By Pres James
Tap, tap, tap, tap tap.... hissss.....
Tap, tap, tap, tap tap.... hissss.....
Six
students sat around the forge, watching with muted amazement as their
teacher made a railroad spike into a fully formed and mounted
tomahawk... in the course of twenty minutes.
Let me back up.
A
few weeks ago, I took a beginner’s level blacksmithing course at Broken
Hammer Forge, taught by Dave Collier. It’s a craft I had no
experience in, but have been curious about trying for years. When I heard that a slot was open in the class, I jumped at the chance.
 |
| Image from the Blacksmithing Class (Photo by James) |
Half
an hour from the nearest town in the wilds of Maryland’s eastern shore,
the forge is situated in an old combine repair garage. Half of it is
filled with rusted bits of metal and what looked to be broken equipment,
but the other half is what really shined. Six small forges with
hand-cranked bellows, each station with an anvil, a selection of tools,
and a vise, just waiting to be used, and all with a custom made
ventilation system that Mr. Collier made himself.
I
guess that shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, since a traditional
part of blacksmithing is making your own tools. Why not the ventilation
as well?
I
was the first to arrive, and was greeted warmly by a fairly short man
wearing circular purple goggles. (I honestly couldn’t think of anything
other than a gnomish tinkerer. I never saw him take those off the
entire weekend.) He gave me a brief tour of the forge, and showed me
the table full of demo pieces.
It held quite a variety, from knives to axes to iron age style cloak pins.
Once
everyone had arrived, we started with the basics. The MOST basic. Namely, how to start the fire in the forge. Since we didn’t have the
luxury of what a traditional blacksmith would do (“Apprentice, get the
fire started while I have breakfast”), we learned how to make kindling,
pile it up with bits of paper, and line that whole nest with coke formed
during previous forging sessions.
It took me two tries to finally get it going. Others took even more. It’s tricky business, believe it or not.
The
class was divided in a similar way to many other two day courses. During the first day, we had a number of small projects to learn the
skills. Nails, different forms of hole punching, a wall hook, all
things that would focus on a particular action. The second day, we had a
project to tie everything together - making our first pair of tongs,
perfect for those of us who might want to continue as smiths.
 |
| Another shot of the work area (Photo by James) |
I
had pretty good success with the first day, but my tongs broke towards
the end of day 2, and in a way that it wouldn’t be easy to recover from. Ah well, at least I learned something! Iron burns when the fire
gets too hot.
One
thing that really impressed me was Dave’s teaching style. In addition
to being a blacksmith, he is also a physical therapist, so his focus
wasn’t just on the finished product, but the how and why of the motions
we were being taught. He was full of reminders about being too far away from the
anvil, for example, or gripping the hammer too tightly or too far down,
in a way that we’d be seeing him in a few years with carpal tunnel. All
reflected on just how thoughtful and considered his smithing style is. And he knew his history, too, with the lessons being interspersed with
stories and tangents about traditional blacksmiths, smithing scenes in
various movies and the history of the equipment. Fascinating stuff.
If
you’ve ever been curious if you have what it takes to beat iron into
submission, I would highly recommend contacting Broken Hammer Forge to
see when their next beginner’s class is. (It may also be worth keeping
an eye out for Dave to post his zombie apocalypse smithing course. I
have a feeling that will appeal to some of our readers!)
As for me, I’m going to go wash the soot off of my face. Again.
Contact info:
brokenhammerforge@gmail.com
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