We had a chance to hold a continuing education class this last week. One of my Students from about 4 years ago got ahold of me last week and asked to come take a refresher and an intermediate or next level class. John came to our shop for the beginning class from his home of Spokane, Washington. After his first class with us he went home and built his own Smithy. He added tools and a home built forge over time. He is now a full fledged member of ABANA and the Northwest Blacksmith Association.

John wanted to back up his experience, work on his chops and get some new instruction on traditional joinery. He and his wife came out to Portland on Monday and class started early Tuesday.  We decided to create the class around some practice hammer work, refresh on technique and basics and then we settled into some scroll work, mortise and tennon joinery and hot rivet work.  I came up with a few projects for John to work on during his three days here at the forge.  We ran through a few studies in castle door nails, hooks, scrolls and various hammer textures.

John after completing his shop sign hanger for his Smithy.

We combined several features to create a wall mounted sign hanger.  The kind you’d hang your shingle on.  The features included, random hammer marks with a scalloped edge; fish tail scrolls; hot puching the rivet holes, creating tendril shaped hooks for the sign; adding an arrowhead terminal to the front. Here are a few of the pictures from class.

Finished product

This turned out to be a fun and good project to compose all these ideas. At the basic level it teaches you how to think ahead in the construction your iron art. What are the stages that you need to complete first before you can move on? Scroll first or rivet?  Texture or punch the holes?  These types of classes are fun for me because I have to learn all over again or remind myself of what I do all the time. Its great to see these ideas fresh from a students perspective.

This is the tendril hook that the sign will hang from. It is set up with a tenon and bradded over to secure it to the frame. After we finished this one and sat back to admire it we noticed that we put it on the wrong side!  Oh well, cut it free and try it again.  Keeps me on my toes!

I really enjoy classes like this because the student who wants to further their knowledge and skills is eager to try new things and experiment a little. Or perhaps to leave a comfort zone for new areas.  In a class like this we can discover the myriad of  projects that these techniques can be applied to.  Gates, rails, fire place screen, etc.

A little clean up with the wire wheel.

Thanks John for the chance to show some of the information I have learned over time and to be able to learn again myself.

If you’d like to know more about the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America or the Northwest Blacksmith Association, please check out our links page.

Black anvil rings its thunderous applause. Sparks shower the curtain’s drop. Hammers sing in melodious tones of staccato breath.  Geese fly. Leaves gently blow. Roses bloom. Tendrils twist and curl around gates closing tight. Fire secluded behind art’s fierce grip.  Life is hammered  into another living soul.

Daniel Klug

The new door and hinge plates at the Lone Fir Cemetery

We went to the cemetery today to witness the hanging of a door.  This is a piece of work we accomplished with a fantastic wood worker named Mike Adeen for the friends of Lone Fir Cemetery in central Portland.  This is Portland’s first cemetery and to be a part of it’s history with our work is really a great and wondrous feeling.  When you walk through a place and see memorials that are over a 100 year time period and you think to yourself I am witness to the first day of this new memorial that can be here for the next 100 years is pretty daunting and awesome. What I have come to realize about our work is that it is not just for some house wife to enjoy or impress her friends, but that what we make will be around longer than I will. It, like all our works,  has become our piece of immortality.   This is Public Art without having to go through a selection committee.  Without having to sell oneself  under a pitiful means.  No selling to the lowest common denominator or just to make a buck.  What you’ve produced will be there for the public to enjoy – and I encourage you all to go see this place- as a testament to a trade and a skill and a craft.

The new reident moves in.

So I am giving a workshop at the National Oregon Trail Interpretive center in Baker City, Oregon on the 12th and 13th of September.  I am going to be teaching the basic class in coal fired forge work with the emphasis on the time period of the overland migration. I hope we have lots of folks sign up and I’d like to do this on a regular basis.  I am trying to help them with building a working smithy at the site of the center.  It is hoped that we can teach there and bring folks in from around the area who are interested as well as federal staff from other centers around the nation.

I am attempting the next installment for the blog.  I am off right now to pre-fit an interior hand rail and then back here to the smithy to work on Karla’s gate.  I am also saddened by the news of the death of a close friend yesterday.  Cloudy day today seems to fit my mood.

Cheers,

Dan