The Forgery

I tried my hand at working with copper for the first time, making some roses for my wife and mom for Mother’s Day.  Overall, I really enjoyed working with it.  It’s quite amazing how soft it is when annealed, and how quickly it work hardens.

I was going to try my hand at ‘flame painting’ the copper once the roses were made, but I ran out of time (my forge is set-up outdoors, and I had a few weather delays).   Nevertheless, I liked the way they looked as-is.

The stems and calyx (the pointy bit underneath the flower) are both made of mild steel, and the petals were 18 gauge sheet copper.   The copper was actually quite hard to come by – I thought for sure that Metal Supermarkets would have some, but they only had a few small pieces kicking around in their dead-stock rack.  And boy oh boy, is it expensive stuff!

For my wife - hidden in a bouquet of other roses

For my Mom - tucked into a rose plant in her garden

This afternoon was the inaugural sparking of my new forge!

I was so busy forging, that I forgot to take any pictures until afterwards.  Guess I’m not much of a blogger, eh?  But this was the set-up.  I’ve got a sturdy steel work table that I put the crane rail on.  The table already has a heavy vise (as I don’t have a post vise yet, it’ll have to do for now) mounted to it.  I put my tools (hammers, tongs, punches & chisels) on the shelf underneath.

I burned hardwood lump charcoal as the fuel for the forge.  It was good & hot, with little to no smoke, but the sparks (a.k.a. “fire fleas”) were intense.

To get the forge ready, I had to make a new cover for the ash dump.  I just cut a piece of 18 gauge sheet steel to fit.  The blower needed a new belt.  I was able to make one from a 60″ leather belt.  Beyond that, a light wire brushing to get off the worst of the rust and I was in business.

… yes, I said a 60″ leather belt, as in to hold up your pants.  Apparently they do make them that large.  The guy at the store where I found it (a small shop in the mall that repairs shoes, sells belts, wallets, etc) said that in all his years, he’s only sold 2 – and that I didn’t look anything like the first guy.

Despite tightening up all of the fasteners on the legs & bracing, the forge still has an annoying wobble.  Will have to take the time to look into what’s causing that.

To mark the occasion, we made a family day out of it.  My wife, kids and parents all came over to watch me do a bit of smithing.  Made my mom a bunch of drive hooks for using in her garden.  We had a small picnic dinner afterwards.

Now, I know some smiths may think this sacrilege, however …

When I was done barbequeing steel for the day, the forge had a nice hot bed of coals in it (I’d been using plain old hardwood charcoal don’t forget).  So rather than firing up the BBQ, I threw a grate over the forge pan and cooked up some “Forge Dogs” for the kids.  Don’t think I’ll make a habit of it, but my son in particular, thought that was just great.

… Forge Dogs.  If anyone actually reads this site, I’ll take a bit of ribbing over that one for sure.

What on earth would possess someone, in this day and age, to go into blacksmithing?

That is one heck of a good question, which I often ask myself…

As mentioned on the welcome page of this site – I felt my life was being wasted sitting at a desk, doing unimportant things.  Not that I like to ‘toot my own horn’, but I’m actually a pretty smart guy.  I excel at most things that I’ve tried, learn new things easily, enjoy learning new things, and love working with my hands.

My interest in blacksmithing started many years ago.  After my grandfather passed away, I took an interest in the family tree research he’d done.  That led me to starting an Ancestry.com account to further his research.  If you haven’t looked into your own family’s history, you should.  It’s fascinating.  It’s also quite amazing to look back multiple generations, and still be able to recognize the faces in those old photos as your family.  To see a certain ‘look’ that your 2 year old son has, in the photo of your great-grand uncle that you never met.

In any case, back to the topic at hand … While doing this family tree research, I started looking at old census records, which list a persons occupation.  My family, going back many generations, were farmers, miners, shipyard workers and blacksmiths.

Farming – well, unless you inherit land, nobody just ‘starts’ farming.  Mining – I’m clostrophobic, so that’s out.  Ship building – not much of that going on around here.  Blacksmithing, eh?  Sounds interesting….

I love working with my hands, using tools and making things.  Metalwork does seem to have that level of permanence that I’m looking for (a gate or railing should outlast a PowerPoint presentation), and will give my kids something to point to and say “my dad made that“.

Sounded right up my alley, so to speak.  But the biggest questions remain: is the work important, and can someone make a living at it?  I believe so, on both counts.

Most smiths get into the craft as a hobby, as I have, but there are quite a few who have been able to do it as their full-time gig.  Success is by no means assured, but it is possible.

Is the work important?  Yes, it is!  I personally want to get into conservation / restoration, which I believe is very important work.  But in a larger, more philosophical sense, I believe that it’s vitally important for our society to keep skilled, hands-on craft work alive, and to teach it to our children.  Far too many of the current generation lack even the most basic knowledge of how to build and fix things, or how to use tools.

Well that was a bit more long-winded of an explanation than I intended….

Your first question may be “why ‘The Forgery‘, doesn’t a blacksmith work in a ‘smithy’?”.

The answer, of course, is yes.  The workshop of a blacksmith has traditionally been called a smithy.  However, I really, really don’t like that term.  I’m not sure why, but it irks me for some reason.

So when it came time to choose a domain name for this site, I had to think of something different.  A lot of smiths use ‘The Something-or-Other Forge’ (i.e. Great Oak Forge, Running Deer Forge, or whatever).  That’s fine, but I couldn’t think of an appropriate Something-or-Other that seemed to fit, and that was available.

Others use ‘Something-or-Other Ironworks‘.  Again, the same problem as above.  ‘Ironworks’ also seems a bit too industrial / large-scale for what I’ll be doing.  And besides that, such names are all too often used by fabricators, not just by smiths.

For the longest time, I just couldn’t think of anything – and then ‘The Forgery’ just popped in my head one day, and I liked it.  I think it’s a bit of a whimsical play on words.  My long term goals also include doing restoration work, and doing replicas of period hardware.  If I do end up doing that type of work, perhaps I can market my reproductions as “Authentic Forgeries“.

What do you think?