Blacksmiths in Gozo fashioned items from iron and steel for the their fellow tradesmen to use in their work and also made things for household use since time immemorial.

With forge and anvil, hammer and tongs, blacksmiths made agricultural tools for farmers and iron rims for wheelwrights. They also repaired many iron objects commonly used by local residents. Their skills with vice and file served customers as diverse as the miller, saddler, carpenter, and builder. From steel, the blacksmith made tempered cutting edges for axes and smooth faces for special hammers. Some of the items that a blacksmith made were: plough shares, door hinges, locks, chains, knives, nails, tools, horseshoes, hooks, cart parts, pots and pans, and tools for the fireplace.

A blacksmith's forge, like those at Ta' Kola Windmill in Xaghra, consisted of a raised brick hearth outfitted with bellows to feed its soft-coal fire and a hood to carry away the smoke. He pumped the bellows and forced air through the coals in the forge. The more he pumped the bellows, the hotter the fire became. Once iron became red-hot he would use tongs to hold the metal on his anvil. Then he would hammer the hot metal into different shapes with his sledge-hammer. The metal was then cooled in a tub of water. With his apprentices, the blacksmith used sledges sometimes weighing as much as 12 pounds (5.4 Kg) to hammer the heated bars into the desired shapes.

Local farmers and tradesmen relied on the blacksmith to shod (shoe) their horses, as horses needed shoes to protect the hooves. The blacksmith shaped the shoe to fit the horse's hoof, rasped the hoof, then burned and nailed the shoe on the hoof.

With the arrival of cars, truck, and tractors the garage replaced the blacksmith shop. However, in Gozo a couple of blacksmiths are still seen busy hammering in their small-blackened workshops. There is a revival in demand for old-fashioned locks, hinges, curtain rails and iron gates for local "houses of character" (old houses), and traditional blacksmiths have enough work to give another life-span to this generations-long tradition.