all Richard or Dick Osborn material is copyright and owned by him 2008
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I was born in 1926 as the horse and
buggy era was ending, before the Great Depression. Cars had not yet become the
mode of transportation. Milk was
delivered to our house by horse and wagon, bakery goods also had a horse drawn
wagon along with the ice wagon delivering blocks of ice to houses with ice
boxes, not electric refrigerators. In the winter people did not need ice to
store their food. The weather was cold
enough to store the food in the basement. The women went daily to the neighborhood
store to purchase their wanted items.
My
father, Claud Dexter Osborn, was a blacksmith and shod horses as his father and
grandfather before him had done. As a matter of fact, the blacksmithing trade
goes clear back, possibly, to our family days in
When my father bought the shop, grandpa
retired and became a sometimes helper,
but not a regular worker.
The blacksmith
shop was not only a place to get a horse shod or for having some steel welded
or formed and something repaired. It was
also a place for the old retired men to come and talk with the blacksmith and
the other old men that came and spent an hour or two every day or at least a
couple times a week. It was like a
community meeting place. I remember some
of the old men, Old Charlie, Old Jim and Old Ed, beside my Grandpa, Bert and my
Dad. Some time they would all chip in a nickel or dime and someone would go
over to the tavern and get a growler of beer. They would then heat up the poker
from the forge and stick it in the beer, making it poker beer,
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and they would all share in drinking
it. Of course, they were always telling
stories and laughing a lot.
One
of the things I recall from these meeting was the time when my youngest
brother, Bill, at the age of 4, came to the shop during the winter time. Bert went outside and gathered a handful of
snow, making a snowball into which he secretly slipped a nickel. He then told Bill that he was magic. He put
the snowball on the potbellied stove and when it had melted Bill saw the magic
nickel. Bill tried many times, but he
wasn’t magic like Bert.
Now, of course, horse shoeing was
not the only job for my father as he did a lot of iron working along with horse
shoeing. There also was making and
installing wagon wheel steel tires, fixing and repairing a lot of farm equipment,
making steel railings, hardening and tempering tools, making steel tools such
as chisels, ice spuds, steel scrapers for roofers, and decorative shepherd
hooks for hanging baskets with steel formed leaves and vines attached to the
post, and so on.
Now, I, as a young boy of 9 years
old living only a
short distance from my father’s shop, visited
there most every day.
Due to the era of little or no
money, when it came time for us to get a haircut, Bert, who worked in the
blacksmith shop, had a pair of hand clippers.
Bert also had an affliction, his head jerked and this caused his hands
to jerk also. I hated to have my hair cut as each time Bert jerked it to pull the clippers out it also pulled the
hair out and this HURT, and this I didn’t like.
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I watched my father and his employees do their work on the
forges and anvils, making horse shoes and putting them on the
horse’s
hoofs. Before the shoe could be nailed
on, the old worn shoe had to be removed with the pull off tool. Then it was
necessary to trim the hoof with the blacksmith’s nippers, then the frog
(a growth on the
inside rear of the hoof) had to be trimmed and cleaned of excess growth. Now
when it came to nailing the shoes to the hoof, one had to be careful not to
drive the nail straight in. It had to be slanted outwards so the end could be
crimped over to hold the shoe tightly to the hoof and the shoe would not come
loose and fall off. Once the shoe was properly nailed on, the rasp tool was
employed to smooth the hoof to the shoe and the substance was applied to make
the hoof shiny and clean.
Next page
shows some the tools the blacksmith used when shoeing the horse.
1st pick, 2nd Rasp,
3rd shoeing hammer, 4th pull offs, 5th tongs,
6th nippers and 7th hammer
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Now as to
the nails used to hold the shoe in place, these were not round nails such as
used in nailing lumber. The nails were flat and tapered from head to point,
with the head being flat on one side and slightly rounded on the opposite. The flat side was toward the inside of the
hoof while the rounded side faced
outwards and
the pointed end could be clinched over the outside of the hoof.
One time during the winter a man brought his horse in to be
shod and after dad finished he took the horse out of the shop and down the
street. His horse either stumbled or slipped
and fell and broke its leg and somehow, the man got the horse back to the
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shop. Dad,
upon seeing the trouble called the police who arrived in a touring car with
side curtains down. They went into the shop and saw the problem. Dad sent me into grandpa’s house while the
police took their rifle out of the car and into the shop. I heard a BANG, and of course being
inquisitive, I went back to the shop, opened the door and saw the horse lying
dead on the floor. After this, Dad had to pull off the shoes and gave the man
half his money back because the shoes were new.
As to some of the equipment used by the blacksmith the first
and foremost was the forge, in which all the steel was heated to at least a red
glowing heat, and in some cases a white heat, before it was hammered into shape
on the anvil. Next most important
blacksmith tools were the tongs in many shapes and sizes used for holding the
hot steel.
Various
tongs 
Claud working on the anvil
with the forge and vise - in the back ground. Notice all the horse shoes behind the forge.
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Then
the anvil which had a tapered horn on one end was used for rounding the steel.
There was a step between the horn and the flat surface of the anvil used for
offsetting or bending the steel and a projection used to make the toe clip on a
horse shoe. On the opposite end there were two small round holes called pritchel holes used for punching the nail holes in the shoe.
Last, but not least by any means, was the hardy hole which
is a square hole used to hold a tapered cutting
tool or a bending crotch to form right angles. The anvil was fastened to a tree
stump or
log placed in the ground, making the anvil come up to working height and
strapped in place.
Claud working on the anvil with a
white hot iron forming an eye on the end of the steel rod.
And the floor vise which was attached to the forge and close to the
anvil is shown below.
This type hammer is
what my dad used.
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Of course,
let’s not forget the hammers that were used to perform this work. Some were
hand hammers, some were sledge hammers, and, of course, shoeing hammers, a much
smaller hammer than the others. Most of
the hammers used were not peen hammers, but rather a hammer that on one side
had a flat surface with rounded edges and on the other a more beveled surface
with rounded edges. Then, also, some of
the other hand tools were a slotting iron to make the crease for the nails and
the pritchel punch used to make the holes for the
nails. Others were hot cutters, cold cutters, flatters, used when the sledge
hammer was employed.
The blacksmith heated the iron red/ orange hot and then his
helper got hold of the sledge hammer while the blacksmith placed the hot iron
on the face of the anvil and held the flatter by the wooden handle on the piece
to be flattened. The helper then swung the sledge hitting the flatter on the
head several times until
the
blacksmith took off the flatter and inspected the iron. In some cases it was
necessary to reheat the iron in the forge to again obtain the right heat
necessary to flatten the piece by again striking it with the sledge hammer
hitting the flatter. Other times, hand tools and sledge hammer were used to
curve the piece of steel into the desired shape.
One time while
walking on the drive way to the shop, I found a wallet lying on the
ground. I picked it up and took it in to
my dad. He opened it and found $40.00
inside. He also found the name of the
man who had dropped it when leaving the shop.
He
telephoned the man who quickly came and got the wallet, but the man never
thanked me nor even gave me a nickel for finding it.
Another tool that was in frequent use was the bender. (pull handle not shown)
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This was
mounted to a tree trunk or log sunk into the ground below the floor and raised
to the proper working height. It had a
long
handle to be pulled in order to bend the piece.
The bender had two pins that could be moved into the proper holes to
obtain
the
proper distance to form the wanted arc.
The center pin was the hinge pin which held the handle arm to the non
movable section of the bender.
Note that between the
top and bottom arms was an adjustable square loop with a thread rod and
adjustable nut so that when a piece of steel was inserted in it against the
center post, a right angle bend could be made. It was usually the younger
people (me, in some cases) who pulled the bending arm. The blacksmith could also mount a round disc over
the pivot pin and adjust the movable pins to bend a circle or arc, when the arm
was pulled.
There was
also an alligator shear for cutting steel round and flat bars. This also was
mounted to the floor.
Another of the tools used was the
alligator shear,( see next page) this also was hand
operated. The front end had the shear
blades and in the rear on a cam was mounted the slotted disc into which the
pull handle was inserted. As the handle
was pulled, the cutting jaw moved downward, cutting the steel. It was some
times necessary to move the pull handle into the second slot after pulling as
far as it would go as the steel had not yet been cut.
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It took a man pulling hard to cut some sizes of steel and
even sometimes two men pulling.
As you have probably surmised, most all this work was done
by hand without the aid of motors or electricity. A blacksmith’s job was not an
easy one, a lot of sweat and hard work was necessary, but so were most other
workers’ jobs in those days.
Later, electric motors were used to run the blowers on the
forges, and the emery wheel for grinding sharp edges. Also the band saw and
jointer used on wood working for wagons, etc.
There was also a lathe used for cutting certain steel parts.
The lathe
is shown on the right of the following page.
A drill press mounted to a post as shown below on the left
on the following page.
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There was also acetylene welding and cutting equipment used
for brazing and welding steel and for flame cutting of
certain steel parts. And now came the
time for a
welder to
be used in the shop. Many hours were spent learning to weld as this was
entirely a new feature in the blacksmith shop.
In shoeing some mean horses and mules it became necessary to
rope their legs together so if and when they started kicking this would throw
them to the floor, then they could be shod before letting them get to their
feet again
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A twichel (
previous page) was some time used. This was put around the horse’s nose
and mouth and twisted tightly shut which stopped the horse from breathing. Of course this could not be used for a very
long time or it would kill the horse, but once used, the horse became frightened
and would stand very still. Then the blacksmith quickly did one hoof. The twichel was
loosened before again being applied, if necessary, before the next hoof was
worked on. Usually, once the horse had
this applied it remained very still when having his hooves worked on. After
having this applied the horse usually remembered and it was not necessary to
use the twichel again for several times unless the
horse forgot and again it was used.
I watched and learned a lot and one
of the first things learned was to never, never pick up an iron that was laid
on or near the forge, because it might be hot.
Now a black hot iron is very sticky, whereas a red hot or white hot iron
is slippery and easily dropped. A black
hot iron sticks and BURNS. So I quickly learned to spit on any iron to see if
it would sizzle before I picked it up. Once
burned by a hot iron it is not easily forgotten, and I can tell you that it
only happened to me once, before my father could warn me, “THAT’S HOT.”
Dad had been shoeing race horses for several people who
owned the horses, and also people who owned riding stables.
Instead of them bringing the horses to the
shop to be shod, it became necessary to go to the barns and do the shoeing
there. Now when shoeing race horses a
different type shoe was needed. The shoe could only weigh so much and no more,
it was necessary to weigh each shoe and match the other three to that
weight. This sometimes meant extra work filing, etc.
to obtain a match.
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Most of the work was done in the shop with only occasional
trips to race tracks or riding stables or something similar was necessary. During summertime I was sometimes allowed to
go with dad to the track or stables where he went to shoe the horses.
One time as he was shoeing I walked outside where some men
and women were shooting at a keg sitting on a fence post. They all took turns shooting and missing the
keg. A man asked me “Would you like to
try?” “Yes,” I replied. He handed me the shotgun and I took aim and
fired, knocking the keg off the post.
Just at that time dad walked over to see what I was doing. The man said,
“I bet you can’t do that again.” Dad
said, “Go ahead
and do
it.” I took the shotgun aimed and fired again knocking the keg off the
post. The men and women couldn’t believe
that a kid could do it when they couldn’t.
Another time when I was quite young I got a box of
crackerjack and inside was always a small prize. This time the prize was a trick nail. The nail was bent so it would go around a
finger and a cloth with a stain that looked like blood was also in the
package. I took the pack and went into
my grandfather’s house and into the bathroom, where I put the nail around my
finger and put the blood cloth in place, and then I started to cry out, “Ouch
it hurts.” My grandpa said, “What’s the
matter?” I showed him my hand with the nail sticking out of my finger. He
said,
“Let me get hold of that damn thing”.
He pulled so hard that he broke the nail in half. Thus ended my nail trick.
There was also the
time when my grandpa decided to make a crossbow for the boys, as they had been
reading about them in some story.
Grandpa made the crossbow and decided to try it out before he gave it to
them. He stood in the doorway of the
shop and saw a bird in the tree that stood between the shop and his back
door. He carefully aimed and shot the
arrow (or bolt), which
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missed
the bird, but found the window in his back door. He immediately broke the crossbow over the
fence saying, “It’s too dangerous for the kids.” He repaired the window in his door with a
bolt, nut, and two washers and kept it that way to remind himself never to make
such a thing again.
As I was now getting to the age where I could be of some
help, I had to learn how to harden steel, temper steel, and to form simple
steel objects. In making a thing such as
a chisel, the steel had to be heated and then hammered into shape, drawing the
end down to a thinner end for cutting.
Then reheated and quenched for a short length of time, quickly withdrawing
it from the water,
rubbing
off the residue and watching the colors run from red, to purple, to straw, to
blue, where again it was quenched completely as this was the hardness wanted on
the chisel. Now that the chisel was cold
it had to be sharpened. This was done on the emery wheel, grinding the edges
from both sides to a sharp edge.
Other things I learned were how to use the sledge hammer,
hitting the flatter or cold cutter which my dad held on the steel where he
wanted it hit. A lot of the time I
spent learning how to weld with the acetylene (gas) torch, how to braze with
the
acetylene
(gas) torch and how to weld with the arc welder. Of course, I wasn’t the only one. My brothers had learned the same things much
earlier than I did.
I had three older brothers who also helped Dad as they were
growing up. But, by the time I became big enough to be even a small amount of
help, they were all working elsewhere.
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The youngest of my
older brothers (Clint) was 7 years older than me, and had taken a job as a
welder in a local factory. Our parents
were very happy they had full time jobs.
As the DEPRESSION worsened, a lot of people lost their jobs.
My second oldest brother (Chuck) lost his job and came to work with my dad. Just
prior to this, dad’s only employee left.
Horse
shoeing became less necessary as people began doing away with horses and were
now using trucks and tractors to do the work instead of horses.
Now my second oldest brother (Chuck)
did the welding in the shop, becoming very proficient with both the arc and
acetylene welding.
Work was now changing due to the many people without jobs,
and it became necessary to do any type of work, or what ever
steel
work people needed. This sometimes included making and installing trailer
hitches on cars. A portable welder was
bought and mounted on a truck, so that welding could be done in the field where
needed for contractors or farmers.
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This was our means of servicing the contractors who need
repair
work done in the field.
Finally a job was obtained to make the frame work for punch
press flywheel guards out of angle iron. A jig was made to fit the bender to
form the top small circle and another jig to form the larger bottom circle on
the guard. Then the ends were welded together, and expanded metal welded in
place with a small circle that allowed the hub of the flywheel to extend thru
the frame. These completed frames were
then shipped to the press manufacturer.
1941 WORLD WAR II CAME
In the early part of 1942 my second and third oldest brothers
were called into the Army. Now my father was all alone in the shop. At this
time my school days ended, and I went to work with
Dad in the shop. After several months my oldest brother Bob also
came to
work with us. He never served in the armed forces.
Now with the war going full blast, the need for everyone to
pitch in became necessary. The shop also
became engaged in doing WAR WORK, and obtained an order to make ground
anchors
for telephone and telegraph antennas.
These ground anchors looked like a corkscrew, except much larger. They were screwed into the ground to hold the
guy wires that kept the antennas upright.
These anchors were fabricated from both ½” round rod and ¾” round rod.
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When it came to forming, bending, twisting of steel, making
jig and fixtures, dies for forming or bending, my dad could make
steel do
everything except stand up, walk and talk. He really was a genius working
steel.
My dad took his old lathe and mounted a truck transmission on
the drive head giving the lathe much more torque. With this, we wound the ¾”
steel rounds without heating them into the
corkscrew. Then it was necessary to heat the rounds in
the forge, turn the straight end at right angles, then reheating and forming a
loop (eye) on that end. After this it
became necessary to weld the eye shut.
On the ½” steel rods, my dad built another type machine to
wind these into the corkscrews required.
He mounted a 2” round steel rod to a steel pulley mounted to a stand.
This had a live
pulley
and an idle pulley so that the turning bar could be stopped and started, as
this all ran off a line shaft. A bracket
welded on one end of the 2” round turning rod held the ½” steel rod in place and
a shut off bar to stop the winding
process.
We made and shipped thousands of these. It became my job to
arc weld the eyes on these corkscrews.
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There was also an order for stamping rifle bolts blanks that
was performed on the drop hammer, as shown below, the metal was heated and then
placed on the jig and hammered into shape.
These blanks were then shipped to the place where they were
machined into the finished product.
It became necessary to replace the alligator manual shear
with a motorized alligator shear. This
shear had a lower jaw
which was
a punch. This was used in making chain link hooks and also rope hooks needed by
the military, which we also produced. Also
used for cutting flat bars.
Shortly after this a punch press was obtained to cut the ½”
and ¾” rods. Dad made a die and installed it on the punch press for the purpose
of cutting these rods to length.
Now my dad had to hire
several other people to help with the
work,
because it became too much for the three of us.
Dad knew an old blacksmith who was looking for a job. He had worked for dad several years before and
was very happy to return to work
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here. Two other men were also hired to do a lot of
the grunt work, such as pulling the bender handle, heating the irons in the
forge, hauling coal to the forges to keep the fire burning hotly.
In July, 1944, I receive notice that I was being called into
the army and had to report on Aug. 23 at the local railroad depot for
transportation to
I firmly believe my
life was saved BECAUSE I was a BLACKSMITH.
1946
After spending 1-1/2 years overseas I returned home in Oct.
1946, a short while after my two older brothers (Chuck & Clint) had
returned safely home. We all went back to work in Dad’s shop.
While I was gone the old blacksmith shop became much too
small for the work they were doing. A new building was purchased and now that
the War Work was over, a new type work was begun. We converted to manufacturing materials
handling equipment. Still forming,
cutting and welding steel, but now instead of using
a forge
to heat and form steel, a press brake was purchased to bend and form. A square shear was purchased to cut sheet
steel and light plate. A Kling
combination shear, punch and cope was purchased to cut angle iron on one end,
to punch on the other end
a shear to slit plate with the lower jaw. It was also
used to shear flat bars to length. Two
more punch presses were purchased also used for forming steel bars into many
different shapes. Also
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several
more arc welding machines were purchased and more men were employed.
In 1948 our youngest brother Bill joined us in the plant. He
also had learned to weld, but never had to do the forge work, as this was all
before his time.
Our oldest brother, Bob, now moved into sales work calling
on our customers, and I moved into the office to handle that aspect of the
business.
It wasn’t very long before we again outgrew this building
and decided to build a new much larger factory, and we installed overhead
cranes, etc. This building was completed
and moved into in 1954. It also became
necessary to sell the old press brake, and square shear, and purchase new
larger ones.
Dad never learned to play, it was
work, work, and more work.
However on
some rare occasions he did go fishing with us, but these trips were few and far
between. I do remember Dad one time going to Canada for a week in 1954 to fish
with Clint, Bill and Me.
We purchased a ¼” x 10 ft. 500 ton press brake, shown above,
and a ¼” x 10 foot hydraulic square shear (not shown).
We also retired the old arc welders and purchased MIG (metal
and inert gas) welders in their place.
Hiring more men to do the work also became necessary.
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Our next purchase was for a ‘Ultragraph’ Flame cutter that would follow a pattern and
cut exactly to the pattern.
This was used for cutting the rocker side plate to shape to
be welded to the Rocker on end dump hoppers.
With this
new equipment we could now form 1/4” plate x 10 foot long or ½” plate x 4 foot
long. This was used to form the end
dump hopper
rocker bases. Previously we had to
purchase these ½” plate bases from another source.
We could shear ¼” plate x 10 ft.
long with the hydraulic shear.
We also purchased 3 chain feed power
Hack Saws, which could saw steel up to 9” diameter. The steel bars were placed on the saw stand,
and attached to the vise and was pulled by the chain forward under the
saw blade. The opposite end of the bar was placed on the second vise on the saw
bed. The chain pulled the vise and bar forward when the piece was cut off, all
automatically, once the piece was cut completely off the saw raised and the
vise on the saw opened and the chain pulled the steel bar forward. The only
attention needed once the saw started cutting was to occasionally clean out the
metal saw chips so that the water could pour over the saw blade keeping the
blade cool.
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Chuck setting up the saw to cut to
the proper thickness
on the
preceding page.
We sawed these steel blanks for Gear Manufacturing
companies whose job it was to cut gears from these pieces. The companies would ship the tool steel bars
to us directly from the Steel Supplier, we then cut
them to the required thickness and then delivered them.
Of course we also had to install a paint spray booth to
paint our equipment with spray paint and not with a brush. This entailed installing overhead fire
protection in the way of water spray heads, to prevent any fires.
This also
necessitated buying a semi tractor and trailer to haul our products to our
customers in several states .
Many of our products when completed
weighed upwards of 1000# each and now we had to purchase two Fork Lift Trucks
to handle and move these around. WE
could no longer use manpower to handle products.
The blacksmith work had changed forever. No longer did men
have to stand over hot fires in forges in order to form steel by pounding with
a hammer. Now it was easier to place
the steel under the ram of a press and step on the treadle lowering the ram
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and
forming the steel in one blow. No longer
did men lift and strain to move a piece of steel into position. The crane or the lift trucks took their place
and made working a much easier job.
In the old days, most work was done by men lifting, straining
and tugging. Now the same work was done
by pushing a button on the crane or driving the lift truck.
We no longer could be called blacksmiths, but now became
steel fabricators.
But without the old blacksmiths and their knowledge and
ability to work steel into shapes, WHERE WOULD WE BE TODAY.
The time came when dad retired, our oldest brother, Bob, had
died at a young age of 50 in 1967. Dad was the next one to pass away in 1977 at
the age of 84, followed by brother Chuck at age 72 in 1990, and brother Clint
in 1991 at age 72, then our youngest brother Bill died in 2001 at age 70.
We sold the company in 1992 and I am the only survivor of
the company as of this date in 2008.
On the
following page is shown some of the equipment we manufactured. We shipped these items all over the
