Log Cabin Blacksmith Shop Build Continues 1700 1800's PIONEER LIFE SELF RELIANCE GARDENING

Kathy's been really busy this morning. She got all the garlic processed and put away. She's pulled all the onions and we've got more than enough to last us till next spring. We've got to get them in out of the sun now and let the stalks dry off and then we'll store them appropriately for next winter's consumption. A lot of people might look at this device and not have any idea what it's for. In fact, I wasn't all that familiar with it myself until I got educated, you might say. But what you're looking at is a rush lantern. So a wee bit of history. In the 17 and 1800s, before modern lights, light was given to them by a number of means. Candles, beddy lamps, which burn typically whale oil or some kind of a fish oil, or rush lanterns. Now the rush lantern was the light of the poor, if you would, because they could ill afford candles. So unless they raised their own bees to make the wax, they couldn't afford to buy candles. So essentially what you do is, the rush plant that grows in wetlands, on the perimeter of the wetlands, you harvest it in the fall. You take the stem and you peel all the green off it except for a tiny little strip of green you leave on. It gives it some integrity. That got soaked in any fat that they had, rendered bear fat, bacon grease, it wouldn't matter. And basically you'd cut it about six inches long and you put that in the vise. Basically it's a miniature set of blacksmith tongs. You'd open this up, put the rush wick in, put it on about a 45 degree angle and light it in the fire. Basically it gave the same amount of light as if you were to take a wooden match and strike it. So not a lot, but enough to get the kids to bed and for mom and dad to sit back down by the fireplace where they had other light. So the rush lantern. But what I want to do here is give a shout out to a number of artisans, but the first and foremost is Hayward Meissner, a friend of mine down there in beautiful Nova Scotia. He made that and sent it to me. And that's going to be a nice addition to our cabin. I just got to find the time to get out and find the rush plants. And apparently this is the time of year to harvest them. So I got to take a break from this building at some point and look into that. He also sent me, he's handmade a whole basket full of three inch rosebud spikes. Now those spikes are going to get used on my plank door that I'm going to put in the blacksmith shop. It's going to be sliding door and that's how I'm going to fix the wood to the structural members. So shout out to Hayward Meissner. He's one heck of a craftsman Hopefully I'll get them out here someday and get them banging some steel back in here once I get that forge built. While I'm at it, all other blacksmiths here as well. So we got Chris Johnston up there at Adventure Blacksmith, I think is the name of his company. Made me that fine hammer. Mentioned that. Bo Beckett tutored me on making that belt axe on forging in a tool steel cutting Nick Skinner, one of the best blade makers in Canada made me that fine little blade there and run out of blacksmith stuff. But Jeff Luke down there, he made me that bag and I've worn that bag for the last year and a half and kudos to Jeff. I haven't worn it out yet and it's full of nails at times and the odd time I get out with my musket it's full of my shooting accoutrements. Anyway, I best get back to the building so I can start to craft some of these things myself. Two rafters to go. Yeah I got my double header on now that supports the roof load in the middle of the building and I got this morning earlier I got the front side done with my intermediate slabs I guess if you would. I used round logs, peeled them out. So what I intend to do to save on shinking costs, well first of all I'm not trying to make this airtight, not like the cabin. I want to keep the snow from blowing in so I'll probably put just a rough coat of mortar on the inside and these guys here will work like a block for it. It doesn't have to be fancy, it's just a shop. Anyway off to make two more rafters. It's coming along. I've got two sides strapped now and I'm going to be starting to sheet it. I actually got a couple pieces on the back of the roof which is pretty cool but a wee bit of history. So our endeavor is to portray life in the 1700s but we've left ahead 100 years with our blacksmith shop so we're going to be showing a working blacksmith shop when it's done of the 1800s. So if we look at the industrial revolution historians love to put time periods to things. So basically it's from 1750 to 1900 and that's pretty loose because there was lots of industrious things happening before and we know there's lots of things happening now but that's the time period that we look at as the industrial revolution. And at the onset of it for power they only had two things. They had wind and they had water. Wind turbines in that time period increased in efficiency amazingly. They changed the system that would keep the turbine pointing into the wind. They replaced sails with shutters and the shutters got to the point where they could adjust them so they could either let the wind pass through or they could close them more so that it caught more wind putting more pressure and then higher revolutions. And water power in that same time period experienced a huge explosion in engineering if you would. And ultimately leading to the water turbine which is a very effective way of converting moving water to energy and it's used to this very day and then we get into the steam era period. So in terms of steam in 1769 a fellow named James Watt comes up with this brilliant but simple concept of taking the hot steam that is powering the piston of a steam engine and he separates and compresses it feeds it back in essentially. And the efficiency of the steam engine went up dramatically. But we're looking at a time period where inventions are just absolutely crazy. But the biggest one that that sort of sets the stage for the industrial revolution is things that that reduce the amount of labor required to produce food. So agriculture and we've got things like the seed drills invented the the the cotton gin the thrashing machine. They make a huge difference and so now we've got a better fed population they've got a better diet population grows and taken as a whole it sets the stage for the real industrial revolution. In terms of the if we think about things that were handmade like that hammer I'm holding prior to the industrial revolution these were craftsmen that made them one at a time. An example is the muskets I have. So the lock in a musket's a fairly complicated device. They were handmade one at a time. There were no replacement parts. If something broke on that it had to be handmade to fit that particular lock. By the time we get into the height of the industrial revolution things like that are being mass produced. So a wee bit of family history because I have a dear woman she was quite dear to me who actually lived through it. So my grandma Kelly she was born May 18th 7 sorry May 18th 1874. So nine years after the American Civil War and she passed away in February 1974. So she was just shy of three months short of a hundred and if one thinks about what my grandma Kelly experienced at the height of that industrial revolution the inventions well it boggles the mind. She saw the final development of what we know as the modern steam engine which changed everything. She saw invention of electricity, the light bulb, the automobile. She witnessed first flight of man and lived long enough to see man land on the moon. She saw the radio, the television. One could just go on and on. Just a fascinating amount of things and if we think in our modern world that things are rapidly changing well they are but they're basically just improvements on the things. We have better cars, we have better phones, we have better radios etc. But those primary inventions that started it all began in that during that industrial revolution and grandma Kelly she was a great storyteller. She had this little rocket chair. She was a wee bit of a thing by the time she passed away but she was still working in her garden in her 98th year. But she told me one story and she was she can't recall how old she was but they'd hitched the team and gone to town because that was the only way. It was long before automobiles. She was just a young girl she said and I'm not sure the town they were in. It might have been London, Ontario but on the day they arrived there there was a public hanging. So and she whispered in my ear she says you know she says I didn't look. So anyway an amazing story and one more wee bit of history before I get back to making my own history by building this blacksmith shop. We get a lot of people send personal stories on our comment section and to be honest it's worth all our effort back here producing these because they absolutely fascinate me. So I'll just use his first name. Greg from Illinois sent me a thing saying that in the 1860s his great-grandparents moved to central Indiana and started homesteading. So the first thing they built was a barn and they lived in that barn. Well you had to take care of the animals so they lived in that barn for two years. Now Greg's great-grandmother had his grandfather was born in that barn and his grandfather's brother were born in that barn and then two years later they moved into their house. But that tells me that for the two years that they were working on building that just the two of them that she bore two children along the which is remarkable in itself. And according to Greg they built a pit saw to to saw the planks for it. They hand hewed with axe and adds the timbers that constructed the barn and that barn stands to this day and it's according to Greg it's still in good condition. Anyway I absolutely love when people share their wee bits of history and like I said I'm gonna go make some my own history right now.