Yes....you are about to hear the wonderful and pointless story of my inadvertent humiliation.  For reasons known only to my less than masterful brain, I find these stories funny.  

The  trapezist in Twisted Vegas.  Go see it.  It's fun.

Anyway, I met the trapezist (that's apparently what you call that person swinging from the swing, although Microsoft doesn't recognize the word)  when she accompanied one of the stagehands picking up one of the props. ( Rolling staircase for a Celine Dion impersonator bit.  I knew you wanted to know.) A couple of weeks later, I went to see the show.  I saw her act.  My brain seriously did not register how strong she must be, because... you know, we are all strong enough to hang upside down by a toenail and then flip to standing on the swing in our minds.  After the show I was hanging out in the house waiting for my friend to finish work while the trapezist was working on adjusting her harness with a stagehand.  She does a neat trick at the end of her set with it.  Rather than hang in the air while they did the adjustments and tests, she decided that they should use sand bags as a stand in for her. 

I know you think you know what is about to happen.  You are wrong.  Also you are probably wrong about the point of this pointless story.

  

Anyway, she headed backstage and reappeared with a sandbag in each hand. She's 5'-2" tall.  A large and burly stagehand did the same.  I should have noted he carried the bags with much less grace.  The stagehand vanished as they will, and the trapezist turned to me and asked how many sandbags I thought she would need to approximate her weight.....Nope, I did not insult her by saying something stupid about her weight.  What I did say was "How much do you think the sand bags weigh?"  She grabbed one and started walking toward me while curling it.... and said "I don't know maybe 20 lb. I curl about 20."  This is when I should have run screaming from the theater.   My brain didn't work.   I just stood there while she said "what do you think?" and HELD THE BAG OUT TO ME......................................Giant sigh.....................................................

I swear that sandbag hit the floor at twice the speed of gravity...with me holding on.  Twenty pounds my flaming red keister.  All I could do was hope, while trying to still my fluttering heart, that when I righted myself she wouldn't be smirking or laughing out loud.  

I'm pretty sure trapezists get a lot of training and do a lot of training.  Trial and error after a short intro would kill them.  

I don't know what the first thing you learn when you want to become a trapezist is, or how long you spend learning it.  I do know, from one account I read that when there were guilds, the first thing an apprentice blacksmith learned was how to file.  He, because they were all he, would spend his first year doing nothing but filing.  I'm pretty sure after a year of filing, with constant correction and instruction, anyone can file.  There is a part of me that wishes for a return to this level of craft, but I don't really want to return to any other aspects of that time so I will just go ahead and get to my point.

Yes, yes, yes.....I'm pretty sure there is one.  

One of the things that I notice (aside from lack of attention to safety, but they are related) when I watch or even see pictures of aspiring and often working smiths is a lack of hammer control.  It's probably nothing that a year of hammering with correction and instruction wouldn't fix, but we have no guilds.  

I recently saw a picture of a "famous" smith who was holding her hammer so close to the head that I was surprised she didn't have bloody knuckles. Hammers should swing.  They shouldn't punch.  Part of the problem, I think, is that the hammer is too heavy to be controlled.  If you can't control your hammer, I don't know how you can master the craft.  It's that simple. The tool must be allowed to do its work properly. 

I asked my buddy, Jim Peppryl, who is the finest smith I know for a picture holding a hammer properly. He sent this.  It makes me happy that he chose this hammer.

The romantic attachment we seem to have with big heavy hammers is counterproductive, because if you choke up to the head you have lost the power of the momentum of your swing.  You cannot push a hammer and get anywhere near the power you get if you let it swing. 

There are some things that I think are important and that I look for in a hammer.  I have three of four hammers that I use for almost everything.  I own many more and I keep getting new ones but I don't use them because they don't have the qualities I need to have good hammer control.  Of the hammers I use, two are 2 lb and two are 1 lb.  Most people would think those are too small to be effective, but I straightened a piece of 1/2" plate with my 2 lb ball peen and a torch.  It's all in the control of the swing. What these hammers have in common is that they are all very nicely balanced, both side to side and front to back.  That means that when I hold them properly with a loose hand on the handle, they don't twist or pull.  None of them is so heavy that I need to hold them by the neck.  That means that they do the bulk of the work without my shoulder wearing out.  I'm also very careful to dress my hammers so that they don't leave excessive marks.  That means I sand off the sharp edges.  

I got this strange little riveting hammer at an ABANA conference

My three favorite hammers. 2 lb engineers ball peen bought at a garage sale in a bucket with a bunch of other stuff, 1 lb rounder and 2 lb french pattern hammer

Swinging a hammer can be profoundly satisfying and when done properly incredibly productive.  So my advice is, choose a well balanced hammer that's handle sits easily in your hand.  Chose one that's weight  doesn't require you to grip it by the neck to control it. Keep it well dressed and always WEAR EYE, EAR AND LUNG PROTECTION.  

        

There it is.  We aren't all destined to be little strapping trapezists.

Now back to work.

The thing about luck

I usually start these things with a story.  Something that I think relates to my point or makes a point that I want to make.  For this there are too many stories.  I could tell the one about the young woman who got her long hair caught in the drill in college.  There was blood, and crying in pain, and crying from humiliation, and a really messed up haircut.  That was the first one I remember.  I could tell the one about the guy tapping the chisel towards his stomach because it was easier than re-clamping the work.  I’m pretty sure you know how that worked out.  It also involved blood. There’s the one about the girl and the wood chipper.  That involved some serious pain and months of having her finger sewn into her armpit.  She was a musician.  She needed her fingers.  There are stories of digging through dust to find finger bits, stories of broken bones, stories of deep cuts, and stories of projectiles imbedded deep in human tissue.  Those are the stories where the consequences were immediate and violent and everyone I know who makes things, works with their hands, will say “uh, yeah, ..saw that coming.”  

I use a band saw.  Fairly quiet and no flying dust particles.

They all see that coming and still rely on luck when it comes to long term safety.  Like the guy in the shop down the complex from mine who was cutting, welding and grinding with no eye protection, hearing protection or respirator to protect his lungs.   Not that eye protection is about long term safety.  I don’t have a personal story about someone who has lost an eye, probably because I mostly work alone.  And I’m pretty sure that you can’t have your eye sewn into your armpit to save your sight.  Also, squinting doesn’t count.  I do have a couple of incredibly sad stories of guys dying young of lung cancer or ending up with emphysema.  Either way they were unable to work.  I also have a lot of stories of older guys who can’t hear.  It’s not that I don’t want to look them in the eye and enunciate when I talk to them.  It’s just that it’s not convenient at all times.  

Fiber cut off wheel.  Contains silica and aluminum

Cut off saw - These suckers are noisy and dirty

I don’t really think it’s laziness that makes people not don proper safety equipment, although that may play into it.  It actually mystifies me.  I do get that some of it can be a little uncomfortable at times.  I work in Vegas.  My shop gets so hot in the summer that my thermometer can’t register the temperature.  I still wear an apron, gloves, safety glasses or goggles (this depends on what I am doing), ear protection and a respirator when I’m working.  Oh yeah, and boots.  I sweat a lot.  

Maybe it’s some form of machismo.  I don’t know what the unisex word for that is.  I find that black booger blacksmithing thing disturbing.  Really?  If your boogers are black at the end of the day, so are your lungs.  My first blacksmithing workshop, the instructor (I won’t say who he is because he’s well known) said that he liked to forge his work as close to finished as he could because he didn’t want to eat grinder dust.  Huh?  What difference did it make?  He stood over a coal forge sucking in soot.  Grinder dust was the least of his problems.  Also he was deaf.  He did, to his credit, use safety glasses.  That was it though. 

Not flattering but they work

The rubber keeps some dust out.

So stylish

Recently there have been a couple news stories about cancer.  One was that it’s a crap shoot.  The other was that behavior plays a large part in its development.  So why take the chance?  The thing about relying on luck is that good luck needs to happen every time.  Bad luck only has to happen once.  Those seem like crappy odds. 

 

Apron doesn't have to be leather to protect.

I use different equipment for different processes.  While working, I always wear an apron and boots and proper clothing.  I don’t wear jewelry.  That’s pretty common.  I have pretty short hair now, but when it was long I always tied it back. 

I like a tight fitting glove.  Get the right size.

I always wear a glove on my left hand.  That is because I am right handed.  It means my left hand is in danger.  If I need one, I have right hand gloves.  

I use a kevlar glove to weld. 

I wear ear muffs because I don’t like things in my ears, but ear plugs are fine too. 

  

So many ways to save your hearing and worth it.

Wear these all the time and it will be like never having worn them at all.

I wear safety glasses for some operations and goggles for others.  Even though I work alone, I always protect my eyes. 

Standard goggles - I hate them. 

I find these too heavy and the rubber seal makes them fog.

I use goggles similar to these.  No fog.  Try SafetyGlassesUSA.com

 

Although I know some people will use dust masks, I use a respirator.  As a scientist once told me, the visible particles are a problem, but the stuff you can’t see can be worse.  That’s the stuff that gets by a dust mask.  

I think these are a waste of time and money.

This is what I use.  3M Bodyman Respirator.  It fits under my hood and works for grinding and buffing.  Get the correct size and filter.  You can get them online or at a body shop supply.  Worth the money.

This is the Miller welding respirator.  I haven't tried it. 

I know I will die.  We all will.  I just don’t want to be a pathetic shell of my former pathetic shell before then.  To me at least, it’s worth the money and the effort to protect myself short and long term.

Now back to work

j