So you'd like to Blacksmith, you don't know what you want to make, what you could make, or how serious you want to be about it. Sound familiar?...
Well all i can say is "no pressure!" you should be relaxed about Blacksmithing, there's no reason to set yourself a schedule or a strict time in which you need to Smith, by doing that you'll feel like you HAVE to do it! that way you can't think and relax, and you need to relax to have good ideas.
As far as advice go's, mine would be a question, "what do you think is cool?" just think, you wander through a market place or a museum or you watch TV and you see something REALLY COOL!!! made out of metal.
well that "REALLY COOL" thing is probably what you want to make? think about it, why would you not want to make something that's "REALLY COOL"?
Another thing you might be asking your self is "can i really do that?"
Well why not?! If you don't think you can make it but you want to, then go head and try? So what if you fail, that's how you learn, whenever I make something that turns out good I can look back and see that I hardly learned anything!
but if I make mistake after mistake and in the end fail miserably (happens alot) when I calm down, (trust me you'll get angry) I can look back and see that I've learned a whole lot!
I started out knowing exactly what I wanted to make, Knives, me and my best friend growing up, all we wanted to do was make swords knives a daggers!
Our first creations where old steel pipes, that I would flatten 3 1/4 of in a vice and take an angle grinder to the tip and the flattened edge to make it sharp, we where probably about 5-6 at the time, we where obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and almost every legend of a great warrior there ever was.
Today the Turtles have been canceled (although Casey Jones is still pretty cool) and the flattened pipes have lost there charm.
I remember the first real knife we ever made, it was an old bar of low carbon steel that I had cut into the shape of a bowie and I had ground some teeth into the back, we put it in a camp fire and fanned it with a piece of foam board until it was cherry red, then we pulled it out and stuck it in a bucket of water.
It was soooo dull and soooooooo soft, I could bend it in my hands!
But it was our first knife, and we loved it, till it got twisted into a pretzel by some machine we left it by, I don't really remember, but it's in the scrap pile now and we've moved on to better things.
Later I wasn't seeing my best friend Griff as much, he had moved into junior high and I had been unschooled all my life and had no desire to go sit in a class room.
and I was dating Griffs sister Greta at the time so more of my time was spent on her then it was on him.
But we still had a passion for knives! In the cooler days of the summer Griff would Come over and we'd heat up old sections of rebar (low carbon steel) and pound it flat with the back end of a 4 pound axe on an old piece of railroad track my father had given me, and we'd sharpen them with an old bench grinder, then heat 'em up and quench 'em in water, oh yes, industry!
Soon Griff started football and so our time together was brought to a "maybe on the weekend" base, so I went out on my own! All I had was my knowledge and my experience, (witch wasn't much) I my father let me use his stick welder and I stuck a forge together out of any old pressure tank, I hooked an old electric inflatable mattress blower to it for air and I chopped wood into small chunks for fuel, it worked better then anything I had ever had! I could get my metal as hot as I wanted!
I was able to mount my Railroad track anvil to a hickory stump so I could stand while I worked and for Christmas my mother got me a 3 1/2 pound sledge hammer, everything seemed to be coming together and it wasn't long before I got some real good metal, my dad replaced the suspension on his car and I got two old coil springs, spring steel! I worked with those and got my knife making technique down! If all my tools worked I could make any hand knife I wanted!
Soon after I wanted to make a sheath for one of my knives, my mother took me to a crafts shop and I got a bag of scrap leather, I sewed my first sheath and loved it! that's where my leather working came from! since then I've been making leather work for knife and non knife related things, that's also how I got started on wood working, I made a wooden handle for a knife and loved it! I've been working with wood since then as well but mostly it's been Blacksmithing!
Well in short that's my story, since then I've gotten proper tools, a coal burning forge, and better materials, it's been a journey, but it's still only beginning. and what's happened since then and what's going to happen is really what this blogs all about!
If you have any questions please comment or feel free to Email me at craftsmanofmich@gmail.com and thanks for reading.
