Good morning. We only have a few more categories to go of the old time occupations and will then be returning to Revolutionary War records and other topics. For those new to the list, welcome! You may find the previous 167 tips at the following address: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Tips TIP# 168 - GRANDPA WAS A: LOCKSMITH, GUNSMITH, WHITESMITH, PLUMBER. THE LOCKSMITH: Like the skilled blacksmith, a locksmith was very much in demand in the towns. He used a forge and anvil like his blacksmith cousin and produced padlocks and rim locks. Any device that would deter the entry into a home or building was classified as a "ward". The earliest locksmiths in Kentucky and other states had to make all the parts by hand starting with the forming of the key. He built his lock around the key to fit. Many of the early pioneers did not trust banks. They felt that the banks would "fail", which many did, and they would lose their money. So many early settlers preferred, if they could so afford, to have safes in their homes. Strongboxes were used and hidden around the property; many of these weighed over a thousand pounds. The GUNSMITH filled a very important role in early Kentucky. Almost every male owned a gun - it was their lifeline. They killed their own game; they didn't run to the corner grocery store! The guns came in many varieties --smoothbore muzzle-loaders, flintlock muskets … . The great Kentucky Rifle is unsurpassed. The rifle truly started out in Pennsylvania according to the history books and had been developed by German gunsmiths. While not the earliest rifle, it was considered the best in accuracy. It seldom misfired and another feather was the quickness in which it could be reloaded - less than five minutes. The Kentucky Long Rifle was the gun of choice for the "Long Hunters" who early came into Kentucky. Barren County had the distinction of having the finest gunsmiths in the Settle family. There were several generations of gunsmiths from the same family, with a lot of their expertise supposedly coming from the Huffman family who had been encouraged to settle here by Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia; the Huffman's being steel workers. These rifles are still quite prized, guarded fiercely and expensive! The gunsmith didn't have a tool to bore out an exact 4-foot gun barrel so he rather started with the hole and built the iron around it. He had to weld a very thick strip around a rod in a spiral pattern and then hammered the rod out. If he could only get a 2-feet length, he welded two pieces together. After welding the two ends together, he bored out the inside using a steel cutter which was turned by water power or hand cranking. The hole always was slightly crooked and a good gunsmith had to check it with a tight bowstring. He straightened the hole by tapping the outside with a hammer. The bore needed to be reamed to a precise size and polished. To give a rifle ball a straighter shooting angle, spiral grooves were made in the bore. THE TINSMITH: One of my favorite displays to see at a craft show locally is the tinsmith at work. The tinsmith was originally called a whitesmith. Tin plate is a sheet of iron coated with tin to keep it from rusting. It was originally made in small pieces, heated repeatedly and flattened. Individuals called tinners (who were not tinsmiths) cut the sheets as small as 12 x 18 inches, pickled them in a mild acid, scoured them by using sand and then dipped them into a pot heated over charcoal fire. The oldtime whitesmith produced cylinders, boxes and cones of various shapes. If the finished product was to be a cup, he had to make a lip on the drinking surface. This not only made it safer for the drinker but tended to "stiffen" the tin. He made tin snips, tin dippers, candle boxes, tinder boxes, candlesticks, lamps, sconces, money boxes, tea caddys and more. His tools included a pair of large shears, hand snips and nippers. Since tin can't be welded, the joints were soldered together. One of the more famous inventions of the whitesmith was the introduction of the "roasting kitchen." This was a large reflecting oven with one side open to face the fire. It had a door in the back allowing Grandma to baste the food. With the increasing amounts of whale oil being brought to the States, this caused the use of whale oil lamps which smoked less than the previous lamps. If the Kentucky family could not get access to whale oil, they found a substitute in oil that was squeezed from the fat of what they called the "prairie whale". Lard was thick and required a special burner for it. Many of the products manufactured by the whitesmith were originally considered too ugly for home use. The plain sugar boxes, candle boxes, etc. were soon decorated by the whitesmith. The tin was given several coats of a dark brown varnish and painted into bright colors. They even found a way to remove the stigma of having "tin" utensils by using the Frence word "tole". It meant the same, but sounded fancier! THE PLUMBER: Now, if Grandpa was a PLUMBER, we immediately say, "Can't be … they didn't have inside plumbing back in those days!" The term plumber covered many categories involving the use of lead. Lead was extremely expensive in the earlier days and most was used to cast bullets --for which the settler paid an arm and a leg. The lead used normally was recast by plumbers into sheets that could be up to 30 inches wide and possibly seven feet long. These sheets were rolled up for storage. When ready for use, they were unrolled on a table coated with sand. The process used 3 men minimum. Two men carried hot lead from the furnace and poured it onto a table. The other man flattened it by beating it with a wooden hoe he called a "strike." This strike had notches at both ends in a square shape and ran along guides which determined the width of the sheet. The first two men, the pourers, moved up and down the table, one on each side, at a certain cadence, slowly. The strikeman pushed the blade behind them. It wasn't until the early 1800's that plumbers began to "cold draw" lead pipe. They cast a thick-walled collar around one end of a steel bar which had been polished. The drawing was done by pulling the collar through smaller round pipes, each one smaller than the one before which allowed the metal to flow along the bar as a pipe. It became thinner and longer. Musket balls, almost ½ inch in diameter was something many hunters made themselves. A shotmaster made them also, in quantity. Buckshot is only a ¼ of an inch in diameter. Most times, if the settler could afford it, he let someone else, often a plumber, make them for him to ensure the shot pattern. © Copyright 30 July 1998, Sandra K. Gorin, All Rights Reserved, sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Sandi Gorin - A Proud Kentucky Colonel PUBLISHING: http://members.tripod.com/~GorinS/index.html BARREN CO WEBSITE: http://ww4.choice.net/~jimphp/barrenco/ ARCHIVES for ROOTSWEB: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl PRAYER&PRAISE: http://www.listbot.com/subscribe/prayerandpraise