ANCIENT IRON
 Front of the building. Note the hand cranked gas pump on the right side. |
Located in the southwest Iowa community
of Manilla, Ancient Iron is Theodore Gollobit's informal
museum of farming history. Theodore, affectionately known as Tader,
farmed a fair number of acres several miles south of here from 1941
to his retirement in 1987. "I've always been a collector of antiques".
He obtained his first antique tractor in 1955. He doesn't specialize,though
-- "I'll collect anything". Gollobit said he is in no hurry to refurnish
the blacksmith shop. Collecting the needed materials is a slow process.
"Wherever I go, if I happen to see something I need I buy it" "All I
want to do is keep it original, in the 1900's." He's often on the road
in the summer attending swap meets and sales.
About 1991 he purchased the blacksmith shop in Manilla. The building was built in 1897 and while the business changed owners many times it allways remained a blacksmith shop. A blacksmith shop is diffrent than the more commonly seen machine shop in that a blacksmith shop used no precision tools, mainly a coal fired forge, anvil, hammer, pliers and other hand tools. The blacksmith used a hand forge to work on things like horseshoes and plow shares. The forge was once used for bending iron and for forge welding. "That's kind of a lost art" "It's something of the olden days", Tader would say.As you walk into the museum, on the right you'll see a coal-fired forge surrounded by an anvil and tools and a rim shrinker. The rim shrinker was used to adjust the size of the metal band that covered the wooden wheels used in the old days. The size had to be adjusted as the wood would shrink. On all the rafters hang horshoes of various sizes. The museum is divided into two sections, the front section contains the forge and smaller pieces while in the back are a number of larger tractors.
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 Tader leaning on his forge. It is coal fired using soft coal containing very few impurities to avoid contaminating the iron. |
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URL:http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~schulte/ancient.htm
Last changed: 08/30/11
Comments to John R. Schulte
This page was developed by Tom Schulte
and moved to this web site to preserve this valuable piece of family heritage.