Tom Lumpkins Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 I was sitting here wondering and thought I would ask, What got you into blacksmithing and How long have you been doing it, Are you self taught or did someone teach you. I am eager to learn and I know some of you all have some good stories to share and I would love to hear them, Maybe soon I'll have some stories to share. Thanks inadvance,,,Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete46 Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 Read A Book By Alex Bealer "the Art Of Blacksmithing" Then I Spent A Fortune On Other Books,built A Forge Out Of A Cast Iron Sink And Have Been Fixated Ever Since! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fat pete Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 started last summer ..... wanted to fix knife handles for something to do...met a guy that said if you wanna make a knife you gotta learn to forge..ergo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Lumpkins Posted June 1, 2008 Author Share Posted June 1, 2008 (edited) Thanks for your posts, I'm sure there's many of stories to be shared, Lets hear um guy's... Edited June 1, 2008 by WagonMaster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
latvius Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 Started about 3 years ago, saw some blacksmithing websites and the stuff they created and decided it was something I wanted to do also. Build a brake drum coal forge, dident work out to well. Then made a propane tank gas forge, though I am kinda on hold until I can get my blacksmith shop built. All my projects are starting to pile up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabre Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 i started by wanting to make throwing knives.... on utube i saw forges and homemade knives after that i build a forge and started bangin meatle ive been stuck to it ever since Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 started bangin meatle ive been stuck to it ever since Maybe we should call you Clinker then? Heh heh heh. Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gayle Brooks Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 Family business. It was at one time used as a form of punishment. Got in trouble, then I was stuck organizing the metal rack, grinding/detailing welds, cleaning shop...I tried to not get caught at least! Teenager years I was in and out of the shop, picked up some forging techniques along the way. After high school, I was offered a full time position, took it and went to college (majored in 3d animation.) College was finished and found out the entertainment industry doesnt pay. So 8 years of full concentration on this craft and attending various classes, workshops things are coming along nicely. Most of the projects now are traditional joinery and not the fabrication jobs. From the gigs we get to the tooling we have to create to accomplish them, this is more than just "work" but something I am. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan W Posted June 1, 2008 Share Posted June 1, 2008 Got into living history F&I and War of 1812 first. Then started thinking, why pay for the day to day items, s hooks, fire irons, flint and steel strikers, etc when I could probably learn to make to make them myself.Most of my blacksmithing centers around the day to day items used by our 1812 group. I did take the beginners course at the J.C Campell folk school in Brasstown. Now I play on the forge for fun and have been smithing for about three years, and am currently helping my cousin get his first forge up and going. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Lumpkins Posted June 2, 2008 Author Share Posted June 2, 2008 Family business. It was at one time used as a form of punishment. Got in trouble, then I was stuck organizing the metal rack, grinding/detailing welds, cleaning shop...I tried to not get caught at least! Teenager years I was in and out of the shop, picked up some forging techniques along the way. After high school, I was offered a full time position, took it and went to college (majored in 3d animation.) College was finished and found out the entertainment industry doesnt pay. So 8 years of full concentration on this craft and attending various classes, workshops things are coming along nicely. Most of the projects now are traditional joinery and not the fabrication jobs. From the gigs we get to the tooling we have to create to accomplish them, this is more than just "work" but something I am. ****Great posts Guy's you all keep um coming,**** Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Finnr Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I am a member of a society that recreates the Medieval period. I got my big push to doing smithing because I'm too cheap to buy period woodworking tools. Now I do a lot more smithing than wood. Finnr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerryCarroll Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I got hooked visiting a shop in Va. near relatives back in the 50's as a kid--been practicing ever since. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KYBOY Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 (edited) Started welding when I was about 15..Most of my family were carpenters and wood workers as far as skilled labor goes. I was just drawn to metal. First time I took two pieces of metal and made one out of them I was hooked. Then around 9 years ago my proffesion changed to corrections(Prison work;)) majored in law enforcement in college. Worked for three different prison systems. Private,state and finally federal corrections.I welded for the Bureau for the first two years of my federal service.All the while still working with metal on the side too. Blacksmithing just being a natural proggresion in my metal working career. Blacksmithing is the pinnacle of metalworking in my opinion. Ive welded just about everything. Pipe,aluminum,stainless,structural..brazed and all that. I love it all but Im not sure any of compares to the feeling I get from a finished piece out of the forge. Edited June 2, 2008 by KYBOY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rthibeau Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 About 10 years ago, I was into rendevous of the F&I War period and couldn't find items I wanted readily available. One of the guys knew a blacksmith and introduced us. I had always had an idea that I wanted to try blacksmithing, so I worked for him about 3 years learning all I could and making my own stuff. It just continued on from there. Now I have my own shop so I can smith at my leisure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johannes Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 KYBOy, i'd love some of your welding knowledge!, mine is slim.. :-s Me, my greath grandfather was a 5th generation blacksmith, my grandfather learned the craft as a young man, but after WO2 never practiced it, when i was a kid he told me he was gonna teach me , since there was again a small market growing for artisanal work.. but he died of cancer before he could teach me mutch, i grew playing with wood, metal, horn .; al kinds of material, went to to university and dit a master in product design, tok some welding clases and learned how to operate a lathe, now at 26 am once again a part tilme student, doing a 2 year course to be a farrier, and practicing blacksmithing on my own, but visiting allot of smiths in the area, to learn wat ever i can, my dream is to become a full time blacksmith/farrier (in the old days those where one and the same person in the villigas around here) in 4 years from now, until then i'l keep practicing at it, and keep paying the bills with product design work, and teaching art history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 My great grandfather was the smith in a small Arkansas hill town; but I didn't find this out till years after I started smithing. I grew up with a fascination with arms and armour (remember whittling palm frond swords back when I was 11 or 12); but never thought I could make such things myself until I was encouraged by the SCA back in 1978. So I made my first maille shirt and found a copy of Weygers "The Modern Blacksmith". My first forge was set up in 1980 or 1981---I usually use 1981 as my starting date. I still have the first knife like object I forged---hidden carefully away so I don't hear it laughing at me so much...I should reforge it and call it my Twice Forged Knife and serial it 000... In 1983 the oil patch crashed and spent a year apprenticed to a professional swordmaker, Tom Maringer, 6 days a week in the shop, 2 meals a day with the family, no pay and anything I made on my own, He set the price on and took the shop cut right off the top. It was a great experience for me; but really showed me how an apprentice does not help the bottom line in a one man shop until *after* a long training period. After my year was up I got married and had to find a "real job" to support a family and gradually worked my way up to where it could support my hobby too. Lived for 15 years in Columbus OH and so had SOFA *and* really great fleamarkets in the blacksmith's happy hunting grounds. (Not to mention Pennsic and becoming part of the iron smelting team running a bloomery there). That job evaporated and now I'm out in NM with my first built from scratch smithy and save for the scarcity of good scrounge loving it. Temp in the 90's with *4%* humidity yesterday! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete46 Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Down here I use the forge to burn the humidity out of the air . I drink gatorade out of a buckett between heats !;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tompdw Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 A couple of years ago I saw a handmade knife at a flea market and it felt really great in my hand. The guy wanted $75 which I didn't have and wasn't about to pay,( It was worth it though.) I said to myself that I could build my own, Over a thousand or two dollars later I have made my own and saved the $75. I was in boy scouts as a kid and have always been facinated by sharp objects ( knives, axes) and old tools. That's my story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johannes Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Down here I use the forge to burn the humidity out of the air . I drink gatorade out of a buckett between heats ! how does it work out as a quenchant? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete46 Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Yuck Hot Gatorade , That's Just Wrong! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Like a weak brine and the stick stuff burnt on is not fun to remove.... I drink gatoraide mixed 50:50 with club soda. The fizz helps and I don't drink sodas anymore. When I lived in a more humidified region---like OK or OH it *was* nicer near the hot forge than away from it as it seemed drier. Of course we also had the definition of "Blacksmith Air Conditioning:--Step Away from the Forge" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 (edited) I grew up in Father's metal spinning and machine shop. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the ways behind the tailstock playing race car with the adjustment wheel while he spun. It was Dad's version of baby sitting. I can still feel the difference between the red, gold, silver or gray cars, how each one sounded under the tool, how the lathe vibrated how the motor worked. You can say my feel for metal was beaten into my head through my butt as a very young child. We moved from there before I was four. The attached pic is either the daylight basement or attached garage of one of the next places we lived. As you can imagine I "got" to work in Dad's shop as soon as I could get around without hurting myself too badly, about eight. I started out wiping and oiling machinery, sweeping came a little later, it was kind of dangerous for a little kid with all the cuttings on the floor. Free time was spent working for Dad and school centered around metal shop, drafting and such. I was burned out on precision work before I was 10. At about that time I was wanting to play with fire and hit things and living in S. Cal. there's no way a kid could play with fire and not get in trouble. BUT if you're blacksmithing you HAVE to play with fire so I started pretending to blacksmith. Father discouraged me from smithing, kept telling me to learn a paying trade. I still hadn't convinced him it was for fun when I was in my 40's. I still loved the feel of having my way with metal but being able to do it intuitively, by feel and eye rather than die and instrument was like cool water in the desert. After a number of years I had a fairly decent home made set up I played with occasionally. Then in 72 I moved to Alaska and left it behind, not that much to leave, no regrets. I'd lived here a few years and got a job that took me into the field for most of the year and I couldn't bring myself to drink myself into oblivion after work like a proper driller so along with reading I started playing with hot iron in the campfires. After a couple years of that I welded up a rail anvil and brought a pair of tongs, my blast was a Coleman InflateAll and a piece of pipe. Shortly after that I put the word out and a friend's neighbor, a retiring farrier, sold me my first "real" anvil a 125lb. Sodorfors #5 Sorceress and a pallet of tongs. She's still my favorite, a face so hard a file will skate so you have to be careful not to mis and hit an edge, that's probably why it's still ruler flat and virtually undamaged. There are a couple tiny chips but that's it, the previous two owners didn't even cut on the step. I've been doing smithing as a hobby with the occasional detour into a paying commission for a good 45 years now and enjoying it immensely. I basically started out pretending to be a blacksmith, had fun so I continued. After a while people started thinking I WAS a blacksmith so if I didn't want to be found out as a fraud I had to keep pretending. And here I am! Frosty Edited June 3, 2008 by Frosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ironrosefarms Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 When I was about 6 years old I sat in the pick up and watched as my dad and a couple other guys clean out my great grandpa's garage of all the "junk" metal. My great grandpa had worked as a blacksmith for a couple local mines doing all sorts of repairs of tools, chain, carts, hitches, wagons, rails, and what ever else. I have one picture of him several years after he had retired, sitting in his big overstuffed arm chair with a cigar hanging out his mouth and a long handled 5 pound sledge being held straight out level from his shoulder, he passed away a couple months later which was about 3 years before I was born. So I never seen him use the tools or hear his stories but watching my dad and three other big guys struggle while putting his old anvil into the back of my dad's truck and being told by my great grandmother that my great grandpa had moved it by himself when he brought it home was an awesome picture in a young lad's mind. I have no idea how much that old anvil weighed was but I remember it was about 3 foot long on top and that when the pointy end poked dad in the gut it makes him cuss. I also will never forget the answer I got when I asked if I could have some of those old tools... "It's nothing but old worthless junk son" Advance a few years, I and my wife was standing talking to a reenactor smith and after sharing my story with him, he offered me the hammer. I took ahold and that was my first day of learning the basics of this addicting craft. I worked at that village for several years until the man I was working with was pressured into allowing 5-6 young boys all in at once to learn how to beat on metal. They all only had one thought and that was to make a knife or sword. This in itself wouldn't be a bad thing but the shop was crowded with two people working make it 7 or 8 and it wasn't do-able... the second time a piece of hot metal came swinging and burnt my arm and caught my shirt afire I knew it was time to move on and make room for others. I had continued doing some work for a few reenactors from a couple different time periods and outfitting a new cabin with some custom cooking and fireplace items, a couple festivals and such. Mostly just just worked as I found the time. 2 years ago I was hit on my motorcycle by an SUV. Kept me from working metal (and a lot of other things) until just recently... So now I am once again working myself up to being able to work at the forge again. My wife ever encouraging me to smith, she has requested a bathroom makeover, including iron towel bars and TP roll holder etc... James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LITTLEJOHN Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 I have always hung on to things of old so to speak.I have enjoyed blackpowder hunting and studying crafts of old,I have been a welder for six years the modern equipment is great but does have limitations lose of power etc.I started driving a bus and spotted a forge sitting in someones back yard.After work I went to the house and ask the old gentleman if he was interested in selling it.I explained to him I knew nothing about blacksmithing but would like to learn.I remember the look on his face when he told me no one was interested in that stuff anymore.I told him I was and wanted to learn all I could.He told me he had been smithing for forty years and would teach me all he knew.Well that was the start he has given me a dozen books to read and shared much knowledge as well as helped me aquire the equip.needed.I have just started forging this year and wish I had time to do more but I have a lot to learn and I have been lucky to not only forge steel but a friendship with someone willing to pass on the knowledge of a trade to keep it alive.Thanks Chet! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrynjr Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 Thanks Chet! We need more Chet's around to pass the torch. My story is pretty plain, back in high school I was very into the Lord of the Rings and swords and knives like many other youngsters and had a vague interest in learning to blacksmith to make swords and knives. Other than a metal shop class where I did get to forge a chisel, I never did much about it. About 5 years ago during my divorce I found myself revisiting idea's of things I've always wanted to do but never had and discovered the blacksmithing dream was still there. I took a 3 day basic course from a well known Wa. blacksmith and discovered that I did and do still have the desire to blacksmith. I discovered though that making swords and knives are now very far down on my list and I'm more interested in ornamental ironwork and tool making. I love the idea of having the ability to make a needed tool instead of going down to the local big box hardware store and buy a mass produced questionable quality piece. I had a 2 year hiatus after that while moving and getting remarried but took a refresher course last fall and have been hitting the steel since. I hope to take an intermediate tool making class from that teacher in the fall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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