Has the craft changed much in that time?

The methods, no. The principles are the same — heat, bend, stretch, upset. I'm still doing it like 3,000 years ago. Well, I'm not using a goatskin, but I still got the anvil. They haven't improved on that yet.

What's the role of the blacksmith today?

I have a piece of fence there that's over a hundred years old. Who's going to fix that? Only a blacksmith. You can get a welder that can make something that'll look pretty good, but it won't be the same. That thing has mortise and tenons, it's not welded together in any way. They brought in a cannon caisson from the Revolutionary War, and after we fixed it, the guy that brought it in didn't know where it was fixed.

If [the parks department] goes on the outside to get a job done, and they send guys out that they hire, its going to cost twice as much. It works out cheaper because we have no equipment, we do it the old way. ... You need a new punch machine, its going to cost $30,000 to $40,000 — that's a half a year's pay. But you got some guy knows how to do it, you got $200 worth of coal, $50 worth of iron, you can do a $5,000 job.

So why was [the blacksmith craft] dying?

It was dying because blacksmiths did their jobs so well they put themselves out of business. Every blacksmith who needed to do something faster had to figure out a better way. He'd think his way into a machine to do it, like a power hammer. That was an extra man that didn't cost anything. Then the modern punch press, punching holes faster, because back then you had to heat them up in the forge and punch them with somebody holding the tool and you striking the hammer. With a punch machine, anybody could do it.



What do you think the future of the craft looks like?



That depends on the clientele — that's what'll either make it or break it. Otherwise it's just going to be a bunch of hobby guys. There's so much knowledge lost over the years that we're reinventing it. Everybody thinks they're so smart because they invented something, but then if you look and you research back, you see some guy did that in the 1700s.