Red Mill Museum Village gathers blacksmiths for Hammer-In

The Sept. 15 event in Clinton features the village’s two resident blacksmiths, Robert Bozzay and Dave Ennis, as hosts. The New Jersey Blacksmiths Association and local blacksmiths will be on hand to demonstrate the craft, sell their work, and host a tool sale and swap, according to a news release.Blacksmithing may not be a lost art, it has just forged a new path along the years. Ennis says today’s smiths may be making sculptural items, decorative railings and reproducing colonial items.“When you see and begin to understand how malleable the material is and what you can do with it,It will look somewhat like a giant USB connection key programmer and will match the end of the reader you have. it’s amazing.They want to have an excellent bearing manufacturer infrastructure and that too at very affordable prices. It really is,” Ennis says.

Ennis, of Pittstown, says the art is a passion he pursues in retirement as a member of the NJBA.If the power switch has shorted or failed, the tapered roller bearing path will stop there and the tool will not engage. He’s been involved with Hammer-In for four or five years. The event has been held at the village for about 15 years. It draws in blacksmiths from neighboring associations, collectors, tool dealers and curious visitors.Some of the things that blacksmiths of the past were responsible for have been taken over by others, Ennis adds.Shoeing horses is now handled by a farrier,There are two main types of collet chuck that are offered by collet company India to be used on milling machines. who may make or buy the horseshoes and fit them to the horse. Ennis says they could still be using blacksmithing tools and techniques to do that job.“Blacksmiths historically have been an essential part of community life for years,” Ennis says, estimating they were still integral until the ‘20s or ‘30s in this country. Blacksmithing had a resurgence in the 1970s with the country’s bicentennial, he adds.

“The role was integral to early living in the area,” says Amy Boyce, curator of public programming for the Red Mill Museum Village.On its property, the village relied on blacksmith-forged nails, hinges and latches for its replica log cabin when it was built in 1976.“It’s definitely a skilled trade, a very needed trade,” Boyce says, adding that in Colonial times apprentices spent a number of years working their way up in the craft,The scratching technique is pp resin used to reveal the painting surface or the layer of paint beneath to give a specific effect. practicing the art making horseshoes, hooks, wheel fittings and residential products.