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I Forge Iron

Oak Branch inspired from Steve McGrew article in Hot Iron News


David Kailey

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I started my Smithing by taking a class from Steve McGrew in the winter of 2011. He was working on a oak leaf and acorn door knocker and I thought is was great, so he taught me to make an acorn and oak leaf, among other things. After taking his class I started forging different things and Steve always welcomed me into his Smithy and I could always contact him for any questions.

After seeing his article in the Hot Iron News 2013/1 where he showed how to make his door knocker, I decided to finally tackle a project that had been rolling around in my head for over a year. An oak Branch center piece for a table that could also be hung on the wall. So I built everything i needed to make an acorn and started in on the project. Steve had e mailed me and told me that i could come beat some metal with him at his smithy over the weekend and so it began.

I drew out the main branch and all the side branches that day and welded them up. Thankfully Steve let me use his power hammer for the main branch it started as a 1 1/8' round stock so that saved me a lot of work, Thanks Steve!!!! The side branches are from 5/8" round stock.

So Spring break was here and i had my 10 year old Daughter Madelynn for the week and so we forged all the acorns and the leaves together, It was great to forge with her, She loved it!!!!

All that was left to do was to assemble all the pieces into a branch. So here it is. I have about 13 hours into this branch it is 32" long and about 18" wide.

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That looks fantastic! How have you done the acorns? They look great!!

Colleen,

Here is a link to the Smiths web site that taught me how to forge acorns from black pipe. Below that is the link to the article he wrote and posted on his web site.

 

http://www.incandescent-iron.com/

 

http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/yhst-17797617870419/ForgeAcorns.pdf

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