Day 1

Once upon a time, Glib Emeritus A Leap at the Wheel described the process of attaching a handle to a hidden tang knife. I imitated his example and attached scales to a wider tanged letter opener, only to realize the tang was still too narrow for a grip and boxed it in. But one thing still bugged me. I wanted to make the metal part too.

My house is unsuitable for building a forge unless I undertake major renovations I can’t afford and which the city would doubtlessly meddle in. Besides, I knew just enough to know I didn’t know what I was doing. So I decided my best bet was to find a professional instructor and learn from them. I found a metalworking school in New England that primarily was a vocational school for welders but had programs in blacksmithing and bladesmithing as well. These latter two programs were just a series of classes that anyone willing to pay could enroll in provided there was space. Each student needed a forge, so there were only eight spots per class. I chose a winter session because fire is hot and a forge in summer would be brutal.

Being unsure of the skill level required to attend the actual bladesmithing class, I started with a basic blacksmithing course. Learning things like managing a coal forge, the ergonomics of swinging a hammer, and how to move metal all sounded like they would come in handy for the later class. Besides, I desperately needed a break from the day job where I had nothing to show for all my stress and effort.

So, taking all my hotel loyalty points from my various road trips, I booked a room and set off for Maine. I found waiting for me a place to move metal.

The Work Site

The instructor, despite being a semiprofessional blacksmith whose day job was running a school of metalwork and teaching blacksmithing courses, didn’t look the part. I thought he looked like a mix of Sam Waterston and Brent Spiner, not exactly the bulkiest of individuals. He swung the hammer southpaw, and moved metal like it was clay. The class structure was not complicated, he would demonstrate the process we were expected to duplicate, discussing any particulars, or caveats along the way, then we would go back to our stations and try it. Most of each eight hour day wast spent at the forges dealing with fire and steel. The students were practically a convention of deplorables ranging from homesteaders, to industrial mechanics, to custom furniture carpenters to, well, me. I was the only student with an office job, but they all understood why I would want to get away from that place and do something productive. Even without too many details.

Because they were easier to manage, on the first day we worked in propane forges. The big problem with the propane forges is that they have a very oxidizing atmosphere and where they didn’t leave heavy forge scale, there was red rust. The projects on day one were as basic as they came: J-hooks, an S-hook, nails, and a bottle opener. I failed to complete the S-Hook on day one because of one nagging problem that would plague me for several days – I have trouble setting tapers. To make a hook, we would set a taper, curl the end up tight to make the tip round, then bend the hook in the opposite direction of the curl. But when you’re slow to set the taper, the process bogs down. I was also awful at setting the shoulder to define the area to be flattened into a tab on the J-Hooks where a hole could be drilled to mount it on the wall.

Not a very auspicious start, but I had honestly rarely been called upon to even swing a hammer. Sometime on day two, the instructor did go over the ergonomics over how you’re supposed to swing at an anvil to minimize injury to yourself, and I eventually got the hang of it… around day four.

Working the nails taught me that my initial problem setting shoulders had a component that wasn’t the fault of my hammer swing. The edge of my anvil had a differential radius along its length. At the side opposite the horn, the corners were rather well defined and not quite sharp. The closer you got to the horn, the more rounded they became, until having a radius of about a quarter inch just before the base of the horn. Setting the shoulder on a broad radius edge makes for a very poor definition that makes it harder to lock it against the corner of the anvil for further strikes.

At the very least, by the end of day one, I had made a nail that was straight, properly tapered, and had a flat head.

Below that nail is the Sinister Smithing Glove. It belongs to the school, and I left it behind.

Of course, that wasn’t all I did, but by gosh, I had gotten something right! Of the other three I made that day, one was awful, one was meh, and one the instructor straightened. That was the big flaw in his instructional style. Sometimes in one on one discussion, he’d both show and tell you how to fix something, and leave you without the problem to fix yourself. Anyway, At the end of the first day, I had quite an assortment of steel bits and bobs, and was quite pleased with myself, despite how janky the arm on the bottle opener looked.

Note the rust.

Day 2

After the first day, the gas forges were removed. So the first thing we learned on day two was how to clean a coal forge, and then how to light it and get the coal going. Burning coal leaves behind two waste products in the fire pit – ash and clinker. Clinker is largely silica, and is of no use to us in the class. The ash isn’t mostly silica, and is also of no use to us in the class. So the first step was to separate out any coke and coal that was still burnable from these waste products. Then dump the waste into the ash can under the forge. Then we would have to light it.

Now, coal isn’t the most enthusiastic of fuels. It burns grudgingly at higher temperatures. To get it started we need an existing heat source. There are options, but because the ventilation system in the forge could carry off small woodland creatures (according to the instructor at least), we used charcoal. Getting the charcoal going with a butane torch until it produced embers along the edge, we’d give it air, then load the coke on top. It was important to not put the coal directly on the charcoal, because coke burns directly, while coal outgasses and converts to coke first. This process would suffocate the fire before it got started. With the coke burning from the charcoal heat, the raw coal would go on the back corner to start outgassing, and the coal gas itself would catch light. This merry fire would convert the raw coal into more coke that we could keep burning. It did require plenty of attention to the air flow, both from the forced air system and within the fuel itself. Coal in the process of turning into coke will clump together in big lumps that block airflow. You need to break these up on the regular.

It’s too hot to handle, too cold to fold.

We had a staging area for coal next to the fire pit where we could rake or shovel more on as needed, or move stuff out of the fire to cool down and/or go out as required. The forced air system controls were all by my knees as the fans were under the table. It may not look it, but the fire in the example image above is too cold for forging. The gates are closed on the forced air, so it’s just burning ambient atmosphere. Because of how reluctant coal is to burn, I never once saw a fire escape into the staging area. Besides, the outgassing of gray-green smoke before it catches light is obvious, so it’s easy to catch a problem before it spreads.

As for the projects on day two… I hated day two for much of it. We started with a warm-up which would be a staple of the remaining three days. That is, work on whatever project was at hand to get into the swing of things. I made another nail, and I finished the darn S-Hook from day 1. Observant Glibs might have noticed in the picture of Day 1’s work product some pieces had a twist in them that I hadn’t mentioned. Twisting was something I found to be relatively easy, though other members of the class struggled despite being better at the hammer work than I. In the S-Hook, I made a twist that changed direction. That proved a bit of a pain, so on other items I stuck with a unidirectional twist.

Well, the big project of day two was one that caused me so much consternation. It was a barbecuing implement known as a Texas Nose-Pick. Starting from twelve inch square stock, we were supposed to take half of it and draw it out into a twelve inch taper. The other half we were supposed to flatten, then set a shoulder and draw out part of that into a different taper, turn it into a loop for hanging the tool. Then we were to twist the flat into a handle, and finally put a few precise bends in the tip of the long taper to form the working end of the tool. This working end had a handedness, so the direction of the second bend was vital.

Until day four, I was not able to set a taper readily.

This means that to set the twelve inch taper, I was expending a lot of effort, much of it wasted because I was hammering past where the strikes would be effective. As my arm got tired, it got worse because that meant my strikes carried less force, and the range of temperature where they were moving metal was shrinking. And the thinner the metal grew, the faster it cooled, meaning I spent a lot of time wearing my arm out further futilely hitting a hammer on steel that wouldn’t move. I was downright angry by the time we broke for lunch because I felt my poor physical shape was the only culprit. This was only partly true. It was also my ignorance of how steel behaves at particular temperatures. My taper topped out at ten and three-quarters inches, a full inch and a quarter below target. But I had to move on. I was no happier flattening the other half, for the exact same problems with the taper.

But when I finally got the preforge done, I was more than ready to move on. A preforge is a shaping operation to set up the next operation. Steel is almost never already in a shape you want it to be in for the final forming. Anyway, the hook and the twist were operations I had no trouble with, having mastered them on day one. So after a lot of wasted energy, and some productive energy, I hung the thing on the coat hook.

It’s Grilling Time

The last few hours of day two were spent spreading metal to make leaves.

I utterly and completely failed at this.

I would not manage to spread metal to anything resembling a broad leaf shape until day four. I did manage to spread the handle of the janky bottle opener from day one into a fish tail which complemented the texturing I applied to the grip. Once I twisted it, I was convinced it looked like a skinny anglerfish. At least, that’s what I’m going with.

Day 3

We had a number of operations on the lesson plan for day three. We started with upsetting, which is the process of striking the end of a piece of metal to make it thicker and shorter. We did this to put enough mass in one spot to make a sphere on the end of the stock before bending it into a coat hook and putting a leaf design on the other end. I had to stop before I got to a sphere because the neck had started to crack and more work would just cause it to pop off. This was a very real possibility, as one of my failed leaf attempts did pop off when I was working on tapering the stem and flew halfway to the power hammer.

We didn’t get to use the power hammers. Big Blu was silent all week.

Once the coat hooks were forged, we moved on to door handles. The new procedure here was opposing shoulders. Humans have opposing shoulders, they sit on opposite sides of their body from each other. Setting this in steel can be tricky. I had more trouble with the taper behind the shoulder, and ended up burning off one of the ends of my door handle. I cut it off and curled up that end to leave me with a door handle that only attached at the top. Not complete success, but I made something of what I had.

We moved on to cutting and punching. We were tasked with splitting the end of a piece of flat stock into two branches that we were to do something decorative with, then punch two mounting holes below that and make another coat hook out of the bottom. This operation… was frustrating. It was easier if you could apply more force. Even at heat, a good, strong strike was required, and a good number of them. There was time left at the end of the day, so the instructor demonstrated a technique not normally in the beginner curriculum, drifting. It wasn’t that far off what we’d done, just punch a hole or slot into steel then widen it with a tapered tool.

I took a route that I expected to fail, grabbing smaller stock than the others were working on, punching a hole instead of a slot, and trying to drift that. My first hole was so off-center that I couldn’t drift it very far before it threatened to split the side of the stock. While I was staring at the piece in consternation, the instructor did ask the important question – “Does it have another end?” Since I’d only put one hole in the steel thusfar, I understood what he meant, turned it around and started over with the other end. This time, the hole was still off-center, but close enough that I could get the hole drifted large enough to fit on the tip of the anvil’s horn. Why is that good news? Because there I could selectively adjust the shape and thickness of the ring by only hammering on the steel where it was thicker. Drifting pushes in all directions, so the thin areas stretch more. Once I was on the horn, it moved where the hammer landed. Thus I was able to even out the ring, and turned it into a bottle opener with a lanyard hole in the handle.

I don’t need so many bottle openers.

I was starting to get the hang of it all, and I was hurting less after each day.

Day 4

Our last day of classes. We only had one technique left, and it was a doozy – Forge Welding. I was not alone among the students expecting this to be the hardest of the lot. It was, and it wasn’t.

Steel actually wants to stick to steel. The biggest problem is that when exposed to air, especially in heat, steel mixes with oxygen and you get either forge scale or rust. These are not very strong and will ruin the weld if they’re in it. Physically removing these will not guarantee you will be able to prevent more from forming. That requires an atmosphere in the forge perfectly neutral between reducing and oxidizing, and a hammer blow almost before it touches regular air again. Your time frame for that is so narrow that it takes someone with the skill and experience of our instructor to pull it off. No beginner could ever hope to do so.

Thankfully, most forge welding is done with the assistance of flux. The composition of flux varies by tradition and technological level, but the purpose is to chemically break down the oxides into a form that is driven out of the weld gap when the hammer strikes. We used borax. You had to apply it at orange heat so what the moisture in the product didn’t interfere with its adhesion to the surface of the steel. It would melt into a texture that visually resembled a glaze on the surface. Once in the forge, we had to bring it up to a bright yellow heat, just shy of burning.

Yes, you can burn steel in a coal forge. I kept calling that temperature ‘sparkling’ because you got a spray of bright yellow sparks raining off the metal like a sparkler. This is bad. You’ve ruined the material. It might just be the surface, or it might not, but you’ve also gotten it to a temperature where the crystal grains inside the steel grow too large and it gets brittle. There is no fixing that in the forge. It’s scrap metal fit only for the foundry. Cut it off and try again.

Anyway, for welding, if you flirt with burning but keep shy of it, you can pull it out and create the largest burn hazard in the class. You see, all that hot flux and oxide slurry within the gap between the pieces you want to weld has to get out of there. You drive it out with a hammer blow. When you do, you send yellow-hot slurry flying in all directions. So the protocol was to call out “Welding!” before that hammer blow. And I’ve been struck by the sparks flying out from two forges over when our industrial mechanic friend set one of his welds. Thankfully I’d grabbed a leather apron when the burn hazard was discussed, so I was unhurt.

You would then re-flux at orange and get it back in the fire before it cooled too much. Maintaining heat over time improved the weld, so letting it cool was only done when checking the weld. The key indicator is differential cooling. If the two sides changed color at the same time while cooling, the weld was good. If one darkened faster, the weld was bad.

We learned three different welds whose names escape me, but whose processes do not. You see, I was actually very good at forge welding. The reason was that it was all about process and managing temperature. You didn’t need heavy-handed hammer blows, in fact, you wanted lighter strikes on the first few rounds of forging. So my less stout arm was not a handicap at getting the technique down. And yes, we made chain. When the instructor said that chain was traditionally made in sets of three, I switched from a two-link chain as my goal to a three-link. The reason chain was made in links of three was simple – Apprentices would made individual links all day long, filling up barrels with unconnected links. The next guy up would then make links connecting pairs of those. These short chains would get passed up to the guys with more experience wrangling longer chain. And sooner or later you got to the finisher to linked all the sub-chains together.

While I probably only rate apprentice in skill, I still had a goal to have interlocked links of chain, so I made a length of three. Just to honor tradition.

And that was it. By lunchtime, we were done with the techniques. Afternoon on day four was free for whatever projects we wanted. Several of us made spoons. I had set out to do so since day two after one of my failed leaves ended up resembling a spoon more than a leaf. That one was the one that flew off while I was working. What I hadn’t mentioned was that it flew off on day four while I was working to turn the rest of the stock into a handle. Like with the second bottle opener, I ended up having to turn the stock around and spreading the other end to make the head of the spoon. The original neck was already heavily tapered, so I curled it into a decorative end.

Fine welds, and my apprentice piece.

So on day four, I made yet another bottle opener (the first forge welding project), a flat-head screwdriver (the second welding project), a length of chain, a spoon, and a doodle in steel I’m calling a snake.

So, in the end, I had a decent collection of ironmongery, and my smithing glove had turned quite dingy.

I’m not kidding about the smithing glove. On day one I blistered the palm of my hammer hand, so the instructor recommended finding either a batting glove or a golf glove, as these were designed for use with a closed fist and wouldn’t impede dexterity while protecting my hand from the friction. I also went and superglued the sore and covered it with a band-aid to prevent it getting worse even under the glove. Anyway, here’s the collection:

The Dexter Smithing Glove belongs to me.

In all, I rather enjoyed myself, once I got over the bouts of frustration at my tiredness when lifting the hammer felt darn near impossible. But still, I learned a great deal, made actual functional items, and most importantly of all, found out that I could actually make it through a week of hammering. To be honest, I think I swung a hammer more in those four days than in the rest of my life up to that point.

I am enrolled in the bladesmithing class later this month, and will have another update on the arts of moving steel after that.