I made tools

I’ve wondered a great deal what blacksmithing would be like previous to taking this four day workshop with Old West Forge. I no longer have to wonder. Tim Middaugh is great, he actually lets us make stuff.

There are five of us in the class, a man from Portland, a woman from Spokane, a couple from Darrington and me.
On our very first day, we took mild steel stock and made a drift, two bending forks, and started practicing rolling eyes. (It’s really what they’re called–the circle at the end of a bar of steel–and I did a lot of eye-rolling trying to make them, too.) Okay okay, our teacher made the one pictured here.

We also hammered away at tool steel. To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, here’s a picture of the mild steel and tool steel in its bar state:

And here’s what I made (yes, Tim helped) by the end of the day:

To the uninitiated, that’s a 1/2-inch and a 3/8-inch bending fork, a fuller, a hot cutter, a 3/8-inch punch, a walking chisel, and a drift. Tomorrow, bright and early, we’re supposed to use all these tools to make other stuff, starting with punching a rivet hole.

Here’s to roaring forges and banging and pounding and grinding and sparks flying and metal in various shades: shiny silver to yellow-orange to cherry red to blue to straw. Tim taught us about the SOR method of hammering (Square, Octagonal, Round). Add an E and you’ve got SORE, as in Egads my forearm is killing me. Think of me at dawn, as I head up to the forge for another go.