"John, I suppose by this time you've heard all about my blacksmithing."
"Reckon I have, and everybody else in this place. They say you hammer the iron on a lapstone, same as a shoemaker his leather."
"Not quite so bad as that; but I find I must have a pair of bellows, and I want inch-and-a-half stuff to make the 'woods.' I have got a pine log at the door, and I can't go eleven miles to a sawmill; indeed, I don't think I could get there with cattle, the snow is so deep. Will you take your saw, and help me saw out the stuff? and I'll take my oxen and haul logs for you."
"Won't I? I'll be right glad to do it."
"Then I'll go home, and get my log on the saw-pit and come over in the morning."
Two men accustomed to the work will saw out boards and plank with a whip-saw as well as they can be sawed in a mill, only it takes more time. Richardson had a place fixed near the bank of the river, where the ground fell off abruptly. Here stringers were laid on uprights set in the ground, on which the log to be sawed was rolled, and the descent of the ground afforded room to work the saw, which is nearly as large as a mill-saw, one man standing on top of the log, and the other on the ground below.
With the aid of his neighbor, Richardson not only sawed out plank enough for the woodwork of his bellows, but one to make a bench, and boards enough to make a door to replace the rude one of poles, and to close a window he meant to make over the bench.
Having procured the material for the woods, the next article needed was leather to cover the woods. Putting on his snow-shoes, he tracked and killed a moose, took the hair off with strong lye, then tanned it with salt and alum, and pounded it upon the anvil with a stick, kneaded it in his hands, and greased it with the marrow of the moose till it was as limp as a rag.
He now made the woods of the bellows, and bows, and as he had neither nails nor tacks, fastened the skin to the woods with wooden pegs. All this he accomplished without much difficulty; but without iron how was he to make the nose, which must enter the fire, or at least must approach within a few inches of it? The nose of a smith's bellows is of iron, and enters what is called the tuyere pipe, which is in these days quite a complicated affair, and communicates with the fire.
"It's no sort of use, William," said his wife; "it must be iron, and you'll have to go to John Drew, and get him to make it."