At the Tripp Wagon Shop in Perry City, Schuyler County, New York, we found an area of charcoal and thousands of horseshoe nail fragments outside of the extant shop building. Clearly, wheelwright Humphrey Tripp shoed horses from time to time and did so outside of the shop from the 1840s into the 1870s. Presumably, he used a portable forge.
 
 
 
James G. Gibb

Gibb Archaeological Consulting

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On 09/30/14, Marty Pickands<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
David-

A few years ago I excavated a country blacksmith shop in the St. Lawrence valley, with input from three smiths who had a great deal of historical knowledge about shop layout. The shop had a dirt floor, which is ideal for studying work areas. The distribution of horse nails showed two distinct "shoeing floors," one adjacent to the forge and the other almost as close. These were both clearly identifiable by the dense concentration of clipped nail points. Points are clipped off the old shoe first and fall to the ground, while the heads tend to be removed with the shoe and tossed in the scrap pile or reforged. 

The smiths commented that while it was not common to shoe horses next to the forge, it was sometimes done. This was especially true in cases where a lone smith was doing the work, because while the smith was busy shoeing the horse there was no activity at the forge to frighten it. They said there were usually rings on the shop wall to tether horses, rather than stalls, and I have encountered that elsewhere. In good weather they might be tethered to a rail or post in front of the shop beside the water trough, and even shod there. 

So- near the forge makes sense in a small single smith shop because there is no work at the forge when the smith is busy shoeing, but in a very busy shop with several workers doing lots of other work (check the censuses), it is much less likely. If you look at lots of floorplans and interior photos, you will see almost every possible arrangement, so nothing is really impossible unless it violates the primary work area of forge, anvil and vise within a step or three of each other.








Marty Pickands
New York State Museum
>>> David W Babson 09/30/14 3:50 PM >>>
I have been asked to advise on a potential modification to a reconstructed building. As built c. 1995, this building depicts a mid-late 19th-century blacksmith shop as part of a boatyard on the Erie Canal, and it contains a working coal-fired forge for living history demonstrations. As built, a corner of the forge area includes a single-animal stall, interpreted as being a holding stall for canal horses or mules, waiting to be shoed. The stall is approximately 15 feet (4.5m) from the forge. With possible renovations coming up, the museum sponsoring this building is wondering if stalls within an active blacksmith shop were common, unusual, or never heard of. Opinions range from the stall in the forge room being a practical idea, to it being never done, because the horses and mules would have been agitated by the fire and noise of the forge, and would therefore have been hard to manage safely. The museum is trying to decide to keep the stall as is, or remove it to improve the historical character of the reconstructed building.


Opinions and links to published references concerning this topic are welcome.


Thanks,


D. Babson.