"I'm sorry, I don't make iron gates. You need a special blacksmith for that task." Blacksmith in Colonial times needed to know how to forge tools, shape liquid metal, and heat metal. Some of the raw materials they used were iron and steel. 

Some tools they used were:

• Anvil - heavy iron block used to hammer metal into shape
• Forge - furnace for heating metal
• Fuller - tool for pounding grooves into iron
• Hammer - used to bend hot metal into a shape
• Mandrel - a round, hornlike tool for shaping iron
• They also needed grabbers for taking hot metal out of the fire and claws for holding the hot metal while they hammered.

The blacksmith made nails, swords, hatchets, axe heads, bullets, anchors, anchor chains, hooks, iron hoops, shipwright tools, anvils, horse shoes, hinges, hammer heads, gates, gate locks, and wheel barrows. They also repaired tools used by other tradesmen. Carpenters would buy the tools they needed for building things, and commanders would buy the weapons for the army from the blacksmith.

In the South many blacksmiths were African Americans enslaved people. Many blacksmith shops had apprentices who helped and learned the trade. Blacksmith shops were very busy places.

Colonial blacksmith Peter Townsend was hired by the Continental Congress in 1778 to create a chain to stretch across the Hudson River at West Point to keep the British ships from passing North. The chain was huge and each link was one foot wide and three feet long. It took a month and a half to make. The colonist floated it on logs across the Hudson River until the Revolutionary War was over and the British never broke through