1 50 1 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/ec25852d7a8f225d472b32edd08d3367.pdf 365dbbafbcecbdc488518900679d1735 PDF Text Text TAPE #44, 45 This is an interview with Bea Hensley and Mike Hensley in Spruce Pine, North Carolina on March 24,1973, by Lester Harmon and Bill Brinkley for the Appalachian Oral History Project. A: Well, we start from scratch every day, what we do, we taper coal or raw coal like this and we've got a "duck's nest", what is called a "duck's nest" in there. It is actually a pot that has holes in the bottom of it, where your air comes up through. Pack that coal down around six inch pipe and then take the pipe out and just put paper down in the hole and then ignite it. Then at the same time you're burning coal, you are making coke. Q: Is this the coke? A: This is the coke and then while you're burning, the coke has a shorter life span than coal does, but yet it'll burn hotter. I can run this fire up to about four thousand degrees, when I want to. Now it doesn't run that hot normally because of the fact that, at four thousand degrees, you could melt a piece of 1-8-1 right quick. So you generally run it around seven, eight hundred, nine hundred, thousand degrees all the time. But the important part about this is your coke. Your coke has all the impurities that the coal has and you've already burned out. Then you get cleaner heat, and especially in making a forge weld, you have to have a clean fire. Then certain things that you do, for instance making this particular twisted handle, well, you have to have a clean fire on that because the ball is forge welded on plus if you had any impurities in the fires, these would have a tendency to stick together, that form separate pieces. That happens to be the hardest thing in black- smithing to do. �Q: Do you use both the ovens? A: Yes, this one's dad's. This is the only time that we work together, when we're going to give a demonstration. my tools. I use my anvil, my forge, my hammers, But if we're going to give a demonstration or anything like that, we use his forges most the time, his anvil, because he's familiar with it. It's to his height, and I can bend over, but he can't stretch. Q:Is this a, this is the original flooring right here, of the old building? A: Yes, no, our old building is up front. We don't have any, this is a brand new building. We've only been in it about three years. at this location for twenty some years. But Dad's been here Then when I went business with him about six years ago, we had to build a new building. The other shop was just a one man shop. We were turning around in each other's way, so we had to eliminate the showroom and things like that, where we had a complete, big display set up and everything. But, actually we got this new building, we'd decided we'd . eliminate the showroom, and everything temporarily. We'll have one one day. But all we have on exhibit is what we make up and are ready to ship out or people going to deliver. are going to come and pick up or we're That's all we have on hand anymore. Q: Are these clay floors? A: Yea, it's red clay. We have it for two reasons. The main reason is because standing all day doesn't hurt you like concrete does. with you. It's a lot more like a cushion. It will give The second reason, a lot of time when we're wanting to cool steel, w e ' r e not wanting to put it in water, such as �the balls on top of andirons. Those are solid, we forge those, and if you put those in water they'll crystallize. They'll become glass hard and you can't drill, you can't do anything with 'em, so we put 'em on the dirt floor to cool. They'll cool a little more rapid than they would on concrete. Q: How much do one of those balls weigh? A: Oh, they don't weigh much. They weigh about three to five pounds, something like that. Q: How long have you been working with your dad? A: I've been in the shop since I was four years old. I kinda grew up in the trade. Q: Pretty well know the business then? A: Well, yes and no. There is still a lot to learn, you learn everything everyday. Because the thing about it is, no two pieces of metal work alike. You have to work each individual piece as an individual piece, because of the fact, that it has hard places in it and soft places in it and throwing the scroll, it may have a, pull a flat spot. You have to know where to take this out. You may have to work a little different on it than you did on the previous piece. Q: You read each piece of metal before you start working with it? A: Well, you don't exactly read it. You read it as you go. You get a piece �4. ' paper and I'll start this fire, and get this made. If it gets above fifty-five or sixty in here, we're just too hot to work. But we do work during the summer time. Q: I bet it gets very hot during the summer. A: Ah, of course we've got the windows open, we got a big fan that we turn on. Q: Now where does that connect to.? A: This comes under the forge and we have a gauge valve on it here that controls the air that comes up into the "duck's nest". Q: Does that smoke cause the yellow smoke? A: No, it's really the paper. When the paper burns out, it should have the coke hot enough to where it'll stay hot the rest of the day. Of course, the coke will burn out, and we have to keep adding coke to it. But, that's the reason that we're making coke at the same time, we tear out and rebuild the fire, as you can see the paper's beginning to burn out now. Q: Do you take part of this coke out and save it? A: We take all of it. We clean the whole "duck's nest". "duck's nest" if you want to see what one looks like. are, here in the center. I ' v e got an empty This is where the holes And then this is where we place the six inch pipe around like this, so it will not, the coal will not cover up the holes. Then you put �5. all the raw coal around this, or the forging coal, and ycu let your two mounds come out on each side. Q: Are those two mounds raw coal? A: Raw coal, and they will t u r n into some coke. Now they don't turn into all coke, but this is mainly to contain the heat from the sides, cause you want your opening clean through so you can slide your piece of metal through, back and forth to keep it pure during what we call a "long feed" on it when you can slide it front and backwards through it. Q: Do you have any of the old bellows, I believe they used? A: No, everytime we wanted to buy a pair, they found out that'we're' blacksmiths and won't sell 'em to us. Well, we're in it to make a living. Someone had to make me a pair. It's pleasure, but still we have to make a living at it, so that's the reason we had to go to the electric blowers. It eliminates all the hand pumping there all day long. Q: Could you kinda talk about the fire a little bit with us? A: Hardly know what to say about the fire. burnt out. It's practically no good. or for working in all day long. Really, this fire now is nearly This is not a real fire for forge welding Now to work big pieces where you were going to forge out a ball like is on the andirons or in something like that, it is a good fire because it's open, and it's out to where you can get down in it because you place the ball right down in it, and you'll run the ball up to �6. to around fifteen hundred degrees, that you run the ball up to. But it's higher than that sometimes, depending on the hardness of the metal that you have. And of course, if once we bring it out, we stick it under the pile hammer, this is the pile hammer over here, but that eliminates me hammering it. But as far as, well, the two mounds like we're telling ya before, contains the heat from the side, so that you'll get more heat. Then this a forging fire instead of a forge welding fire. A forge welding fire wants to be a fire that is brand new with raw coal. Then you burn coke inside of that so that you can eliminate the impurities, you're burning mostly coke then. Now you're burning your coke itself that you're making. Q: That right there's the coke burning itself? A: Right, you can see that outer ridge around here, coke's beginning to burn now, itself instead of makin' coal. Dad wants to go ahead and do it. What we'll do for you here now, if If you'll wait just a minute, we'll fix it up here, and I'll get my hammers and everything and we'll get ready to go. Q: I don't know much about the blacksmith. there? How do you put the metal in I mean you have something you hold it with or.. . ? A: Well, you have tongs you hold it with or you have the pieces long enough, you know, to hold with your hands. Boy, it's chilly out there. Q: Yeah, it is. That blue flame looks like it's getting pretty hot right now. A: Boy, you can melt a piece of steel in there and it don't look like a big �fire, but it's hot. Q: What are you doing that for? A: Really, it's two things; it drys the moisture off the hammer handle so the hammer handle will slide through your hands, then to get it warm. Mostly to get the moisture off it, you don't pay too much attention to the coldness of it. Q: Is there a special reason for getting moisture off? A: Right, you never hold your hammer handle tight, like a carpenter would hold a claw hammer. It has to be able to move in your hand freely, cause a turning scrolls hammering position is a certain position that you have to move your hammer head into, such as, in forging special pieces or a flowering piece, like a fish tail scroll or something like that. You may have to turn your hammer head just a millionth of an inch, so you have to be able to have this hand, your hammer completely under control, but yet, loose in your hand where you can turn it. what makes it so hard to learn. That's the big secret of blacksmithing, that's You can. really get a Ph.D. degree quicker than you can learn blacksmithing. Q: Is that right? Your father taught you how, is that. . . ? A: Right. Dad's the first one in the family. Q: Did you ever have to go to school to pick up any of this. there a subject, are there any courses? I mean, is �.A: No, there's no such thing as a blacksmith school that I know of anywhere, really, in the United States. Now there are schools that teach horse shoeing, but horse shoeing is just a different aspect or a side aspect of real blacksmithing. Let me get this anvil. . . (He hits the anvil. ) Q: We should be getting this on film, too. A: I'm just turning it now. Q: What is the purpose of turning this? A: It becomes a, what we call, all our anvils are bought for their musical quality and for two reasons. One is because you have to live anvil and a live anvil is this. (He plays the anvil) And when you can hear that particular sound like that out of an anvil, means that for every hundred pounds that you hit down, it'll hit back that many hundred pounds. Another thing, you don't have to pick your hammer up. It'll pick up your hammer for you. But a dead anvil, or an anvil that's fastened completely down, you have to pick up your hammer and it won't hit back. This one, in working on it, you can, in other words, you can hit a few pounds less and do the same thing with it, whereas you might have to hit a whole lot harder on a dead anvil. Plus the fact that the thing that Dad and I do together, the language that we do together, we have to have it, because you go a lot by sound; you go a lot by the positioning of the hammer, not only from the aspect of the master's point of view, but from the apprentice's point of view, because the metal will change sounds and in the anvil, plus in the position of your hammer. The �colder it gets the deader the sound, I mean the live the sound, because the steel's more mellow when it's hot. Just about two seconds, if I can get a piece of chalk. Q: What's the purpose of the chalk? A: It eliminates moisture from your hands, so you, that you can slide. If you want to move right there you can see a lot better. Cause I'm going to be standing in your light. HE PLAYS THE ANVILS PLAYS THEM HE AND HIS FATHER Q: Gosh, I have never seen anything like that in my life! ! A: I would have done it longer, but it's cold this morning and I'm not warmed up yet. Q: That's almost unreal! That is really fantastic! I just can't believe that! That is really great! A: What this is, it's really a language. We'll have to go through it again. What it is, he's the master and I would be considered the apprentice on this side of the anvil. So what he is doing, he's telling me exactly what to do. Then after, well, as long as he's playing on the face of the anvil, I can work either side of the metal that I want to. And also, I'm doing it right. Then when he goes off and hits the heel, that's telling me to work on this side alone. And once he hits that heel and how hard he hits that heel's how hard �10. I work this. The position, whether he hits it back or front, tells me to work high or low on it. Then when he switches over to the horn, that tells me to work on this side alone. this side. How hard he hits the horn, is how hard I work on And then whether he hits the front or back of the horn, tells me to work high or low on it. Then when he reaches his hammer in there and taps a spot, he's telling me one specific spot to hit, because of the two different view points of light that you have. Then he'll tell also how hard to hit that spot with that hammer lick. And then when he comes over here, which we didn't get a chance to really do on account of arm cramping on me, he hits the horn back and forth, back and forth on it, that tells me to draw the piece of metal longer. to it. Every sound or every position that hammer has a meaning You spend four years on this side of the anvil and doing nothing but this, but you work the complete face and horn of the anvil. Then once you do that, you switch to the other side of the anvil and work six years with the master on the same anvil. Then after you do that, you go to another separate anvil, in the same shop, and work four more years before you get your master's license. So you have fourteen years all to it. Q: You do have a master's license? A: No, there's no such thing today as this, because we have eliminated a few of the good things from the past, from the apprentice, and fellow craftsmen; master programs that we used to have. is how I learn blacksmithing. But this is. old country doctrine. This Then we can trace this particular language back to the building of King Solomon's temple. And it's one of the oldest unwritten languages �11. on earth. And there's no way to write it down, because after spending four years on the apprentice side of the anvil, you know exactly how to turn your hammer. How to shape a piece of steel, generally. Now after you shape that piece of steel, generally you switch to the other side. And then you start in your finer details; how to draw, how to make scrolls and make roses and leaves of all types, clusters of berries, and things like this. Some of the old techniques that they really had down to a fine art. you go to your anvil and you create your own designs. Then after that, Then once you've done that, you can go into competition or go into partnership with whoever you want to. The only reason that we really don't have any recorded blacksmiths during the Renaissance Period andup through that section is because there was one practically on every street corner, plus the fact that the apprentice are, after he once got his master's license, he might like to make knives better than he did wrought iron work, so he went into the cutlery/ business, which is a phase of blacksmithing. he likes to do wrought iron work. One might like to shoe horses better than Once he does that, he's afarrier. And then another man might want to be an armorer which was a phase of blacksmithing. Another might like to make guns better than anything else, so that was the gun smith. All these were phases of blacksmithing. Even your coppersmiths, your silversmiths, people like this were all out of the traditional blacksmithing field, because the blacksmith generally made andirons fire sets, screens, chandeliers, and all types of railings, gates, things like this. Of course, today we have brought the blacksmith down to the �12. horse shoer today, but really he's the farrier. Then of course, you have your wheel wright which is another aspect of blacksmithing; that goes to your covered wagon days. I don't know too much about wheel wright, but Dad can do the wagon wheels and all the wheel wright work. And we have a lot of the wheel wright tools, but not all of them. But he likes the artistic views of blacksmithing, because you just don't go down the road everyday repairing wagons. We could have a good business shoeing horses and you could make a good living at shoeing horses. But still it's hard on the back; it's hard on the liver. Q: Hard on the liver? A: Yes, you stay in a bent over position all day like that. You're down like this and then wait til you get your leg ripped up or something like that with a horse shoe nail, or get kicked, or something like that. serious by shoeing horses. You can get hurt real There's good money in it. Q: Do you have any ideas how many different types of blacksmiths there are today? A: No, not really. Because a little bit of, like I said gun smiths, a lot of it is eliminated due to the machine age. your wheel wright. We have no more call for it such as Now a gunsmith, even though he is a modern gunsmith and he's got his lathes and everything, but it's not really the blacksmithing type that he once was in the muzzleloader days when he made the barrels, and the locks, forged the trigger guards, and the triggers, and trigger sets and all the gun springs and everything. The closest that you have to a �13 specialized blacksmith now-a-days are your knife makers, throughout the United States and very few of those do forge work on 'em. Most of 'em grind 'em out, and then they have a pryometer furnace that they can heat treat 'em in. They do not do the hand tempering or anything like that. getting away from the blacksmithing aspect. So, they're Your coppersmiths and your silversmiths, they've gone to your dyes and your molds, things like this. And a lot of them are eliminated, even though there are some excellent silversmith craftsmen, still left in the United States, they've gone a lot into production work. A lot of it is cast silver, which it's, you have to have a mold and sand and things like this. form at one time of blacksmithing. And even foundry work today was a But that's where you have to carve a mold and do a deal with sand and melt your metal, and pour it in, which a lot of schools are teaching in a small way, in your industrial arts and things like that. Q: Your father was the first blacksmith in the family? A: Yes, my grandfather was a Baptist minister. Q: Is that right? Mr. Hensley, how did you learn this art? A: Born that-a-way. You can't help it when you're born into it. Q: You just took right off into it? A: I'll forge a little piece here for ya, let ya see how it's done. I gotta bend down here and work in that water and that. . �14. Q: Do you think there has been any kind of revival of interest in this sorta thing? Are there more people beginning to do it, or is it dying out? A: It might be a little bit, but nobo dy won't do it. You don't have to worry • \t people, you know, a-do Our's is rough. Too many things involved. You've got to be able to run a business to begin with. And takes TOO LONG TO LEARN IT. Most people want to do something they can learn in six weeks, so he ain't going to do this. Then equipment's hard to get. You either have to make it or pick up used, because you see, Champion and Forger Company, a lot of these big companies, they don't ev^n raak§ equipment you need anymore. For instance, that power hammer right there, you couldn't, unless you could find one of those used in a place, well, you wouldn't be able to buy it. Q: Could you make that? A: I could make one, yeah. anvil before you can use that. in it. But that one, you gotta be able to do it on the So it's, there'll never be much competition Now there might be alot of welding shops of that nature. A: Another aspect of it is the fact that everything that is expected to be learned in six weeks or eight weeks or something like that, they try to teach short courses in, try to teach everything in six or eight weeks which you cannot learn. I've been at it now twenty-two years and there's a lot of it that I still don't know. And you, like I was saying to begin with, you learn everyday, cause no two pieces of metal work the same. You have to have �15. that knowledge of how to eliminate the hard places in the piece of steel and make it work the way you want it to work instead of it working you. And people are just not willing to set down. We just got too fast a society today, to want to get inthere and get things done and get it over with or make a die to stamp our a hundred of these. smithing. That's the reason we stay in custom black- Because you don't find any two fireplaces hardly the same size, and you have to proportion everything. The main thing in blacksmithing, irregardless of anything else, you have to see the finished product before you can even start making it. And that's within your mind's eye. You cannot set down and draw it out. You cannot set down and figure it out on a piece of paper, because of the fact you may have to make one set of andirons, for instance, forty-eight inches high. The next pattern you might make exactly like it.. (End of Side 1) Q: This one right here? A: That's one of the machines right there. Q: What is that? A: (Mike) A power hammer, run off of air, electricity or a motor. (Bea) If you bought it, it would take you, of course, now to me, all this stuff comes to me. It doesn't bother me. I can walk out here to look at a machine that I've never seen, turn the switch on it, and I've figured it out in a few minutes just exactly what it makes. I mean, it's no problem. You go to a, Mike can tell you, it's not peanuts to learn to use one. �16. (Mike) No, it's not, because of the fact you have to learn to hand hammer before you can ever. . . (Bea) I'll show you something. show you. I'll do something right here real simple to That looks pretty simple, but I hired twenty-seven people one year; I got one man that could bend the eye, out of twenty-seven. beat that all to pieces trying to get that around there. They'll If I was going to make them, I'd make a little machine to make it, but I could make it quicker. But I could make a machine, that I could make them just (he makes machine sounds) as fast as you can do that, or just as fast as you could press the trigger. That's the reason nobody does it this way. But if somebody come in here and say I want an eye holed banker out there in the gravel, we got to pull x number of tons or we're going to anchor it here on a, in a mine, or put a cable for a car to pull in a certain way, well, then you got to hand make that, cause there's no machine to make it. But if you're going to do this, get that little old machine there, how is makes it, there's nothing to it. (Mike) See, everything we do is free hand. We have no gizmos or anything like that to go by. on the anvil. We do everything just by free, everything's made right Only reason that we have the power hammers or anything like that is eliminating me from hammering that I was doing there a few minutes ago. Because you have what is called a striper, that if you make an anvil or anything like that, you have to have a striper. See now, as he's doing this with the pwer hammer, I would have to be doing that on the anvil. So that eliminates one aspect of my work that I would have to come and help him with. Whereas you can control that, just like you can a hand hammer. But �17. it's harder to learn to control that, than It is to do this there on the anvil. Q: You said this language ya know wasn't written down. What did you do, pass it down by word of mouth? A: (Mike) It's passed down from generation to generation, from master to apprentice, right on down through the ages. Now the way that Dad, well actually Dad didn't learn it. He was shown it. Daniel Boone VI, whom he worked with. . . Q: Taught your father? A: (Mike) Taught Dad this particular language. And he's the sixth generation of the original Daniel Boone. And the original Daniel Boone was a blacksmith and a gunsmith. The best parts of Daniel Boone was not wrote down in history. . He and his father play the anvils, again Q: That was good. Ya'll oughta get, like he's on his anvil and maybe you're on yours, you get to mess around, playing tunes back and forth to each other. A: We do. That particular part of it, the tune is a useful aspect, even though as Dad says, it adds a little flavor to it. But, what it is, you have to, you never really guide your hammer to where you're hitting. where it is going and everything. hold it loose in your hand. You know This is the reason another aspect, that you For when you have to take a little longer to look at that particular piece of metal, then you normally do, you add the tune in �18. there, because you don't want to lose your rythmn. basic rythmn all the time. You hammer with a So, it's like when you're doing a roll and ah. . . (he demonstrates). While he's talking with him, I'll talk with ya'll. What I started to say about the little tune that he adds to that, what he was doing with the tune there was the aspect of like you would play a piano. When you didn't want to lose your rythmn or anything, you have to add that in to it. Or you were going into another song or something, you do a roll of something like that. So the tune is where you play to look over a piece of metal a little longer than you normally have to. So when you go out of it, you know right where you're going to make the next lick. Then, as he was hammering there the last time, he, that's how you basically hammer all day long. You don't add this flavor in everytime that you hammer or anything like that. So even though when he switched off and hit the anvil and everything like that, you're looking it over, but it takes you a shorter length of time to look it over. Now when you're tapering a piece, like he was doing there, the first thing you want to get an even taper all the way down. take you a little longer to look it over. So that's the reason it has to Then the next process that he'll be going through, he'll be turning his back to the anvil. backside of the anvil, where he normally stands. He'll be working to the The only reason that he does that, is to keep from Scarring up a certain portion of the anvil that you normally work on, such as this part here. on the anvil. You can even feel the indentations Then, once he gets through with that, he'll have a chinkapen leaf completed. �19. Q: What kind of work is that? I mean what is it used for? A: You can use it, for instance, right here. You can see in this picture of this table we have, let's see, I don't know if that's a good one or not. Yeah, here's a better one. This particular leaf design that you can add to it. Q: And this is what he's making? A: Right, he's making a chink, what we call a chink-a-pen leaf. It's what the chink-a-pen . leaf looks like when it first conies out in the spring of the year, about so long. particular chandelier. Well, here's another example. Here's one in this You can use them in a lot of aspects. You can use 'em in all types of work on grates, andirons, lighting fixtures of any kind. You can even make candelabra, together. planters out of them by putting several You can make headboards; I don't have apicture with the particular headboard that we used to mend, but I can show you a headboard that we have. Q: All these are samples of your work? A: Right. Everything in here, well, for instance, not a particular leaf, like we're forging over there, but now this door knocker is an oak leaf with an acornon it that you can use for a door knocker. You can use poplar lea£ laurel leaf, anything like that that you want. All you have to do is look at nature and there is a design there that you can work with. I can, if I wanted to, I could take and forge a complete tree, to make for the front of an andiron. legs. Bring it down and make all the root system, that would be your Then you come up with the trunk or; the body, forge all the branches �20 out, come in for that, and make the leaves, such as the oak leaf with the acorns on it. Make all 30f that for your design, your scroll work design. is what you do without a log rest. make a If you want to cut that and forge it, you can job of it for SL door. If you want to make an acorn--or a well, a door knocker, you can make the hinges, you can make an acorn and an oak leaf, or you can make two small oak leaves and put the acorns down through like this, and you've got a thumber latch handle holder. Hickory nuts, make poplar leaf door knockers, poplar leaf wall sconces for candles, things like this. There's no end to the designs you can come up with out of your head, out of nature. You can look at a certain type of rock every once in a while and you get designs in your mind because of the particular shape of the grain or something. here's a fancy pair of andirons. Then, well, Even animals, any type of animal you want to do. Horses, cows, pigs, dogs, anything that you want to do in the way of-- you can make 'em into andirons; well, this particular one was used for a weather vane. We've made several weather vanes, but we don't make 'em that often. But we make all types of animals. Q: Instead of learning all of this, you have to be something like a sculptor and a musician at the same time? A: Right, you work it to where you can, well, for instance, this is the design I came up with out of my head. I just seen, this is the two particular scrolls over here on the bottom of the andiron over there under the legs. I just happen to see them a-laying like that. That's all you need. This is the basic scroll in here. I came up with that design. You just need a particular something that catches your eye in �21 a fancy and-- so it doesn't matter, you cansee anything to come up with a design. This particular fine screen that we're building here, this is one of the few fire places you'll find that is a complete one. It has no straight lines to it. It's all one curvature. So, we had to make up a new type of screen for it, so you have to make up a new design. Q: Oh, you mean you have to go to the home and make, ? A: Right, we make a paste board tip with a -- of the fireplace and then we design the fire screen accordingly. Over there under the legs. I just happen to see them a -laying like that. Q: You were talking about forging a while ago. that? Exactly what do you mean by What is forging? A: Forging is just exactly what you've seen so far. metal and shaping it or wroughting it. It's the heatingof a piece of Wrought iron is a process of handmaking a piece. In other words, when you hand wrought jewelry, >£>r hand wrought gold, you made it by hand, or you shaped it by hand. Wrought iron has two different aspects. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when they had to make their own metal, instead of mills making their metal, this is where the wrought iron comes in at. Because they would have, say like, three or four men in there that would take and, well, let's say, a six-inch square piece. four foot long. Six inches square, You take that four foot long piece, you put it in the fire, and you may have three men to work on it, and they take sledge hammers, twenty pound sledge hammers, and they start working it down. You can work that particular piece down into 3/8 round, into 1/2 inch square, into 1 / 8 x 1 strip, 1/8 x 1/4, �22 anything that you can, but today, you can make it into that. So this is where your wrought iron aspect comes in. At that particular time, they could not find metal readily, like we can here. All we have to do is call the mill, or we call the wholesaler, and he can ship it up to us or he can buy it. scrap that they could. So they saved every It didn't matter if it was an inch long. weld a lot of these together. They would forge Well, they may forge-forge weld a piece with 1/2 inch square, 5/8 square, 3/8 round, all of this together, and it would be these odd sizes in one long strip. What they do, they kept folding these back, folding them over each other, and making it into one particular size piece that they wanted. This is where also in wrought iron, you have a grain. It's very easy to work with. It's varied grain. But yet they never threw away a particular piece. That's where we also get wrought iron. Now wrought, of course, is the same thing that we're doing now is shaping that particular leaf. it is handmade; it is hand shaped. We call it now free forging because as you can . see, it had no d jes, no molds, no guides to go by. hand hammer. It is hand wrought; You do everything with a You do everything free-hand. When you can do that, of course, you've got forging conquered. There're too many people today that cai call themselves blacksmiths, that have dyes, and molds, and everything. see in our shop is just what we have. What you We don't pretend to hide anything like dyes ;.. i n or molds or anything like that, because we don't need 'em. We forge everything right on the anvil. it's For instance, the horse or that particular credusus over there, made right on the anvil* it's forged. When I made that particular dredusus, I didn't even heat it. cold. That's cold forged. Every bit of that is hammered out t �23 Q: You mean, you hammer it together? A: No it's one solid piece, but it has a three dimensional-a kind of a three dimensional shape to it. You have to round those snakes upso they'll look like a body of a snake, round the staff up. But, of course, from here you can't see it, but I tried to put as much of the underside of the wings in with the feathers. I put the scales on the snakes and the grain of the wood, tried to, in the staff. Of course, that goes, that particular one goes to an optometrist in Raleigh. I've made about three or four of 'em for local doctors. We do work all over the world. We've got work in London, Cairo, and at that particular time we did it, it was the Belgian Congo. We did it for a big rubber plantation. Did a big set of hinges or things like that for a plantation back in the Congo. So, we got work all over the United States, all over the continent of the United States. Q: Well, how do these people find out about you? A: Word of mouth. Also, we've had six exhibits at the Smithsonian Institute and been up there twice to demonstrate, and I have one permanent exhibit now at the Smithsonian, plus I have also an exhibit now at Pasadena Museum of Fine Arts. We used to travel quite a bit to colleges and universities. We'ye stopped that now. Of course, we've been to Boone, and we've been to Western Carolina, East Tennessee State, and Carolina, and North Carolina State, and been to some colleges in Florida, and oh, well, the Smithsonian again. And Craftsman fair in Asheville, Craftsman fair in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, North Carolina State Fair, Dixie Classic Fair in Winston-Salem, and places like that. �24 Dad also did a little of the work on the Williamburg restortation. We've got work now in Abercombie andFitchin New Youk. We've got work in Macy's in New York. We could do a lot more work like this for the big concerns, but when they order, like a hundred and forty-four shovels, that gets ridiculous just to set and make shovels, and pokers, and log forks and brooms all the time. of it. That's the reason we got out We stayed in the custom work all the way. Of course, we still do a lot of w^rk up around Beech Mountain, Hound Ears, Seven Devils, and Invershiel. I've got a lot of work to do for Invershiel. for them. I've got to do a big set of thistled andirons They've got thistles on 'em, with the thistles on 'em, with thistle, leaves and all of this. Thistle fire sets and thistle screens and thistles and more thistles. But we do quite a bit of work up around the Boone area plus all down through Florida, because of the fact of the hurricanes. They got a place to cook on when the power's down, or the heat source. Do quite a bit of work out West and up North, through Michigan and places like that. But it's just mostly by word of mouth, because we have really never advertised at all. Q: What is the permanent display you have in the Smithsonian? A: We really pack it on a cardboard box, but we put it inside of a frame and everything and put cardboard around it and also packing material, all around it, so it won't get bent up or anything. Of course, with the shipping today, you have to pack it real good. Of course most of the pictures that we have in our book are local pictures, some of the things around Spruce Pine, and the area. Q: Sir, a while ago you were talking about the blacksmiths back in the olden days saving the pieces of metal. Is there anything you can do with the metal savings, like tftat over there? Do you sweep it up, and throw it away? �25 A: We sweep it up and throw it away. You could refine it and it is actually metal. It's just the scale off of the metal. It's where the air gets to it and becomes harder than the piece under it and it flakes off. You could do that. it with the filings that come out. it. You could do But if steel ever gets scarce now, you could do But the way they are reprocessing automobiles and other junk things, the railroad, and trainwrecks, and things like this, with the processes that we've got now, there's not much need to save it. A lot of people, the potters do, and get it and grind it, to add iron to their clay to get a special effect on gages and also get special effects on their. . . Q: What? Do you sell this to them? A: No. We give it away. We don't have any use for it. Q: You had a smaller anvil when you were younger, didn't you? A: Oh, yes. It weighs about 10 or 15 Ibs. Yeah, this is the first anvil I ever worked on. That was it. Dad made that for me. It was just made out of a piece of railroad railing. And of course, this is my horseshoeing anvil. It weighs about 200 Ibs. And it's a specialized anvil. blacksmithing anvils. These are your regular As you can see it has two critcher holes, a hardy hole, plus it has part of the face cut off there, where you can turn over and throw your big shoes, like a number 7 or something like that, that you can use it on. Q: Where do you get your anvils. �26. A: They don't make 'em anymore, as far as this type of anvil goes, because these are forged anvils, they are not anvils that are cast. just exactly like we forge that. They are forged That's the reason we have the sound to them. We just pick 'em up, well, for instance, Dad's came from a New York junk yard. And mine came from Virginia; this once came from down on the coast of North Carolina; this one came from Asheville. This is a Hade Buddeman, it was made in New York, the horseshoeing anvil. This one was made in England, the big one. It weighs four hundred and eighty-eight pounds. It was made by Peter Rythin in England. He was one of the most, I guess, most gifted and most famous anvil makers in the world. Q: You know how old that anvil is? A: It could be anywhere between 75 and 125 years old. Any of these anvils could. Now I do not know where Dad's was made, who made it or anything like that, because it has no name on it. Mine, I'm about to figure out it's a Hade Budd manlt has no name on it, but I'm picking up the name gradually off of it. I've got to get it worked and worked over a little and the name might come out on it. I can make out an "H", so I'm going to say that it's a Hade Buddmanaridwas made in New York. But it's a very high carbon steel. And it might have been imported from Sweden originally. It has a tendency to act like Swedish steel, because it has a very, very high keen tone about it. That's the reason I'm working on.hollow log with it. deafen you at times. It can �27. Q: In getting these, do you play them, I mean, for the tone? A: Oh, yes. That's the reason we buy them. Q: What, because of the way they sound? A: Because of their musical quality. Q: Think y'all could go through that one more time? A: Oh yeah, we'll go through it. He's gotta finish up this leaf over here, and then he'll, when he gets finished, we'll run through that again. We may be a little warmer now. Kinda hard to do that the first thing around in the morning. Q: How much would a set of irons like that cost? A: The fancy two over there run about $350 a pair. Of course, we make them from $50 to $1, 500. Well, I use that, for an example, if a person wants a $5,000 set of andirons. I mean, it's just up to the person, individual, what he wants, how fancy it is, what the scroll work and everything is on it and everything. Q: Do you have anything, like in the homes of the Rockefellers, the big ones like that. A: You said the $5, 000, I assume that would mean.. . No, the only work we ever done for Rockefeller would been on the Williamsburg estates, when they were restoring Williamsburg. Like I say, it's very seldom that a person would want a $5,000 set or in that book. I make about a dozen different designs, a lot of those are the pictures of the �28. coffee tables and others the dining table. It's hard to put a time limit 'cause now this leaf run out right real pretty. work as good as others. Sometimes this metal don't I got a piece over here the other day that I made one somebody was, it wouldn't work at all. Now this piece of metal worked exceptionally good here. You can't hardly judge, well, if I thought about the time, I wouldn't even work at it. terms of this fire set here. I mean that's, if I thought of time in I may make three of them handles and the fourth one there, it may take me as long to make the fourth one as it did all three of 'em. So you just don't know. Q: You ever run into any that's just impossible to work with? A: No, when it gets like that, you say, "Lord, break this old stubborn willed piece of stuff here, " and just go right on working. If you walk into a man's shop, I'll tell you how you can tell how godd a mechanic, a machinist, or a blacksmith.Go look in all his corners. If you see anything, if he's got a great big bunch of stuff throwed back, you just go to the next. If he's got a lot of mistakes. A: There's a piece of wrought iron, that he made. That's forge welded together seven times. That's seven separate pieces of metal in one. Q: That's the same idea as probably the different layers? A: No, that's just a name. Wrought iron, now that you can buy, you can only buy it about one place in the United States, what you might say technically still makes it, is the carbon content in it. Wrought iron has really no carbon �29. in it at all. Mild iron which we use, has just a little bit of carbon in it. Q: Do you make any wrought iron fences? Y'all do anything like that? A: Oh yeah, we make all types of gates, and railings and things like this. But we try to stay mainly with the andiron and fire sets, screens, and things like that, because of the fact that there's such a demand for them nowa - days. And other things too. Our wrought iron railings and things like, unless somebody just wants to pay for it, they can pay it at Sears a whole lot cheaper. Q: Wrought iron fence that you would make would probably run several hundred thousand dollars, wouldn 't it? A: No, it will run into the thousands of dollars, but it really depends on how long, how fancy, and things like that. We can do real fancy work or you can do a plain one. But when a person buys or gets one of our railings or porch or anything like that, we put the best in it that we possibly can put. We put all solid stock, there's no, everything is fully welded together, everything, if there's scroll work, we'll, all the scrolls are proportioned, tapered, everything. We put what we call a full graduated tapered scroll on it. In other words, that's this scroll that's on the side of each pair andiron. That's the full graduated tapered scroll. Q: Is this the name put on each piece of. . . ? A: Right, we put our name on every piece that leaves the shop, on every �30. piece really, because of the fact that we, if you want to call it pride, we are proud of everything we do. Plus the fact, there has been a few times in the past that one or two pieces have been sold that didn't have our name on it, but they didn't tell them it wasn't. They have came back, and said that we didn't do such a good job, so if it doesn't have our name on it, it's not ours. A: Unless it might be years ago. A: Well, when you were downtown. He was a foreman in a machine shop, and did wrought iron work too. on it. And at that particular time didn't put his name But this incidence or couple of incidences happened within recent years. But since Dad's been out here. . . A: And a lot of work I done down there, I put my name on it and somebody's done hid Shine that for me. Q: You use sand paper to shine this? A: Yes, all the time. This is what we call a natural finish. Most the time we paint the things when they're going into a fireplace or outside. This is what you'd call a natural wrought iron finish or some type of Swedish finish. Q: Are you making this particular piece for a particular person now? A: No, we make this because this is one of the few things that we can show what a bar of metal can be turned completely into to a finished product. Also, we had these andirons laid out on a table, just in the front there, there are nineteen different pieces. So, if a person, if we tried to demonstrate it at a �31 show, or something that if we were going to talk about it, it's hard to lay out all these nineteen pieces and say, "Well now this is going to be a set of andirons. " They cannot visualize the finished product. But with this we can show exactly how it's done and right to a finished product. Q: You have an apprentice now, or is there someone? A: No, we don't have anybody working with us. Most of, well, one thing, you have to start out fairly young. The public education system today still goes for reading, writing, and arithmetic and in certain ways, that prepares you for life, but it doesn't prepare you for a job. The thing about it is, if they would even in the fifth or sixth grade, set up a learning program for crafts or skills, and let them start learning back at that particular age; it's a lot easier to learn at that age than it is when you get out of college, and say "I'm going to go into it, " because you have gone and formed your opinion and everything like that and it's hard to say, "Now, this is the best way. " Now Dad was real good to me. I do it. He said, "Now this is the way You can find a better, go ahead. " Of course, I started out young and found some better ways, and the one good thing about him, he's always willing to, if I find a short cut or a better way to do it, he's willing to take it and work with it my way instead of his. But today, in the college society that we have, it's what, you might say, not an honor to go into menial tasks. They want to pull or push a pencil. to technical school. Of course, I went on to school. I went But, this is my first love, I've never seen anything else or known anything else, that I'd rather do than this. �32. Q: Do you have a son you're planning on passing this down to? A: I'm not even married. I'm lucky enough to stay single, I think. A: If I'd know? it was going to be this cold, I'd built two fires. A: Wait until we get through. A: You know it's cold, it's cold. A: It won't be that cold when we get through. What this is, this is the language that dates back to the building of King Solomon's temple. We use it today, Dad and I do, as a tune mostly, because I know what I'm going to do and he knows what he's going to do. But basically what it is, as long as he's hammering here on the face of the anvil, I can work withtteside of the piece of metal that I want to and I'm working it right. Then when he hits it on the heel, that tells me to work the right hand side or his right hand side, and how hard he hits the heel, is how hard I hit this piece. Whether he hits the back of the heel or the front of the heel}.'tells.me to work high or low on it. Then when he switches over and hits the horn, that tells me to work on his left side. How hard he hits the horn is how hard I hit this. Whether he hits the back or the front of the horn, tells me also whether to work on it high or low. Then if he sees a high spot I don't happen to see, due to the different viewpoints of light that you have, he will reach in with his hammer and tap that. How hard he hits that with his hammer is how hard I back him up. Now if he reaches in there the second time immediately, I don't hit that spot, because he can take that out himself. That's the reason when he keeps tapping in there, I don't touch that spot. I go ahead and hammer all around it, even though it looks like I may hit his hammer. �33. But when he starts going back and forth on the horn of the anvil, that tells me to draw it longer all the time. And all of this is made up a four year apprenticeship that a person learns the basics of hammering, but he works from one end of the anvil to the other. And all this language goes on, whether he's on the horn or the heelpart of your anvil, or anything like that. Then after that four years, you switch to this side of the anvil, and spend six years with the master on the same anvil. After that you go to a? entirely different anvil, different forge, and work on separate things yourself. And after you work on separate things yourself for four more years, you can become a master blacksmith, and then you can do whatever you want to. You should have learned enough to where you can go into your own business. I don't have that much more to say, except Dad learned his through Daniel Boone VI, and then he got it down from the original Daniel. called a logging blacksmith. He was what you He made all types, shoes for oxen, mules. He did single tree work, all types of wedges, things that pertained mainly to end of sawmilling and that type of thing. Then, of course, like I say now, we do it mostly to the tune. I don't pay much attention to what he's, but is basically the way you can learn blacksmithing, the way, a special way that you can pick up blacksmithing, even though there's not, this will teach you the hammering portion of blacksmithing, this does not teach you anything about tempering, formula for tempering, formulas for the study of carbon and steel, the molecular structure of steel, the how to temper, the direction of temper, how they interlock molecules, how to forge weld, how to jump pieces together, how to sweat pieces together. There's such a wide variation that �34. you have to learn, within this 16 year period that you put in, that it's not all spent right on the anvil, all of it hammer. You have a classroom that you go through, just like these you go through high school, or any other school, because this is all part of blacksmithing. If you don't know how to forge weld, there's no blacksmithing to it, because it's all. . . You have to have certain instances that you have to forge weld pieces together, you can't weld in any other way. Then you got to know how to make a fire, fix a fire, different types of fire, whether it's a welding fire, whether it's a heat fire, or whether it's a fire for sharpening steel, a fire that's going to last one day or two days or three days. All this is a part of it. You've got to know how to make tongs, to handle your steel. You've got to know how to make your own personal hammers, whether it's a shop hammer or specialized hammers, such as horse shoeing tools, whether it's claw hammers or sledge hammers or you have to know how to punch eyes, you have to know how to make bits, you have to kno'i? how to forge weld together a piece that has holes in the center and keep the hole open so that it doesn't fill up. You have to know what a back weld is, you have to know what a light weld is, you have to know what a funnel weld is. There's so much in blacksmithing that you have to learn besides hammering. We've got three of the oldest ancient arts here that's anywhere in the world or know in the world. One of 'em, well, first of all, there's the pottery which came first, the art of making clay into pots; then there came blacksmithing, then came marketry. Marketry is the art of inlaying wood into itself, into either pictures or tables or something like that. It dates back to the ancient Egyptian times. Of course, this dates on back to the �35. Iron Age. Of course, the pottery, well, that comes from the ground, and that's as old as the earth, one of the first discovered. So, we're one of the few places that have three of the oldest ancient arts. Q: Is all this your family, the ones of you.. . ? A: No, they're just people that we rent or lease our building. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews Description An account of the resource In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region. The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students. Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU. An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school. This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-1989 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Scanned by Wetmore, Dana Equipment Hp Scanjet 8200 Scan date 2014-02-18 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bea and Mike Hensley, March 24, 1973 Description An account of the resource In this interview father and son, Bea and Mike Hensley, talk about their occupation of blacksmithing. Bea and Mike explain different processes they used in their craft along with how they both got into the trade. They talk about their shop in Spruce Pine, North Carolina and then demonstrate how to forge metal and the way anvil language works. Mike and Bea also describe demonstrations they have done for universities and permanent displays they have in the Smithsonian. As a surprising piece of information, Daniel Boone passed on the trade that eventually both Bea and Mike learned through his ancestors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harmon, Lester and Brinkley, Bill Hensley, Bea and Mike Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/24/1973 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 35 pages Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource document Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 111_tape44-45_Bea&MikeHensley_1973_03_24M001 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Spruce Pine, NC Subject The topic of the resource Blacksmithing--North Carolina--Spruce Pine anvi language anvil blacksmith Daniel Boone Smithsonian