Heavy Metal : Blacksmith Shop Stayed Alive by Changing With the Times

It can get hot inside Moore’s Blacksmith Shop. Very hot.

“We break thermometers out there, so it gets over 120 degrees,” Rich Moore said with a nod toward the super-heated blacksmithing area of his shop as he sat in the air-conditioned comfort of his small office.

Moore carries on his family blacksmith tradition about 30 miles south of here in Red Bluff. His grandfather, James Moore, opened the family’s first shop there in 1910.

“At that time, there were 13 blacksmith shops in Red Bluff,” Moore said of the once-thriving industry. His late grandfather worked in the shop keeping the books until he was 94.

Moore’s father, Leonard Moore, moved the shop to its present location in 1942.

It was during the late ‘20s and early ‘30s that the blacksmith trade began to change. Modern transportation and new technology combined to deal blacksmiths a blow. Demand for repairing wagon wheels and sharpening tools, the mainstays of the business, declined drastically. But Moore’s grandfather and father, now 76 and retired, anticipated the change and bridged the transition with new equipment and techniques.

“We were in the process of going into more welding so we were diversified enough to keep going,” said Moore, 45. Being the owner of the first cutting torch welder in town eased the way, he added. “We changed with the times. The old breed faded out, and this went along with the new trend.”

Moore said the blacksmith of yesteryear is the welder of today. “Seventy-five percent of our work is welding now. A welder is a modern-day blacksmith, basically,” he said. A job that would have taken two blacksmiths two hours can be done by one man in 20 minutes, he said.

Moore’s Blacksmith Shop is somewhat of a rarity. “There are lots of welding shops, but as far as blacksmith shops go, the only other one I know of (in Northern California) is over in Eureka,” he said.

Sometimes Makes Branding Iron

But regardless of the welding emphasis, Moore said he is not about to give up the smithy portion of the business, which involves making and repairing truck leaf springs. Of his four full-time employees, the springs keep “one man busy year-round, sometimes two.”

In addition to the leaf springs, the blacksmith method is occasionally needed to create a branding iron. One wall of the shop is lined with samples of irons made at the shop since 1952, a collection started by Moore’s grandfather.

The forge is fired up weekdays at 6 a.m. in the summer, and the blaze is coaxed to 1,800 to 2,000 degrees, the temperature at which metal can be manipulated. Walls covered with grime serve as testimony to the countless fires that have burned there.

It is a hot job, but one that lured the young Moore into the business.

“I started when I was 12 years old as a cleanup boy. I got all the dirty work,” Moore recalled. He started full time after high school graduation. “I never got to go to college. My college was right here.”

Moore served a 10-year apprenticeship under the tutelage of the late Ed Darby, who worked at Moore’s Blacksmith Shop for 47 years, with Moore’s grandfather and father.

“He only went through the eighth grade, but he was a real genius,” Moore said of the old blacksmith. “He was a perfectionist.”

“I only got mad enough to quit once,” Moore said. “I was 19 or 20 and couldn’t satisfy him with the job I was doing.”

But Moore returned the next day and has been at it ever since. Although he does not do much of the blacksmith work anymore, he has certainly done his share.

These days, there is the prospect of a fourth-generation Moore blacksmith, with son Jim, 27, learning the craft. Daughter Jill Delfs, 24, is the office manager. Moore said he expects his children to take over the business someday.

Moore’s wife, Sheila, is the only one in the family who does not work at the shop. “She says she never will,” Moore said with a chuckle.