I have a really poor signal this evening so there won't be much text tonight. I'm glad I got the photo's loaded this morning while still in the rest area. I'm at the RV campground now, south of Lexington about 18 miles, right on the banks of the Kentucky River. Pulled in this afternoon and got Esmeralda tucked into a nice shady spot. Will head into town tomorrow and scout out where the dance will be as well as pick up a few food items.

   Not sure what else there is to see around here that I didn't see last time I was in the area. Will go on line once I have a better signal and see if there is anything I need to visit. In the mean time; here are a few more photo's from Fort Klock. Sorry for dragging it out like this, but there are only so many pictures that can be loaded at one time.  These are of the Black Smith Shop at the homestead.

The blacksmith shop at the Klock homestead. Built of stone also, it appears that smithing was a way for the family to make money other than trading and farming. Of course a lot of smithy work might have been taken out in trade also.

A view of one of two forge's inside the shop. In the foreground the ever present anvil and a rack of hammers and other metal working tools. In the far corner is the large bellows for that forge. There was another one in the other corner. Of course these days they use an electrical blower on the days they do demonstrations. Note the stone floor in this part of the building. At the front half where shoeing and other work would of been done, it was 4" thick wood flooring. One other thing; the tall metal cone in the corner was used to shape metal rings of various sizes for harness work among other things.

The Klock's did a lot of wagon repair, in particular wagon wheels. So on the right is a hand cranked machine that would of bent flat pieces of metal into a circle where they could be welded together and used as the outside rim of a wooden wagon wheel. On the left is a simple grinding stone used to put an edge on tools such as axe's, draw knifes and scythe's.

I love this little stool. Built for only one purpose, the small metal anvil sticking up in front was used to hand wrought nails and/or straighten out nails that had been bent. There was no Home Depot way back when that you could run down to and buy a box or two of what ever type of nail you might need. All of them were made by hand in a blacksmith shop. So when a building was old and in need of replacing they often burned them down so that they could sift through the ashes and find all of the nails that had been used. This bench would of been handy for straightening them out and reminds me of my father and his coffee can of old nails that he had pulled out of some old board and was going to reuse just as soon as he, and I, unbent enough of them. Sure would of liked one of these benches at that time.

A few of the wood tools that they would of had handy for fixing a wagon.

A view of both forges and some of the tools of the trade. Note the black lines on the ceiling corresponding to the location of the wooden beams above. I would assume that they are post and beam trusses by the layout.

A hand cranked drill press and a rack to hold some of the longer pieces of steel bar.

One unique feature of both forges is that they have a stone water trough to dunk hot steel into in order to temper the metal.

A view of the other forge and the stone water trough. Pretty cool.