A LITTLE PROJECT FROM MY OLD SHOP IN BERRYVILLE, ARKANSAS

    In 2000, I moved from little Rock Arkansas to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a town famous for its steep hills, stone buildings, and weird artiste lifestyles. A tourist mecca in the warmer months, it is wonderfully quiet from New year's until Spring (except for Valentines Day), and we lived in a remote cabin on King's River between Eaky Spings and its evil twin, Berryville.

Berryville isn't really evil, but is more of a conservative farming community on the flat Springfield Plateau as opposed to the more artistic town on the extremely steep Salem Plateau, which is gouged by deep ravines. Both towns are the seats of Carroll County, as King's River would often flood, keeping county residents from reaching court or voting. 

Finding shop space in the crowded little Disneyland that is Eaky Spings was problematic, and while driving around Berryville, I spotted this little stone building with a gambrel roof. It squatted in a dirt parking area just behind Berryville's picturesque Main Square, and it was CHEAP to rent, always a factor in my thinking.

The building is made of solid stone, mostly limestone and sandstone from the area, and had been there since the early part of the twentieth century. It was known as The Ike Doss Blacksmith shop.

View of the Blacksmith Shop showing the backs of the buildings on The Square

Ike Doss is famous not only in Berryville, but in blacksmithing circles across the south. Barely a tad over five feet tall and thin as a rail, he could shoe the orneriest mule, and the local farmers lined up for his services. He is featured as a photographic exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution.

When I first got access to the shop, I was surprised at how sturdy the  foot-thick walls were and equally shocked at the blackened interior. Of course it was blackened; it was a blacksmith shop, like duh. I rolled some white stain-killing primer on the rough concrete interior and brightened it up considerably. I then managed to pack it with all my tools, benches, tables and antique lumber.

Crowded, but quite efficient.

 

While ensconced in the blacksmith shop, I did a number of interesting jobs in Eureka as well as out in the country, and I'll be featuring a few of them in my next posts. But I also had a loyal following back in Little Rock, three hours away, and so had to keep those folks happy as well.

A church in Little Rock saw some of my Antique Wood Crosses and asked me to build a lectern for the Minister as well as a baptismal, all out of 500 to 300 year old longleaf pine, often referred to as "heart" pine. This term is a bastardization of the term "hard" pine, as old-growth longleaf has much tighter grain, and shortleaf doesn't get quite as old and is, therefore, softer. Virtually all longleaf old-growth was logged from the south by the early 20th century, but us woodworkers scarf up every piece we can get when older buildings are being remodeled or demolished. It has magnificent straight grain, few knots, and finishes a deep reddish orange with applications of varnish or oil.

The church folks brought me a number of wrought iron pieces they wanted woven into the design, but they had some rather unworkable ideas, so we had to make a compromise on the lectern.

Originally, they designed an octagonal base to house eight of the iron pieces, but that would have made it seriously unwieldy and hard to stand behind, so we reduced the design to four and I created a square base instead. The center column of the lectern is a section of an 1881 porch column, and I turned the baptismal legs on my lathe.