bruce wilcock

[bruce wilcock]

my name is Bruce Wilcock, 60 years old , blacksmith from school and still doing the same type of work ,masons tools and shoing ,less shoing now and more toolsmithing, i like to take the longbow out and se if the new set of arrows i have made group better than the last, wife Brenda and two lasses one lad ,the last thing i want for christmas is a anvil,
a card for the camera is more my line now, :lol:

[Mills]

How is Esme doing? Haven't heard anything of her in awhile, having a baby last I recall and that would have been several years back. We all owe her a debt of gratitude getting you online and all :)

[Shane Stegmeier]

Seeing as I come from a time and a place with less of a continious tradition of "teaching" blacksmithing;-) I am particularly interested in your training... I remember you commenting on when you were getting started many of the big shops in Sheffield were closing, and you could buy huge shop anvils (and other tools:-) for a song. An enviable position to find yourself in, especially since you were able to take advantage of the situation and get some big ones:-) But to be honest as much as I have enjoyed your stories about finding great old tools, I am really interested in how you were taught and what you were taught, and what kind of hoops you had to jump through while an apprentice in school. To my knowledge in the US the only apprentice programs are with some of the unions, and unions bear "some" resemblance to the modern guild structure, but still they lack the continuity of the 330 years of The Worshipful Company of Farriers, or the even longer history of the Blacksmiths Company. When I was learning to blacksmith twenty years ago, when I was asked to swing a hammer the concern was in the results, no training was offered on How to hold a hammer, how to swing a hammer. The emphasis was on move the metal this way, and the rest was left up to me on how to get the work out of the hammer... And to be honest while I am hammering, I am not looking at even how the hammer hits, let alone how I swung it, or how I am holding the hammer... I am paying close attention to how the metal has changed, but I have paid a price for my exuberance, and my elbows and hands bother me some... Though it is not all due to enjoying myself at the forge:-) Just wondering what a proper English apprenticeship was like??? Was your father a smith?