I had the opportunity to go to a blacksmith basics class yesterday at Trackers Earth. My kid goes to the summer camps and my friend Dan is a supervisor/guild leader type guy there.
I've done some work in the arena a few times before in my life - I worked at a few metal shops that would do light smith work like decorative vine work in bronze and wrought iron. I also did some knife and blade smithing in the SCA in the 90s as well as a week of it in 8th grade metal and plastics shop at Lewis Jr. High School in the mid 80s. I would not say that constitutes "experience" though.
I want to be more experienced so I took the class. It's also a prerequisite for Trackers' knife smithing class which I want to take next.
The instructor's name is Matt, he is also the one that taught the kid's smithing camp last summer that my kid went too. He started the class by laying down the basics of safety and showed us how to first taper, then draw, then scroll. Our first project was an S hook.
My next project was advanced for my level - a spoon.
The handle came out as I envisioned it but dishing the spoon out was a pain in the ass.
Next I decided to make a bottle opener which, while ascetically beautiful, was not very useful. I need to take a file to it to shorten up the hook a bit to better fit under the lip of a bottle cap and lock up so the leverage can do it's part.
I had 2 hours left at the end of the class to make whatever I wanted to make. I decided to try my hand at a ringed straight cloak pin like this:
I barely got close but it was a great learning experience and many of the skills I learned were in that project.
No comments:
Post a Comment