Richard Bogardus Blanchard Jr.: Born June 11, 1920
in Gardner, Mass. He is the oldest child and used
to help in the silver shop. In his own words in an
email September 3, 2004:
 
  On the silver yes I did help my Dad over the years
doing the beginner's job - polishing.  We had a
overhead shaft with belts down to several polishing
machines, which were built over galvanized iron
pans, similar to the filing drawers.  These pans
had a lot of pumice powder in them, and we would
take a handful and hold the silver in it and hold
it against the spinning wheels. The rough wheels
were made of walrus hide, about 3/4" in thick,
then for the finish polish we used cloth wheels,
which were made of many layers of cloth stitched
together to form wheels about an inch or so thick.
  Before polishing, the filing operation took place,
with finer and finer files being used, then the
polishing to get rid of the fine marks.  I did some
filing as well, but  you had to put in a lot of
time polishing before he would let you get near
any files.  That's how an apprentice would start,
and step by step work your way up.  I also was
allowed to anneal the silver. You had to anneal
each piece several times before it was done. The
hammering would make it harder and harder and if
you went too far it would crack and ruin the piece.
So he had to know when to lay the piece aside for
me to anneal. That would be just heating it red
hot with a gasoline blow torch and then let it
cool naturally. We had a round tray full of lava
rocks that could spin around on a pipe, so we would
slowly spin it while heating the silver. Then it
would be as soft as the new blank he started with.
He bought raw silver in sheets of various
thicknesses, depending on what he was making.
  I remember silver cost about 70c an ounce, from
"Handy and Harmon" in LA back then...Too bad he
never had the money to buy much so even when he
got an order sometimes he couldn't fill it because
he didn't have the money to buy the silver. Of
course, I was never really interested in following
through with the apprenticeship program; just
wanted to play my trombone and play ham radio.