What is the latest year you would expect an item to have been made with these characteristics?
It’s forged iron.
I has forge welded components with side pegs and square heads. Basicaly they serve the purpose of attaching a non metal item, be it leather or wood.
It looks like it is part of a boat.
It looks like it could be part of horse riding gear.
I’m not asking what it is, and I don’t have hosted pictures.
I’m asking the minimum likely age these clues imply.
Thank You.
Any chance of getting a picture or two up on the net so we can see? what it is?
There are plenty of blacksmiths working today who could forge anything you need. Forged iron is not a lost art.
I know that. I can watch somebody forge stuff at Old World Wisconsin, and one of my uncles’ farms even had a forge. I want to know the latest aproximate time at which this was a common process. This is most certainly not an object made in my lifetime. I suspect the object could be from the mid 1800’s. Then again it could be from the time of Marquette and Julliet, since the area it was found at was on the old portage of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers. I found it about 10 years ago, and it’s stashed somewhere in the house where I store my fosils and such. I will post a picture when I have a host and picture.
I don’t think there is a definitive answer to that. All we can say is that it was once more common than it is now. There is no date at which we can conclude that it could not have been made after that point.
I’m looking for a ballpark answer for when modern manufacture processes had taken over from the smiths making everything. I took some pictures, but I still don’t know where to host them. At that point it becomes a what is it question also.
I use Photobucket. It’s free and easy.
Thanks for the host service link Surly Chick.
Thanks Fear Itself for your participation so far.
Now the additional question is what is it?
Could a moderator please change my title to this:
What is my forge welded object and it’s possible age?
Almost looks like a primitive come-along.
My guess would be 1930, or before. How much before is a tough call, without some more involved provenance. Blacksmithing was a going concern all the way through the depression, but art and aesthetics for the given piece seem to me to indicate it to be a very mundane work piece, which would make it more likely to be from before that.
The low cost of Iron in your region during the 19th century make it much more likely that it just sat around for a long time without being sacrificed to a new use. (Which is what happened to a lot of early forged iron pieces, during the depression.) I don’t recognize it by function.
Tris
I found it after some grading had been done about two weeks earlier. The piece was on the edge of the grading. I don’t know how long it was burried, before surfacing.
Perhaps it’s part of an old gun of some sort. The spot was where traders would have gathered, and Fort Winnebago was nearby.
Wild ass guess territory, you might check out harness tack as a possible function. An old road bed would be a likely end point for such a dropped item. I don’t know squat about the actual nature of such items, but I can see the possibility that multiple attachments to a central pull point would be a reasonable use for such an item. Given the location you found it in, that becomes even more reasonable.
That makes it older than 1930, if it is horse tack. It isn’t “nice” enough to be modern, since horse use has moved pretty far from the mundane everyday sort of practice, and aesthetics would be much more a factor in a newer piece.
Tris
The heads on those pegs look like they were bashed into shape rather than sawed, cast or stamped. That’d put it towards the the early end of the time range.
I thank the posters from yesterday for the input.
Does anybody else have a good idea as to what this is.
The site has been busy for a long time.
It’s near an Indian trading post, a fort, a canal and the site of one of the locks. It’s in the area of the portage for fur traders. After the canal was built many people started to build boats, that were left to rot, when the railroad came through. A complete iron boat was found in the mud about a mile away. The old railroad tracks are far enough away that I don’t think they figure into possibilites. Some farming occured in the area, but not at the place I found this.
I would still like the title changed if possible, so people know I’m trying to find out what it is now, otherwise I’ll have to start a new one for that specific purpose a bit later.
I haven’t a clue what the little holes are for, but I would speculate that this is some kind of hitch for attaching a wagon or trailer to something else; I think there was probably wood on either side of the thing, held in place by the three rivets or bolts, and the thick cylindrical section looks as though it is designed to be hooked or clasped by something , but still be able to flex up and down.
I hadn’t even considered the wagon hitch idea.
One thing that you might check is whether the object is made of wrought iron or mild steel. I don’t know of any way to check that that isn’t destructive, though. Wrought iron will have a grain pattern like wood that results from working the bloom from the smelter into bars or sheets or whatever. Iron silicates are embedded in the metal and give it that grain pattern that looks a lot like pattern welded steel. I am not as up on my history of metallurgy as I might be, but I believe that the Bessamer process in 1858 IIRC obsoleted the traditional bloomery-style foundry and led to mild steel taking over the job of wrought iron. Something else to note is that during the industrial revolution, blacksmiths often tried to make their work to look as machine-made as possible. That probably wouldn’t be an issue in a rural community though. I agree that this is probably some sort of wagon or sleigh hardware. BTW, those studs look riveted on, rather than welded. I couldn’t really see any evidence of forge welding from the photos. What parts do you think were welded together?
Rob
Lurker Blacksmith
Looks to me like a locking mechanism of some sort. The cylindrical part on the fore end looks like it was mounted on a bracket, and the end with the six “rivets” swung down onto something and locked. Wagon hitch is a good idea. Some sort of door, Barn door, or other such rolling door locking mechanism. I would say the piece you have is the part thatswung down onto the locking mechanism.
I really can’t tell the exact assembly process, because of the rust. I don’t plan on doing any destructive tests on it either. I don’t know if the square heads were welded onto the shafts, or if an end was widened, and or flatened and or folded. I certainly don’t know enough about forging metal to determine that on this item.
My grandfather was the last in a family of professional blacksmiths (he learned the trade, but went into agriculture after WWII.) Probably he would be able to say what it was, but I fear he doesn’t use his darn newfangled computer contraption, or I’d email him a link to this thread.
I would guess that it’s at least post 1850, but I don’t have any great experience from which I am drawing that. I grew up on the west coast, and the bits of Old West metalwork I’ve seen has generally been about that color, and with squared-head pegs like that.
