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Posted by copey on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 22:33:37 :
Today , I had every of intention of heading to the woods to drop some thirty trees that will become fire wood . Now the family gets annoyed, they say its too dangerous when I go to the woods alone to cut trees .So I was out in the driveway waiting for some of my younger ones to join me . The kids don’t get to excited to come so, while I was waiting for help to arrive,i made some post on the forum and have a snack I had time to give a few licks of the file to my saws ,while sitting on the tail gate of the power wagon ,still waiting. The sun was so warm on my face I wasn’t in that big of hurry anymore to head out to the woods. Out the corner of my eye I spotted a piece of steel in the mud . I wondered over and picked up , it was a strap off a old wagon that had surfaced up over the winter . Well this strap held the tongue of the wagon to the fifth wheel . I took the steel up to the woodshed and grabbed a wire brush and knocked off the mud and brushed it clean . Some one, had welded it were it had been broken many, many years ago . This weld was that of a blacksmith hammer welded in a forge , heated fluxed and peened together . It was truly a great job a nice finish and strong . I probably farted away hour with this steel just musing on it . I remember old Charlie McWatson telling there was a smittys shop on this farm behind the barn , he was the local stone mason who laid the foundations for most of the barns in this area. His name is still impressed in the concrete wall on mine ,his trade mark . After Charlie did the footings and walls along came Mr Garnau , he was a woodrite as he called himself he cut all the beams and bents and rafters for the barn raisings and laid it all out, and with the help of nbrs there was barn . After my search for the old smiths shop ,it turned up nothing other than old roof sheeting .I ventured up to the top of the barn just to have another look at at Mr Garnau’s handy work Gods its neat ,tight joints all fitted painstakingly and over seventy years old !Nothing has shifted the footings , the walls or the frame work . By now I have burnt the morning and decided to grab my afternoon nap in the hay mow , before drifting off I was thinking about a post on the forum about someone having a problem with a tool set, of sorts and having a hard time getting satisfaction from the manufacture . Here I am drifting off , holding a old piece of steel in a old barn built square and level and I am thinking that both Mr Ganrau and Mr McWatson could not read nor write and I doubt that the smitty who welded this steel could either , my grand father Copey also made his mark X > But one thing all these old boys possessed was PRIDE in their handy work what they fixed ,what they built ,and what they sold , and gentlemen that’s sadly missing in today’s world . I woke up from my nap at 5 pm this afternoon no one missed me and I didn’t get one stick cut , but had a good day to say the least ~ Copey
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