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Historical Inspiration This forum is dedicated to the discussion of historical knife design and its influence on modern custom knife work.

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Old 08-09-2007, 01:14 PM
Chris Meyer Chris Meyer is offline
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Mystic Seaport Museum photos

Greetings everyone,

In July of 2007 I took the family to the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT. The Seaport is fairly large and located right on the Mystic River. It has tall ships, a re-created 19th Century Village[/URL], museum buildings, etc. While checking out the 19th Century Village shops, we saw a Shipsmith?s Shop and a Cooper?s shop (barrel maker). Each of these shops had large numbers of old tools. Very cool! I took a bunch of digital photos, some of which I?d like to share with you here.


This is the Shipsmith?s shop


Here is the Shipsmith himself. He said his name, but I forgot it.


In his shop he had a DuPont-Fairbanks 50lb power hammer, which he said was appropriate for the time period of his 19th Century re-enactment shop.




The power hammer says Toomey on the side. The Smith said that Toomey was a distributor for DuPont-Fairbanks.


The Smith used a coal forge and had numerous anvils around the shop.










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Last edited by Chris Meyer; 08-09-2007 at 01:18 PM.
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Old 08-09-2007, 01:19 PM
Chris Meyer Chris Meyer is offline
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Mystic Seaport Museum continued?

The Shipsmith had quite the collection of hammers and swages laying around.









These are some harpoons the Shipsmith made. He was making Marlin Spikes for re-enactors at the Seaport while I was in the shop. He said he made knives for them too, but I didn?t see any of those.







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Old 08-09-2007, 01:26 PM
Chris Meyer Chris Meyer is offline
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Mystic Seaport Museum photos continued?

The Cooper?s Shop was interesting too. I love old tools, and he had some really beautiful tools. Most of them were specialized for barrel making, so I can?t tell you their names.









The Clockmaker?s Shop had a nice old metal working lathe.



While we were there, we checked out some of the big ships.





Naturally, I was on the lookout for Blacksmithing tools.





I played a trick on the museum and carried this little anchor away.


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Old 08-09-2007, 01:27 PM
Chris Meyer Chris Meyer is offline
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Mystic Seaport Museum photos continued?

There was a guy that had a boat building shop on site. He built this beauty. (He also rents them out.)





All in all, we had a good time. I thought the tickets were a bit over priced though.


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Old 08-09-2007, 03:36 PM
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Don Robinson Don Robinson is offline
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That's a real treat for the eyes and soul, Chris.

Thanks.
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Old 08-09-2007, 04:16 PM
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Chris thanks for the photo's that was neat.Hey,if you could spare a piece of that anchor I'd like to get enough for a small hunter.You'd of thought they would have missed that.


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Old 08-10-2007, 01:35 AM
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Chris,
Great pics of the seaport! The shipsmith's name is Bill Sheer. He's a real nice guy. The Connecticut Blacksmiths Guild holds a meeting there once a year.
Bill also teaches at the Guilford Art Center.
Mace


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Old 08-14-2007, 09:05 AM
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Wow... thanks for sharing.


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Old 08-24-2008, 11:18 PM
Mike Krall Mike Krall is offline
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This is going to be a little odd... The 50# Fairbanks, it doesn't have a sow block and I feel they all did. Does anyone know for sure there was a design change at some point in the manufacturing history?

Mike
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