Jim Gibb wrote
 
>The Blacksmith & Wheelwright and Carriage Builder's journals, available
>to university libraries from the Center for Research Libraries in
>Chicago, provide lots of detail, although neither started publication
>until the late 1860s/early 1870s.
 
A few decades won't make much difference, as far as trade practices are
concerned.
 
Blacksmiths were creatures of an inbred "race memory" of trade practices.
What Lester Ross described is exactly what I recall from working as a child
in my grandfather's shop. He learned the trade in the 1880s, and there are
some practices that you won't find in the books, like forcing your grandson
to salvage brass bushings from cast-iron scrap. Builds muscle and character
in eight-year-olds and keeps them out of mischief.
 
There is one historical problem with using trade manuals and textbooks that
we need to keep in mind.
 
The appearance of detailed trade manuals is sometimes evidence for the
decline of the oral tradition, or of a dying trade. During the robust years
of a trade, knowledge is passed almost exclusively by apprenticeship and a
through large pool of circulating journeymen. As their ranks thin during
the dying years of a trade, or as the trade becomes standardized, manuals
start appearing.
 
This is true of blacksmithing and other crafts where the ranks of
practitioners are thinning and newcomers need to rely increasingly on
books. The most detailed introductory blacksmithing manuals were, I
believe, written during the present century. I have found this phenomenon
in letterpress printing as well. And look at all the how-to books on
earthenware potting or log-cabin building that would have been redundant in
a time when everyone knew a potter or a log-cabin builder.
 
 
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