Kalona Blacksmith and Welding itself dates almost a century into the town's roots. Yoder says that the best he can tell, the original building was constructed in 1915. Its abstract shows the current location of the Kalona Sales Barn as still an empty swamp.
Yoder bought Fisher Blacksmithing and Welding in 1984 from Joe Fisher, whose father had also been a blacksmith at the same site. It was Joe who taught him the art of working iron over a hot fire with hammer and anvil.
Yoder began his trade welding for varied companies that made farm equipment, automobile seat frames and repaired state bridges. His schooling includes Kirkwood Community College and Tulsa Welding.
Being his own boss and having his own business were the reasons Yoder says he gave up new fabrication welding at a manufacturing plant to become a sort of jack-of-all-trades - a majority of repair jobs along with some fabrication and blacksmithing.
Like a family physician, Yoder gets called evenings and weekends for emergencies - often from anxious farmers in the middle of spring planting or fall harvesting. For those times when he shows up with his portable welding equipment, says Yoder, "I'm the most popular guy around."
It's not all fun and games, especially in the winter. This February, Yoder was called to make repairs on a Cedar Rapids bridge damaged by last year's flooding. The subzero temperatures frosted the glass in his welding hood and even insulated gloves could not keep his fingers warm. His helper, Yoder added, would try to warm his own hands by placing them over the recently welded areas.
At one time all iron working was performed by blacksmiths. It is believed that some of the first iron worked by humans was from ore-rich meteorites. European Hittites conquered present-day Syria by 1500 A.D. and began smelting iron.Ê They were the first civilization to make wrought iron, which they created by placing charcoal and iron ore in small stone furnaces. The charcoal was lit and the iron would flow from the ore at 2,800 degrees.
The blooms of lumpy iron were removed from the furnaces and hammered on an anvil into flat, rectangular bars. It would be folded over and hammered until most of the impurities were pounded from the bar.
The finished, layered ingot is called wrought iron. Though weaker than steel because of its low carbon content, but it is very malleable and a blacksmith can shape it and forge-weld it to other wrought iron pieces by fire and hammer - creating a seamless bond.
Cast iron contains more carbon and is brittle, so it can't be reworked when heated. But it can be melted and poured into casts at foundries.
By the Middle Ages, the metal working had become an art. From hinges, chains and knives to pots, locks, rivets and nails, the iron items were hammered into shape over a hot fire.
The coming of the Industrial Age doomed blacksmithing. In America, the arrival of the railroad by the late 1800s linked the country, bringing with it mass manufactured iron items that would be sold in hardware stores. Automobiles put an end to wagon makers.
Today, the trade has made a comeback in the form of artists who use the medium to create works of art - or hobbyist blacksmiths who make small items for craft shows and restoration villages.
Yoder is one of the few blacksmiths in the state who still works with forge and hammer as a regular job. The most common items he makes by smithing are plowshares and wrought-iron fences, which he also installs. The plowshares are in demand by the local Amish and hobby farmers
But he is not romantic when it comes to the trade. Take the traditional coal-fired forge. "I never shed a tear when I went to gas," Yoder observed of his conversion from coal to gas. "Coal is dirty and temperamental."
He added that right grade of coal suited for blacksmithing is now very expensive and difficult to acquire. "You have to sweat blood to find it."
And with out modern "mild steel," he said, life as known wouldn't be possible. Mild steel is a general term for a variety of cheap, low-carbon steels with good strength that can be drilled, cut, bent, worked or welded into an endless variety of shapes. Everything from oil pipelines, pots and pans to cars and ocean liners are made of mild steel, says Yoder.
It is this more-modern metal that Yoder works with the most, but he still is a real link back to the village blacksmith - repairing and fabricating iron and steel with tools and heat, whether it be by forge or modern torch. And after almost 100 years, the shop on B Avenue is still where farmers go when a piece of equipment snaps or bends.
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