When Michael Whitmore came home to Maine, all he had was undeveloped land.
Five years later, Whitmore and his wife, Cheryl, have built an off-grid homestead and a blacksmithing shop on the Hancock property where he grew up using only wood they milled onsite.
Whitmore has made his own tools to fill the 1800s-style blacksmith shop, where he teaches classes and gives demonstrations. Developing his homestead this way mirrors the traditional role of blacksmiths in colonial and frontier settlements, who crafted their own equipment and the materials that made development possible, such as stone chisels for quarrying and rigging points for shipbuilding.
Now, passing on these skills and experience from almost a lifetime of working in metal is giving Whitmore renewed purpose as he heads into his 70s. Learning the basics of blacksmithing also prepares the next generation for any kind of metal work they go on to do, Whitmore said.
Though most may not rely on it in daily life anymore, it’s a craft that he believes still has a place.
Interest in amateur blacksmithing has also risen nationwide along with other hands-on hobbies that took off during the pandemic, the New York Times reported in 2023. One of its draws is its reliability.
“I’m not one of these end of the day theorists or anything like that, but if something hits the fan, the internet goes down, the world crashes, this still works,” Whitmore said. “I can still make a tool that’ll cut through stone.”
A coal fire burned in a small forge at his open-air shop on Thursday, fed by air pumped through bellows that Whitmore built using upholstery material and drawings from an old book. Chickens wandered in and out of the gravel-floored shop, where the walls were lined with tools and a small combined metal foundry-kiln.
Shops like these were local gathering places in the 19th century because so many people needed their services, and that’s an atmosphere Whitmore wants to recreate along with sharing the sights, sounds and smells of metalwork.
He has been interested in the process of shaping solid metal into something new since he was a teenager. With the help of a teacher at Ellsworth High School, he learned the basics of welding and went on to become an accomplished blacksmith primarily by reading old books.
He has been interested in the process of shaping solid metal into something new since he was a teenager.
With the help of a teacher at Ellsworth High School, he learned the basics of welding and went on to become an accomplished blacksmith primarily by reading old books.
After 30 years in Texas, working as a welder and starting a similar educational blacksmith shop four times the size, he returned home when he inherited part of the family property just off Route 1 in Hancock.
In Texas, as in Maine, blacksmiths were critical to early European settlers. It was “virtually impossible” for them to survive without a blacksmith in the Civil War era unless they reverted to living like it was the Stone Age, according to the National Park Service.
“Even though he was a lowly blacksmith, covered in soot and smoke and everything else, everybody needed him,” Whitmore said. “I mean, he had a purpose in life right up until he dropped.”
It can be hard for people to find reasons to push forward as they age because so much of life is behind them, Whitmore said. But when he’s teaching children or adults, he’s energized and has a purpose.
“When you get old, you think about what kind of knowledge you have that other people don’t have, and you’d like to take the good stuff that you’ve learned in life, and you don’t want to think about it disappearing when you go,” he said. “You want to be able to pass that on to somebody else.”
At his shop, chaperoned children from 7 to 10 work on soft copper without any heat, learning how to understand the tools. After age 10, students can learn about creating and managing fires.
With parent permission, older teenagers make knives or wrenches. Adults can have custom workshops for projects of their choosing.
Whitmore also works with local homeschool groups and has created a small mobile shop on a flatbed trailer to give demonstrations at parades and events. Classes have been slow to take off so far, but are starting to pick up, he said.
He believes the early instruction in using tools will stay with young people throughout their lives and is a way to pay forward the help he received from others when he was a young man. Even small things, like learning to use a file facing out instead of back and forth to avoid wearing down the teeth, might be hard to find in books today.
“It just gives you a reason for being,” Whitmore said. “When the kids come in here and they’re just in awe, just looking at how things are, soaking it all in, you know…it makes you feel like you’re doing something that’s worth living for.”