how did you get started smithing?

[rmcpb]

I can remember the blacksmith shop as we called it on the family farm still in use when I was MUCH younger. I used to hang around because I could get real dirty and not get in trouble and it kind of rubbed off. We did basic farm maintenance then the arc welder kind of killed it off so I used it to shoe horses and bit n pieces. In the past few years my boys have become more interested so its back up there again.

Besides you can play with fire and hit things and get away with it......perfect

[JosephPrivott]

I tired building a small furnace in the side of the hill by our house. I made a pair of bellows from some ziploc bags and composite board, they worked the best out of the whole affair . Anyway, the furnace was a flop, but it would heat up rebar to red hot (barely). I found a hefty, reasonably firm rock, and managed to flatten the rebar out a decent (read: minimal) amount. I was hooked, and have had black boogies ever since!

Later I used an air mattress pump and burned out a depression in a stump, which I lined with tin can lids; my friend found my peter wright and sold it to me for $100 (a great deal I suppose). My grandfather traded fixing a clock for a neglected buffalo forge, which I added a brake drum to. Now I was cooking with gas! well, coal. Now I have a kind of 55 forge that I fun off of a blower/vaccuum.

That was my beginning, and now I'm looking toward the future. I've been looking to what new anvil I am going to buy, a shop, fabricating a new forge and accumulating the basic tools that will allow me to produce items for myself and anyone else. (man, I sure could use a bag full'o money!)

[Aeneas]

Looking back I realize that blacksmithing has alwys been a part of me. But there's no evidence of it in my family -I'm first Canadian generation to Italian immigrant parents who have never had a smith in their family tree. But I know the smithing bug has always been with me. When I was younger it was tucked away at the back of my soul, gently nudging me every so often.

My first blacksmithing experience didn't happen until ... around 16 years ago, when I was back in university. I had a photo-shoot assignment for a class so I decided to visit the local "pioneer village" - it was right next to the university. I remember it like it was this morning.

It was winter and I had shot around 3 rolls of film in the village. I decided to visit the blacksmith shop. As I went to pull the big doors open, something happened to me (I don't tell many people what happened because people always get this weird look on their face like I'm some kind of nut). Needless to say, it was a watershed moment for me.

This was the last time this village had a master smith working there (they ended up hemoraging money and couldn't afford to keep master trades-people). His name was Ives and he was from Quebec. He was a great guy. He let me look around (behind the rope, right up to the forge) and answered every question I had - I was there for 2 hours. Even though I had never been in a smithy before, it felt like I had spent my entire life in one.

I loved that shop. It was an authentic 1800's forge - beam and clapboard shop, cedar shingles, brick hearth and flu, great bellows, big old Peter Wright anvil on an oak stump, pot belly stove in the corner, ... the works ... not a welder to be seen anywhere. The floor was wood boards, cobbles and compacted sand (wood in the front half of the shop, cobbles in the working half and compacted sand around the forge and anvil). Tools were everywhere, ironware hung from hooks and from the rafters.

As soon as I left the shop I went to the park office and applied as part-time help doing odd jobs and covering people on their lunch breaks and such. Ives agreed to teach me some basics - heating, drawing out, making s-hooks and j-hooks, etc. I surprised him and myself at how quickly I picked things up. I worked there for 2 summers ... Ives left to go back to Quebec at the end of that first summer. That they wouldn't give me the shop fulltime and the way the administration ran the place were what made me leave. But I took a re-kindled passion for smithing with me (I say re-kindled because I truely do believe that I've done this sort of thing before - this is where the weird looks come in ... ).

Then came some quiet years while I finished my degrees, and then I got a job, right out of teacher's college in an elementary school with a great shop complete with a natural gas forge, anvil and sheet metal shop. I haven't looked back since - going on 10 years at that same school. And now I'm starting to build my obsession and my dream forge in my own home. Luckily I married a woman who shares my passion for history. She's a weaver and spinner and she sews while I do woodwork, woodcarving and smithing ... we're both cooks. We're absolutely perfect for eachother, and we support eachother's dreams. It doesn't get better than this.

[UnicornForge]

University of Connecticut offered a non-credit intro to blacksmithing course a the smith's house near Storrs, Connecticut, about 35 years ago. I was in the first class he taught.

[Frosty]

Originally Posted by Aeneas

Looking back I realize that blacksmithing has alwys been a part of me.

She's a weaver and spinner and she sews while I do woodwork, woodcarving and smithing ... we're both cooks. We're absolutely perfect for eachother, and we support eachother's dreams. It doesn't get better than this.

Cool. Deb's learning spinning and had to start learning to knit so we wouldn't be buried in yarn.

I don't think there's much mystery about why people with similar interests are drawn to each other. Deb and I are in a similar situation, she has her Pygmy goats and now an angora fiber goat looking to breed pygoras. She's also good with her hands, picked up repousse first try and fell in love with fold forming and enameling.

Me, I like making things from mechanical contraptions to odd shaped things beaten out of metal and other oddments of creativitism.

We got together online after a story I wrote about Hale Bopp went viral. We ended up corresponding and one thing led to another. When things started getting serious and we started talking on a more personal level she was reluctant to tell me she breeds goats. I love goats I'd just never considered actually owning any. Oddly enough Deb thought blacksmithing was something wonderful. We've been going strong ever since.

It's good to find the ONE isn't it?

Frosty

[Finnr]

Frosty ! You sir are a very fortunate man!
Finnr

[ironrosefarms]

Frosty you are spot on... I don't hardly know how I would take my next breath without my bride. Her support of all my oddities and the similarities that we share are the greatest blessing in my life.

James

[jkeller]

I'm one of those teenage males who wanted nothing more than to make my own sword after watching the Highlander and Conan movies.

About five years later, saw a ad for a basic blacksmithing course but moved before I was able to take it. I was complaining to my parents that I wasn't able to take the course, and they mentioned one of the neighbors was in a blacksmithing group. I asked him about it, he invited me to a meeting and I've been smithing ever since.

I've been smithing for about two years now, very slowly putting together my shop. One of these days I'll get around to making that sword..

As for the wife thing, that's sort of creepy.. My wife has her Bachelors of Fine Arts.. she majored in Fibre. We currently have eight alpacas, and she cards, spins, dyes and weaves their fibre.

[nc_cooter]

I started my journey to blacksmithing by making knives on a belt grinder. I built a gas forge to do my own heat treating. Grinding knives from flat bar was fun, but sometimes I didn't have the size stock i needed. I started looking for an anvil. I put the word out, ran ads in the paper and asked everyone that even might remotely know of one. No luck for the first year or so. Meanwhile, I used a piece of RR track.
After about a year and a half, I found a used 70# NC Tool farriers anvil. The cotton was getting higher. Being self taught, I made a lot of mistakes. I joined some blacksmith forums, asked a lot of dumb questions and read a lot more. The learning curve was very low, but I kept improving.
About 2 years went by and I found a 138# Hay Budden in excellent condition. Then in a matter of days I got a 126# Mousehole for free. I was definitely walking in high cotton. ( the 70# went to a friend)
The journey started about 6 years ago and continues. I still primarily forge knives and BS tools, although I am beginning to make other things.
Last year I fell from a ladder and broke my shoulder. Old folks don't bounce to well. They tend to break. I am still pounding metal, though I have had to greatly modify my technique. (thanks Mr Hoffi)

[Doug C]

My wife is always finding new experiences for me to try. She gives me classes for Christmas. One year was two days with a cooper at Stawberry Banke in Portsmouth, NH, drawing lessons, painting lesson then last December it was 5 lessons with Carl West at Prospect Hill Forge in Waltham, Ma. We made S-Hooks and I was hooked. A guy I worked with sold me his grandfather's rivet forge and a small swaybacked anvil and I have scoured Flea Markets and Craigslist pulling together a 150# anvil, a swage block, vise and some hand tools.

Lucky for me my wife, Deb, encourages me to spend time doing this thing I love.