Medieval Fair is coming up,

and thinking about that made me think about smithing, and how I got started in this mess.

Partly I was always fascinated with the idea of actually making things. And then I found out my grandfather on Dad's side had been a smith for many years, and his father. Which brought that specific way of making things very much into my mind. No idea what to do about it, but it was a wonderful thought. Then I got a taste of doing it.

Back when, Dad was working part-time at a local salvage yard to pull in some extra money. Once day, after I'd said something about wanting to try forging, he brought home a round, bowl-shaped piece of cast iron with a smaller bowl in the bottom which had a hole in the side for grease. He thought it was some kind of cover for a shaft end on some machinery, and it ought to work for a forge bowl. So we propped it up on some bricks, took the refrigerator compressor he had from somewhere(I don't remember what he'd used it for) and ran the output line into the grease hole, broke up some charcoal briquets and lit it off. Not much air flow, but enough to get small pieces hot.

Understand, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and Dad didn't know much; by the time he was born Grandpa had started working at a different job and didn't do much forging anymore. No books, either. So I just fooled around with it, burning up more charcoal than was really affordable, with the only real product I remember being a small javelin head I made out of a screwdriver shaft.

A little while after that we moved, and it was years before I had the chance or inclination to try it again. By that time I was grown(physically, at least), married and had- if anything- even less money free for crap like that. Then-wife and I were playing around in the SCA(had been when we met, so that was nothing new) and a guy we knew was interested in smithing, too. And he had the money and time to collect tools and had put a forge together. So when opportunity allowed I'd go over to his girlfriend's house(his stuff was in the yard) and we'd hammer on things. And by that time there were actually some books out on the subject, and from looking at objects in history and craft books we figured out some things, and it went from there.

I wound up with my own forge, made of some steel framing holding a cast iron sink; I cut a hole in the bottom and set in a brake drum for a firepot, and rigged up a squirrel-cage blower to that. And I actually started getting good at it.

The feeling of figuring out how to make something correctly, and then creating it... it's wonderful. And amazing. The first time of making something, or figuring out a way to make something better(in both senses), it's just indescribable. The first time I hardened and tempered a blade, and it WORKED! The first time I actually forge-welded two pieced together and they didn't fall apart under stress!

Another part of that is taking some rusty scrap you picked up off the street, or from a salvage yard, and making something. Then you wire-brush it, and oil it or polish it or however you finished it off. And you display it and people say "Oh my God, that's wonderful! How can you do that?!?" It's actually kind of addictive.

My favorite thing to make is blades. Knives, chisels, axes, swords. Taking some spring steel and making a chef's knife that holds an edge better than anything the owner had ever had before. Making a chandelier for either candles or oil lamps that you find out has the place of honor in someone's home. It makes you want to make more, and better. I started making pattern-welded blades- also called 'damascus'- because I just had to do it myself. And then you can manipulate the pattern in the blade.

And tools. Need an oddball wrench? A punch? Odd-shaped or sized screwdriver? Light the fire and make it. Need a specially-shaped hammer? You can make it. A spring you can't find a replacement for? Tricky at times, but you can create it.

There is just no other feeling like it.

That's one reason- other than the general- that I bitch about my hands and elbow and shoulder. I flat cannot work like I used to, and I miss it.

But, to quote somebody, "I'm not dead yet!" So I still fire the forge and hammer when I can work it..

Damn, I wish there were blacksmith groupies.