Blacksmithing still a hot trade

Walking through the small historic garden to the entrance of Fort Vancouver, you realize: With 1,500 acres of vegetables once under cultivation there, those Hudson’s Bay Co. gardeners must have needed some rakes.

But where to get one, more than a century before Hi-School Hardware, Home Depot or Lowe’s?

In the reconstructed fort’s blacksmith shop stands Jay Close, a master craftsman holding tongs and glowing metal with one hand, and a hammer with the other. In the span of a few hours, he’ll make that rake.

Close, who lives near Charlotte, N.C., spent the weekend at the fort, offering tips of his venerable trade to a small group of volunteer blacksmiths and a couple of people who were just interested in how it all works.

Tap. Tap. Tap. “The hotter you get it, the easier it is to work,” Close says, thrusting the metal back into the embers of a coal fire, then reaching for a leather bellows to increase the intensity of the heat. The flames set the metal piece glowing once again. Tap, tap, tap. “Get it hot; hit it hard. That’s the most efficient way to do blacksmithing.”

As Close worked, Tom Dwyer, president of the Fort Vancouver Historic Trades Guild, explained.

“A guy like him is our continuing education,” said Dwyer. For more than 20 years, the guild has brought in guests to help its members improve their skills. Guild members work in the fort’s blacksmith shop nearly every day that the fort is open, making a variety of iron tools and implements. Arrayed on a side table Sunday were not only gardening tools, but spatulas, tasting spoons and strainers for an 18th-century kitchen.

What wasn’t in view was a horseshoe. Though blacksmiths might have made horseshoes back in the day, that wasn’t their primary job, said Close, who studied his craft in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and has made a 30-year career of it.

Shoeing horses was the work of the farrier. Blacksmiths did a variety of jobs, making items such as agricultural implements and tools, and repairing metal objects. Should the rake that Close made on Sunday ever lose a tooth, a blacksmith can repair it.

At Fort Vancouver, the blacksmiths would have built and repaired everything from door hinges to beaver traps. Dwyer said. The shop’s blacksmiths also kept busy helping repair the sailing vessels that made the journey from here to London, exporting furs and returning with trade goods.

Today, visitors can see some of the same activities that would have taken place here nearly 200 years ago. The acrid odor of the coal fire, the red glow of the embers and the sharp report of the hammer enthrall a new audience whose garden tools are mostly manufactured overseas.

“It’s a very compelling kind of trade to demonstrate to the public,” said Close.