Broken Hammer Forge

My son has had an interest in swords and metallurgy for a few years now.  I've been looking for a class we could take together, but every guild I could find had a 16-or-older requirement.  It makes sense of course - steal doesn't like to bend below 1500F or so.  Happily, Dave Collier at Broken Hammer Forge agreed to let my son and I take his beginner course as a team. The result was a wonderful weekend and enough skills and confidence to move ahead in our at-home workshop.

The first day involves plenty of basics and practice time.  You also start to understand the dichotomy between the simple concepts and specific tool designs.  Our home forge includes an anvil (aka 2' section railroad track), simple forge, a buck of water and a couple hammers.  We learned how to use various parts of actual anvils as well as a variety of hammers and a few critical tools.

By far, the most enjoyable part was building our own pair of tongs for the final project.  In retrospect, it makes total sense, but prior to a weekend in Dave's shop, it hadn't occurred to me that I might need something with which to pick up the glowing orange pieces of steel.  It took about 3 hours, and probably don't look like much, but these tongs will get some use in the near future.

In addition to the tongs, we ended up with a variety of practice pieces.  At the top right are a couple practice nails we made.  Next to them is a piece on which we practiced rounding (square stock), shoulders (moving mass), and twisting.  I turned the bottom piece in a ginormous fish hook, and the last piece is actually a usable hook. We used bees wax and brass to protect a couple of the pieces.

I hope we can make it back for an intermediate course next year.