How did YOU get started smithing?

[nankbrown1227]

Forgive me if this has already been discussed but I have always been intrigued by watching people, always wondering what their story is. Every person lives a different life full of decisions that has made them who THEY are, so I pose the question,

 

How did YOU get started blacksmithing?

I got started blacksmithing roughly 10 years ago when an old friend of my grandfathers brought the conversation up. Now when I say "old friend" I mean he had lived a very long life by that time he was in his early 90's and lived until three years ago. He told me one day while he was visiting my grandfather in his wood shop that "you should set up a forge and buy you an anvil and torch set, bet you could make some money 'round here" . What he said rang true in my head for some reason so that is just what I did. Can't say I have made much money, since I ended up in college, then barber school to make a living LOL, but I have enjoyed the journey, and love working with metal so I suppose that is payment enough.

[Charles R. Stevens]

A copy of readers digest, back to basics. Some 35 years ago. Dad had taught me to gas weld, and I knew he wold ring my neck if I used the torch , so I jacked moms hairdryer and some Kingsford. Piddled for about a month, and like most kids lost interest. Then low and behold I find myself in a horseshoing school in Oklahoma 10 yeas ago.

[DSW]

I lucked out in that my Jr high school in Wa. had a decent wood/metals shop equipped with both a large gas forge and a foundry for casting alum. I took every shop class I could and worked hot metal as much as they would let me.

[jeremy k]

This thread is more consistent with answers due to the specific questions:

> +started +blacksmithing

[njanvilman]

Always built stuff at home.  Bought a PW anvil in high school from a friends grandfather.  Went off to college and became a shop teacher, teaching Metals and Wood for 37 years.  Have a forge at home, and a complete wood shop.  And still enjoy building stuff.  I have to clean, sort, or make something EVERY day, or I feel like I accomplished nothing.

[George Geist]

Not much different than the rest of you guys. Had a pretty good shop in Jr High and High School. Took every metal shop class I could. Also through most years growing up and thereafter have always been involved in some capacity or another with horses. Being a metalworking enthusiast as well as being with horses getting into shoeing was a pretty natural fit. Upon graduation attended a horseshoeing school and have pursued that trade for 33 years now.

I notice a pretty large percentage of smiths begin their lives as horseshoers. I figure that's where I fall in.

 

Although horseshoeing can be good for money the shop work is the real fun for me. Is a great trade

[DanielC]

I think I've said it several times on this forum, and if Ric is reading this again I am sure he is going to gag. But I had no real interest in blacksmithy until Ric Furrer made that beautiful viking era sword recently on PBS Nova. I have my DVR set to record new episodes of NOVA, and that episode aired, and I was hooked. I didnt know there were still blacksmiths at the time. Honestly, this craft is hidden among most folks.

 

After watching that NOVA special a dozen times, I decided to take it a step further and research the net. From there I found IFI, and the rest is history. I have since traveled across state borders for equipment (several times), and have taken it to the next level. I now hit and strike on 4 different anvils, one being a 371# I bought from a member here. Making Hammers, tools, and blades has consumed me.

 

This Winter, which will mark a year of blacksmithy, I even have a planned attempt to make steel building a Tatara.

 

Honestly, if my life wasn't tied up in the family business, I would do this for a living. It quickly became a passion.

[JShock]

A friend of mine at work started making RR spike knives. He told me I should do it because he knew I would be interested. I started looking up ways to get started online. Brake drum forges. Hand made blowers. Alternatives to anvils. I went to change a couple of tires here in town and right next to the building was a bunch of discarded RR spikes, bolts, tie plates and two pieces of RR track. an 18 inc one and a 4 ft one. I asked the shop own about them and he said the RR guys dumped them there about a year ago and never picked them up. I decided they needed a new home and loaded them up.

 

A cousin in law had a 16 in truck rim and brake drum. I went and got 1.5 in pipe and a blow dryer and a bag of charcoal. Picked up a Cross peen and hand grinder and a couple of cutting wheels and went home. I had the pipe cut and threaded at the plumbing store I got them from. I cut out most of the center of the Truck rim and dropped the break drum in it. After a little modification to the break drum I put the pipe together and bolted a 1/8 plate to a flange and ran my pipe down the center of the drum. 

 

Now I had a forge. I had some material. I had an Anvil and a Hammer. Since then I have found a proper anvil. I still use the same forge. I picked up a Post vice. I still use the same blow dryer I started with as well. Two speed, set to cool not hot air, Duct tapped to the pipe. I could make it better, but at this point It still works. I want to find a hand crank blower, but cant afford ebay prices right now. 

 

I have also joined the local blacksmith chapter and been having a blast ever since. 

[SReynolds]

The folks @ the Ohio Historical Society needed one. I was not; thus I became one.

 

You are "supposed to" dabble in it on your own. Then join a club. Then work for a historical society on the local level, then move up/advance to the state level. I threw caution to the wind and became a blacksmith on the state level w/o any experience. It can be done, if you look the part I guess.

[Francis Trez Cole]

My journey started a while ago and my bio tells the whole story

[jmccustomknives]

I was an avid hot rodder and liked to build parts.  My nieghbor gave me a bunch of old bedframes, I took them thinking I could use them to make jigs and such.  That stuff was so hard I couldn't even drill a hole.  I figured if it was hard enough to resist a drillbit I might could make a knife.  Enjoyed the process so much it just kept growing.  My wife however is a little disgruntled at all the scrap I've acumilated, but hey, can't let good metal go to waste!

[Nick]

My second semester in college I took blacksmithing as an elective.  It sounded interesting (I was a history major, not art), and I was lucky to get in.  Over the next few years I took several more metalsmithing classes in the art department, and I built my home forge right after taking that first course.

[Daniel.85]

I saw a YouTube video of a brake drum forge and scrounged up a version of one.

[Quarry Dog]

A little over a year and a half ago, I found out that one of the civilians I worked with taught blacksmithing.  I attended the classes and within 3 weeks I was hooked.

[Bruno C.]

I always had a thing for knives.  From my first swiss army at 8 years old to now.   One day after many years working on computers, I got fed up with them.  Decided I like knives so much, so why not make them ?   As luck would have it, a relative invited me to the Ukraine.  Spent some time there.  While there I took the opportunity to meet some local blacksmiths with the help of my relative.  They agreed to let me hang around.  After many months of sweeping, grinding and breaking up coal,  They let me work at the forge  more.  They soon after started teaching me more about the art. I consider myself lucky for the opportunity.  Spent a good few months with them before I left.  Great talented, hard working people.

 

Wasn't till a couple years later that I realized when I first forged something.   As a 10 year old kid I remember reading about lock picks on the internets.  Yeah, give a kid AOL and what do you expect ?   So I decided to make some out of some out of the flat metal band that came with old style headphones.   Used some files that were laying around and made the shapes that I saw in the diagrams.   It worked out well.  But I remember having trouble making the Torque pick.  And for some reason, I still don't know why, I remember thinking that, "Hey, if I heat this up it might bend easier".  So late one night I took my metallic strip to the kitchen stove and heated it up until it was red hot.  It bent easily, and the hammer took out the off angles in the metal,  and after a few burns on my thumb I decided to cool (quench) in water.  Needless to say, it came out hardened and properly shaped. And it worked very well for the task at hand. I still have the set I made.   Don't know why I did it that way, and hadn't done anything similar until I started working more with metal.  Weird, Huh?

 

Guess some people are just born infected.

 

-Bruno

[Nobody Special]

Always playing with new hobbies and historical stuff. Every once in awhile one sticks.

 

I started looking at it about 10 yrs ago when I was stationed at Ft. Hood, Tx., decided casting would be easier to start (Ha!!!) and played with that for on and off.  Somewhere along the way, picked up a wee cast steel anvil at a flea market and a copy of Weyger's book.

 

In 09, shifted from big Army to the Guard and moved down to Huntsville, then got a job at a plant that processes Ti rod and Nickel Ti. Wasn't enough room in the truck for everything, so......my furnace got left in Tacoma and I was working 2 or 3 jobs at any given point for awhile, so didn't do much with metalcasting.

 

Took a job working with the Guard full time in 2010 and moved to Atlanta area. Suddenly I had weekends and freetime again, and at a feed store, ran into some bags of coal......hmmm, it's a sign! Made a rr spike knife at about 1130 on a cold winter night with a shallow ditch dug in the yard with a hairdryer blowing through a piece of 3/4 pipe and  the anvil sitting loose on the ground. Only took about 8 or 9 tries to get that anthracite lit and more lighter fluid than I want to think about.....sigh.

 

Then on and off as time/mission, and another move allowed. Learned more this year than in previous two when I progressed from the Weyger's book (which is still a great book) and youtube videos to finding IFI and joining the Alex Bealer group in Atlanta. Starting to be able to look around the house and yard and find iron stuff that I've made here and there.  Still a hobby level, still hooked, still on the small anvil, still love it.

[LastRonin]

I inherited a 150# Mousehole from my wife's Granddad. I had always been interested in making things and tinkering. From sketching to wire sculptures with a soldering iron as the tool. But when we opened that con-ex and I drug that rusty hunk of iron out... the wheels started spinning. I started using my Google-fu and found many references to cheap DIY forges, found IFI and joined, read through HOURS of threads while scrounging materials to build my forge. Got it built with only $.76 out of pocket. I heated up some metal, mangled it (lol) and tried again. I was hooked.

[arkie]

Well, I started out as a hobby welder.  I needed to bend some heavy steel to weld and had no means to do so (no O/A torch, etc. only a MAPP torch).  Decided to build a brake drum forge only for the purpose of bending/shaping the steel...but needed coal...hmmm, no source for coal.  I did an internet search for coal and blacksmiths, since they might be a good source for coal.

 

As it turned out, a local blacksmith club indicated it might sell to the public, so I arranged to meet one of the members to see about buying a small amount of coal.  He took some time to fire up his forge, show me how things are made, gave me a pretty in-depth explanation of blacksmithing and invited me to join the group and come to a meeting at one of the member's smithy.  That "pulled my cork under"!!!!  I was hooked on blacksmithing!!  I've gotten into it with my forge, anvil, hammers, tongs, homemade tools, etc. and have never had so much fun in my life.  I'm retired and after breakfast, I'm outside at the shop firing up the forge and going at it, usually all day.

 

My thanks for the consideration of a fellow smith who took the time to explain his trade and make another convert.

[Dumbaskis]

An existing daily practice of working on archery bows professionally keeps me in the wood shop, and I have lapidary stone working supplies to augment that and/or (mainly) as a hobby making pendants, parabolic jewels... plus a love for metal and knives I'm finally setting a little evening time aside for. This will be po boy to start (as usual) but slowly grow along with he other two. The process is usually fairly painless and natural these days with a little CAREFUL ingenuity and a few pieces of junk. I wanted to grind a knife-shaped stone pendant out of Moh's hardness 7 agate one day (jade or flint-like stone, jasper). No one ever told me you could wet grind on a $40 (new) Ryobi dry grinder but I plugged one into a ground fault, stood on a rubber mat, occasionally put some coolant through the gravity fed water dispenser and/or dripped some oil down the bearings and it's been running for years. Still use it when I don't want to fire up the big arbor. That kind of thing, until you can do better. Turned a 7" tile saw into a 10" tile saw in minutes and a couple disks to prevent dishing. Until you can do better, until you can do better... never failing is never trying.

[Joel OF]

Always wanted to be a craftsman since I was a kid but never had the time. Played drums in death metal bands for over 10 yrs but they always fizzled out so I thought it was time for a change. Built my 1st brake drum forge August 2012, built my workshop November 2012, bought my 1st stick welder early 2013 & fabricated a bigger forge, quit my job to focus on blacksmithing August 2014. Learning from IFI, books & YouTube.

[ripleycopa]

I was on the Board of a local development group that owned a Blacksmith Shop Building with quite a few tools but no permanent masonry forge.  The working shop had been closed for over thirty years and then donated to our group. The shop was taken down and moved to a park in town but the forge was not included in the move.  For years the group just opened the shop on the Labor Day weekend and the rest of the year it just sat unused. I had no experience with the craft, no high school shop history and little manual dexterity.  The Board agreed that we needed a working shop to be a tourist draw and I was assigned the task of finding blacksmiths to make it work.  Long story short; no local blacksmiths materialized, so I went looking far afield and found out about the Blacksmith Association of Missouri (BAM).  They were extemely helpful and suggested I take their Begining Blacksmithing Class which I did and thoroughly enjoyed. With the advice of BAM members and internet searches I found designs for a two workstation masonry forge at our shop and helped get it built.  If you build it, they will come, and, come they did.  With a working shop available, many locals interested in the art of blacksmithing came and agreed to form a group to operate the shop on a regular weekly basis as a community forge.  We now have nine BAM members locally who volunteer to take turns keeping the shop open every Saturday morning for public and touist demonstrations.  I found out that I enjoyed it and it became the hobby I never really had before.  I have been doing it now for seven years, working with BAM and joining the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America (ABANA). When I retire as Prosecuting Attorney of my county in a few years I hope to be able to work more than one day a week honing my skills and teaching classes to young people to encourage their recruitment to the craft. You can check out our community forge, The Tom Kennon Blacksmith Shop" at our website:  www.doniphanmissouri.org/tom_kennon_blacksmith_shop

[JamesBBrauer]

I got a drill press vise that didn't have a handle.  So I proped a piece of round steel up where it was in a propane torch flame, and after twenty minutes or so got it hot enough to upset the end, put it throught the vise nut, and did the other end.  It took a couple of hours, but I still use the vise all the time.  I heated metal with a crab boiler for a while.  I had to wait years for the internet to get better pictures, but finally got around to building some different forges, and got an old Vulcan anvil, and enjoy making a little money from a fun hobby.

[johnnie]

I was (still am) in the throws of renovating our farm house and ordered a catalogue from a company that forge lights, curtain poles and fire companion sets etc.

I was looking through and came across a set of Rams head fire tools and said to my wife thats what I wanted for Christmas. She asked how much and told her the set was £450.

She promptly told me to p#ss off and I could make it myself for that.

Thousands of pounds later my forge is complete and I love every minute spent in there.

 

If you read this hunny, thanks for your idea ( the companion set would have been A LOT cheaper!!!!)

[Crazy Ivan]

I was drawn to it back in high school. I was in a vocational school and took the metal fab/welding shop. That was the first time i ever saw a real anvil (as opposed to ones in cartoons). Needless to say i spent a large portion of my years in high school with a hammer in my hand. Sporadically jumping in the TIG booth or MIG table to keep the shop teacher happy. Ten years later I'm still pounding away! Finally with my own set up as of last year.

-Crazy Ivan

[JL Riffe]

When spending a short period with my parents in Daytona Beach (in '92), my stepfather had taken to volunteering with the smith at the historical village in St. Augustine, FL. There in our 2nd story apartment we cobbled together a micro forge out of a cast iron hibachi grill and a hairdryer, the anvil was a bit of scrap rail that I had been dragging about for a few years. I made my first knife in that thing. I moved out and got married and my stepfather went on to become a full time blacksmith after leaving the military contractor business.

 

I've been puttering around with smithing ever since.