Forging a Plow Share

The Blacksmith and Wheelwright, November 1903

I want to tell your readers how I saw some men and machines make a plow – a common, ordinary plow, as I am a common, ordinary man, so you see I could not tell you if it had been an extraordinary plow. The man was an oldish-looking man, with a big black apron kind of a thing tied on him. I supposed it was to grab things with to keep from burning his hands. This oldish man told a younger looking man, with about half of an old sack – a common sack – tied onto him, to answer the same purpose, I guess.

Well, he told him to go get a bar of iron, while he went and got a thing like Fig. 1, made of wood. He laid it on the bar at the end and with a slate pencil made a mark across the bar at the end of the stick. Then he told Jim (I believe that’s what he called him, as there was such a racket I couldn’t hear nothing) to cut it on the shears. I commenced to laugh. He looked at me as though he would stick me in the fire. I was thinking when he said “shears” that it was something like these young “counter-hoppers” have for making a nick in the edge of a piece of cloth when they tear it across. He didn’t say nothing, though, so Jim went to a great big thing in the middle of the floor and stuck the bar right into it. Then he set his foot on something. Then there was a snap. I thought he had broken the thing or was trying to shoot me. I tried to be brave, so I commenced to whistle, but I kept my eye on him. I saw Jim pick up the piece that the old man had marked, and said to myself, “That’s what he calls his shears, and was just cutting it off.” Then the old man took the iron piece and laid the wooden stick on the side of the iron, set it on its edge on the anvil and set his little hatchet as you see it in Fig. 1, and Jim hit it, just once. Then he stuck it in the fire up to that mark.

After he got it hot the old man put it on the anvil and Jim hit and drew the thing the shape you see in Fig. 2. Then he made a cut with his little hatchet obliquely across it, as you see at C, Fig. 2, and at the same time he took a little round-faced thing and set it at B, Fig. 2, and Jim banged away at it and sunk a place in there. I took courage and asked Jim what he put that hole there for. He said it would keep it dry on wet days. The old man and Jim laughed and looked at me. Then the old man says, “Stranger, that’s to raise the corner up; as we drew it out it got hammered down a little, so we have to raise it up with this little fuller.”

I don’t know what made him get so friendly all at once, unless it was because of my white shirt, but it wasn’t white long, for when Jim hit it the sparks flew and burnt it full of little holes. Then he took a little piece like Fig. 4. The rounding edge was drawn out thin; then he made it pretty hot and put some stuff Jim called borax on the little piece, and when both of them were hot he laid them on the anvil and the little piece on top. Jim hit it again; so he dressed it up, and then put it in his tub of water. After it had cooled Jim took it and got a thing like Fig, 3, which he called a pattern for punching.

I was getting pretty friendly with Jim by this time. I suppose it was because he spoiled my shirt. The little pieces marked D and H, Fig. 3, he said, would keep the pattern from slipping on the bar when he slipped it under the punch, as he slipped them in until the point of the punch came to the bottom of the slot in the pattern. Then he told me, or showed me, the point H, Fig. 3, had an edge turned down a little. He said he caught that edge in the cut C, Fig. 2, and punched all his holes from that. That, he said, would make them all the same if he had a lot of them to do, as he had very often. He straightened up his bar then and took another wooden pattern – I had learned some of the names of things by this time – as In Fig. 5, laid it on another piece of steel and made his pencil mark obliquely across it. Then Jim cut it in those big shears again.

While Jim was cutting it, the old man got the thing like Fig. 8 and set it in the square hole in the anvil. He also got the thing – another pattern, I suppose, like Fig. 6. Then he got a pair of tongs, but one jaw of them had a flat piece welded on the end, making a T shape; then the ends of the T were turned over, so it just fitted the steel, and when he got hold of it you could not move it. Then he made it pretty red and set it edgewise in the groove of the thing he put in the anvil, and he and Jim beat it until they got it to fit that pattern, Fig. 6, or as the dotted lines, Fig. 7. They drew the edge out thin and pretty sharp, warmed it all over, and laid it in the cast-iron block B, Fig. 9, and laid the wooden block A on top of it, and Jim whaled away at it, and after it got cool Jim took it to a small grindstone, that was running like double-geared lightning, and ground off the edge, to get it square and make a joint, he said.

Then Jim got the thing like Fig. 10 – Jim called it a welder – and bolted it to the bar that they had previously made; then he took the share that they had just made and laid it on the welder and onto the bar, and the blamed thing just came to that little mark, that Jim called a punching or welding mark (C, Fig. 2). Then he marked one of the holes (1, 2, 3, Fig. 10). He said the holes were for big or little shares. He punched his hole and bolted it on, and everything fitted up nicely.

This welder, Jim told me, was made of plow steel, and fitted on a share that had been made to get patterns from. So you see when they made shares they were all alike. The side (P, Fig. 10) bolts onto the inside of the bar, and the other side, with the three holes in it, fits under the wing. You will notice a little piece above the three holes riveted on. That is, as Jim said, to keep the wing to the proper angle.

Now, then, they had bar and wing bolted to the welder, and, as I’ve said before, all fitted the different marks that were made. Now the old man got a piece like Fig. 11 and drew it out something in shape shown by the dotted lines; took his share that was bolted up and laid it on the fire where he wanted to weld it. After he got it all nice and red he laid it on the anvil and Jim caught it on the point with a pair of tongs and squeezed them together, while the old man with a light hammer hammered the wing down tight on the bar. Then he sprinkled that white stuff that Jim called borax all over it; he then put it in the fire again and got it scorching hot, and welded it from B to D, Fig. 12. He took another heat below D, and welded a little more. He then put the piece (Fig. 11) in between the bar and wing, with the long, thin edge drawn as shown by the dotted line, Fig. 12; then he welded it all nicely. In drawing out the point he used the cast-iron concern (Fig. 13). He turned the share bottom up, and Jim with the peen of his big hammer hammered it out to an edge, now that he had the share welded.

He then had a brace to put in as in Fig. 12. He cut off a piece of iron and made it hot from end to end. He stuck one end in the hole (Fig. 14) and bent it over and hammered it down flat, then hit it on the edge and drove it up against the ridge, R, and down close against S; then he lifted it out, and had the shape shown as on the share, Fig. 12, with the exception of the holes. Now Jim got out of a box another brace that fitted right over the top of the one he had made. At each end it had a little thing like a steeple riveted on it, so when he put it over the brace it had to stay right there in this pattern, as Jim called it. It had holes, and Jim took his pencil and marked through them onto the brace. Then he took a sharp-pointed thing and made a little dot in the middle of where he had marked; then he went to that big thing that I told you of (he ca1led it a punch). He put it under it, set his foot on a thing, and it went down through it as easy as a circus lass going through a paper loop. He made all his holes, took it back to the anvil, and the old man riveted it in as you see it in Fig. 12.

I said I would tell how I saw a plow made, and as all they got made was the share when the things stopped working, I had to get out; but I am going back some day, as I must see it all.