hochewa

A native of Bethlehem, PA, I started my career as a Metallurgist at Liberty High School under the instruction of Mr. Charles Kropp, who until the Fall of 1966, had successfully trained 35 years of Metallurgists at Penn State.

My career as a Blacksmith started much earlier.  As a child of the 50's and 60's, I grew up watching a lot of westerns.  Every now and then there would be a Blacksmith.  On Sunday my parents and I would have dinner with my mother's parents in Nazareth.  Being bored with the 3 B&W channels on the TV, especially in the Winter, I had to entertain myself the best I could.  My Grandparents just happened to have a coal fired furnace in the basement. With a small block of Iron for an anvil, a claw hammer, a pair of pliers and some coat hangers, I may have not been prepared to make horse shoes but branding irons were in play.  The banging and hissing did not draw much attention but when my parents smelled wood smoke from my burning my initials in the floor joists, my budding Blacksmith career was put on hold.  I still have the block of Iron.

In 1972 I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering.  During my college years, I spent 18 months as a Co-op with Bethlehem Steel.  My first supervisor was Ray Hemphill who would later go on to be the Director of Alloy Development at CarTech.  Ray had a profound influence on my career path.

In the Fall of 1973, my wife, Janet, and I attended the Appalachian Mountain Crafts Festival in Big Stone Gap, VA where we met a Farrier who had shod mules for the Army during WW1.  He made 4 identical horse shoes without measuring a thing and barely broke eye contact with our little group.  From that point on I said to myself , "If he can do it, I can do it."

I set my first shop up in 1978 in Warren, PA in the old chicken coop in the back yard of our first house.  Armed with a freshly bought blacksmith's hammer from Sears, a ½ inch bar of steel from work, a bucket of anthracite from the coal bin in the house and a pair of vise grips, I was never so humbled as I stood at the anvil saying to myself, "Now what?"  I still use the Craftsman hammer.

Working with Peter Roderick of Dragon Forge in Eddington, ME and taking a class with Jonathan Nedbor at Peter's Valley, I had some of the basic knowledge to proceed.

Bill Gichner was most gracious to invite me to give talks on basic Metallurgy and heat treatment.  I have presented at BGOP and MASA sponsored events.  Thanks to Peter Ross,I have been a consultant to Colonial Williamsburg.  I am a member of ABANA and PABA.

My industrial career spans the manufacture of clad materials both strip and wire, Boron composites, electrical contacts, the Platinum Group Metals and most recently NiTinol, the shape memory alloy.  I hold 9 US patents and have published numerous articles.

I have been the Master of the Blacksmith's Shop at Hopewell Furnace NHS for the past 22 years.

As I have recently retired, I plan to spend more time pursuing my passion for metalwork that began 55 years ago.