A Summer Interview with Jed the Blacksmith

Jed is a blacksmith and he does his smithing during the summer because his shop is not heated and it can get too cold to do much blacksmithing in the winter where he lives. Jed is making tripods today as we interview him. Jed says blacksmithing is one of his summer activities.

Jed needs a fire to heat his metal with and his fire is made with a coal called anthracite coal. The fire that he makes with this coal gets so hot that the coals are white in the center of his fire. His fire is made in a forge. Jed’s forge is called a portable forge. A portable forge looks a lot like a big iron bowl on 4 legs. A blower is connected to his forge and it blows air with an electric fan onto the fire making his metal heat up faster and hotter. To make the metal hot Jed puts the metal directly into his coal fire. He only heats up the part of the metal his is working on. It takes Jed’s metal about two minutes in his fire to get hot enough for Jed to shape. The coal makes the metal dirty but he will wash the metal off after he is done making the metal into the shapes he wants.

Jed heats his metal up until it is red hot. Then he pounds the metal with a blacksmith hammer to make the loop. Then he reheats his metal and pounds it to make another loop. After he gets the metal into the form he wants he takes the hot metal and puts it into cold water. The metal steams and makes a hissing sound as the metal cools off. When Jed takes the metal out of the water it is cool enough to touch. Then he can assemble the tripod and it is ready to use.

Jed uses metal that is half inch round hot rolled steel. The tripods are about six feet long and they support a grill in the center that is made to be over a wood fire to cook food on. The grill can be raised or lowered depending on the heat needed to cook the food. It takes Jed about two hours to make a tripod.

Jed can make special order iron items like fireplace tools or railings. Jed has been blacksmithing for 7 years. He started out as a cushmaker at the age of 10. Young blacksmiths are called cushmakers because there job is to cool off the hot metal by putting the metal in water and as they do this the sound is cush. Therefore they are called cushmakers.

Being a blacksmith is very dirty work since working with coal, iron and fire can make a person black. The whole blacksmith shop is black with soot and oil. It is not a good job for anyone who does not like to be clean. Jed gets very dirty during his time at work. A shower is a definite necessity after a job like this.