The clang of a blacksmith’s hammer hitting a hot bar of steel is pretty distinctive. Kids seem to recognize it immediately, said Bob Goodwin, volunteer blacksmith at the Depot Museum in Lisle.
“They all come running when I fire up the forge,” he said.
Goodwin, 64, donates his time at the museum demonstrating blacksmithing skills that he learned growing up in his father’s Downers Grove shop, Bob’s Ornamental Iron.
After their father, Bob Goodwin, died last year, Bob and his brother Tom, of Naperville, donated some steel, tools, shelves and examples of wrought iron art work from the business. Two forges and an anvil are also on loan to the museum.
Turning a thin steel rod with an adjustable wrench to make a twist pattern in the handle of a fireplace tool, Goodwin, a Downers Grove resident, talked about his father’s trade: “My father was born in Sheboygan Falls, Wis., where his father had a farm and a grist mill on the Sheboygan River. My dad taught school in a one-room schoolhouse in North Dakota for a while, then came down to the Chicago area in the 1920s where he worked at several jobs, finally settling on blacksmithing, (which) he learned on the farm and at the grist mill. He perfected his skills by working at a blacksmith shop that was located where a brick building now stands at the southwest corner of Main Street and Ogden Avenue in Downers Grove.”
The elder Goodwin eventually opened his own shop at 419 W. Ogden Ave., a location now occupied by Suburban Lock & Door and a portion of Fuller’s Car Wash.
“I literally lived in that shop,” said Goodwin, explaining that their family home was right next to the business.
In the late 1930s, his father moved the shop to an unincorporated area on Walnut Avenue at the west edge of Downers Grove.
“You can drive around this town for miles and see my father’s work,” Goodwin said. For instance, a sign on the front of Graue Mill in Oak Brook is hung from a bracket fashioned by the late Bob Goodwin, he said.
“He was very proud of that one. The scrollwork on it is turned on the diagonal, and that’s hard to do,” Goodwin said. “He was very proud of his skills.”
Blacksmithing has remained a constant part of the younger Goodwin’s life as well. He has worked at a variety of jobs — in Alaskan shipyards and in the vending machine business, for instance — and in all of them, he said, he put his blacksmithing skills to use. Now retired and living again in Downers Grove, he volunteers at the Depot Museum to demonstrate the historic trade.
“I like to make things,” said Goodwin, who says a blacksmith is an artist. He crafts hooks, candleholders and other assorted items for the museum gift shop and also gives the occasional demonstration. He belongs to several professional organizations: the Artist-Blacksmith Association of North America, the Upper Midwest Blacksmith Association, the Illinois Valley Blacksmith Association and the Indiana Blacksmith Association. He travels around the country several times a year to blacksmithing events put on by the clubs. He recently returned from one called Hammerin’ on the Hooch (Hooch River, Ga.) and has plans to attend another this fall, Bangin’ on the Bayou in New Orleans.
He wears a black ball cap with a picture of an anvil on the front, a souvenir of one of his trips. Ed Land of Lisle, who also volunteers as a blacksmith at the museum, learned to love and appreciate the skill from Goodwin.
“Bob is a very delicate worker. He does some very nice stuff,” Land said. “He has a wonderful grasp on all the things that are involved in putting a piece together.”
Land and Goodwin said blacksmiths are constantly learning. “The blacksmiths will share everything they know and what works best for them,” Land said.
Elaine Keating, coordinator of historic sites for the Lisle Park District, which operates the Depot Museum complex, said that Goodwin and Land are generous with their knowledge as well.
“They enjoy showing (blacksmithing to) the children and helping them make things. The blacksmith is one of the most popular areas at the museum,” she said.
A blacksmith shop is usually dark so the hot steel will show brightly and the blacksmith can see its color and how it’s forming. The floor is gritty underfoot, and soot particles too small to see hang in the air, Goodwin said as he turned the rumbling wheel on a blower to force air onto the coals to make them hotter.
“If you smell something, you smell sulfur,” he said, explaining that he uses a soft green coal in the forge. When it burns, it turns to coke, and that burns cleanly with no smell or flames, he said. “If it’s really hot in the summertime, it can be really miserable,” he said, grabbing a round hammer to curve a piece of steel around the horn of the anvil. “A farrier would use this to put the curve in a horseshoe.” After forming it, he plunged the hot steel into a bucket of water to cool it.
The blacksmith was one of the most important people in a pioneer town, Land said. “He fixed tools, repaired machinery and shod the horses and oxen. He made everything from kitchen utensils to the metal work for farm wagons.”
Most Saturdays, Keating said, either Land or Goodwin can be found at the museum shop tinkering around, making stuff. “If someone happens to be driving by, Bob and Ed are always happy to talk to them,” she said.
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Goodwin and Land will be demonstrating their skills during the Depot Days Festival, Sept. 12 and 13, or Keating can arrange a hands-on blacksmithing class (call 630-968-0499 for information).
