terry_g
Ultra Member
Fifty five years ago or there about as a young man seven years old I traveled to Ireland with my parents to visit my grandmother.
We spent a month there and did quite a bit of sight seeing. One of the things we did was visit a blacksmith shop. My dad wanted
me to see what a blacksmith did and told me it was a dying trade even in 1967. The blacksmith took a horse shoe off the wall and
put it in the forge and I pumped the bellows until the shoe glowed bright red. The blacksmith took it out of the forge and hammered
it and reshaped it into a donkey shoe cutting it down and punching new nail holes in it.
I can still remember the pungent smell from the coal forge. It was a small dark shop with one small window.
I still have the shoe. It sits on top of my now retired toolbox.
We spent a month there and did quite a bit of sight seeing. One of the things we did was visit a blacksmith shop. My dad wanted
me to see what a blacksmith did and told me it was a dying trade even in 1967. The blacksmith took a horse shoe off the wall and
put it in the forge and I pumped the bellows until the shoe glowed bright red. The blacksmith took it out of the forge and hammered
it and reshaped it into a donkey shoe cutting it down and punching new nail holes in it.
I can still remember the pungent smell from the coal forge. It was a small dark shop with one small window.
I still have the shoe. It sits on top of my now retired toolbox.