Another weekend with Martin and the brutes;-) and dealing with morons.

(Text by Fimbulmyrk, Photos by Nick Ilgenstein)

 

 On Thursday our next-to-second-maybe-favourite-human being;-) Martin from Ireland dropped by to do some forging again. There were some schedule issues with plane and train as usual, but eventually I fetched him, and we had a nice chat how things were turning out. It was cool that we actually can continue where we stopped last time... on Friday we made for the smithy and it was quite early still.

 Everything was still calm... but that would not be for long;-) for we were not in for silence.

 A view of the smithy in the sunlight... there is still a lot of work to be done, but it´s slowly progressing. We have a lot of work to do still. It´s not helping, though, that we have issues again with some morons.

On Thursday, five hours or so before Martin arrived, I had a very unnerving phone conversation with one of the members of the club (won´t give you any names.. for now ):-/>). Now the master is severely ill and this guy insisted that we should ask him for everything we  wanted to do and that every decision had to be made at least with consulting him, including cleaning up, for Ewald had no competence in leading and would "kick the bucket" anyway and then everything would go asunder anyway so there´d be no point in doing anything. He said he´d prefer to "see the bad in anything good" and that we were not welcome, for we were "not part of the club and had no say in anything". We have a forum now (www.retzgen.de/hammer) and he insisted that it should be debranded or deleted. He also demanded that the event of the open smithy we have organized with no help by the club for April, May, June, July, August, September and October should be cancelled and no children´s birthday parties should take place before his say-so. So I contacted our master´s daughter and informed her, and she had a bit of an argument with him. In fact she nearly bit his throat out.

We had appointed a meeting with him on Friday, 4pm. Ewald´s other daughter, Tina, and his wife, Gudrun, were there to support us. Guess who did not show up?

It´s starting early this time that people want to get rid of us. But they think of us as a group of hobby smiths. But I promise, we are not.

We are an army. We are the demons they invited over the threshold. We are the ritual gone wrong.

And it´s not the first time we reacted in a manner that made people dearly regret they behaved like this. Each and everyone who mobbed us out is regretting it now. Our group´s strength has prospered by it, for we know that we will make do, and that we can rely on each other, and there will always be another place to be. Kathrin, Tina and Gudrun know this, and they begged us to stay. For them we will. We think of Ewald and his family as friends. For them, we will fight, period. But not for one moron acting out the Gestapo upon us. We are currently working out a solution that will allow us to stay in without being reliant on the club, for clubs are poison.

 I like this picture. These are Martin and Tamás at the forge, and it illustrates what our strength is. Martin is a... well:-P... more or less accomplished ;-P swordsmith from Ireland, and Tamás, at the age of ... is that 9?...from the neighbouring city is forging alongside him and stealing with his eyes. Tamás is getting bullied at school... but I daresay it won´t last that much longer. For he hangs out with the really cool people and learns early that smoking, getting drunk and taking drugs and bullying others isn´t that cool. Instead, he has already done some projects with a little help by Nick, Michael, Martin and my humble self. He learns first hand why it can come in handy to have an inkling of chemistry, metallurgy, metalwork and talking English. He sees us discussing our sketches and gets an impression what arts may be for. By the way, thanks to Nick and Michael for their patience in tutoring Tamás. This is really nice to see!

 For instance, Nick tutored Tamás in forging this miniature horseshoe.

 Of course, forging is always a grave and serious issue. It´s not a laughing matter! Especially because all laughing has to be announced to *thatspecialperson* beforehand and a form filled out.

 Martin was having a forging frenzy. He was working on the "Red Baron´s" knife (Bernd´s knife), a seax and a knife for a friend of his. Here it´s the knife for John he´s working on, a nice presumeably Haithabu-style hadseax blade.

 I was tutoring Tamás and helped him forge his first spring steel knife. While he had some trouble concentrating sometimes, he did a very great job and I daresay he has some talent! I look forward to his new ideas and would be glad to assist him. In the front there is Jan. Jan is the grandson of the master bladesmith and owner of Diefenthal knives in Solingen and he is glad to have the opportunity to keep up the family tradition.

 Currently we have one forge going, which makes work a bit stressy at times... we have to restore my old field forge and the gas forge, and get some more anvils.

Our blacksmith´s buffet set up ion the smithy. Everyone brings some snacks and morsels and tea and coffee-which was desperately needed, for, blimey it was cold!

 Forging is no fun whatsoever. It is a serious business after all. And fun has to be authorized by !THE AUTHORITY!...*ggg*, so what are you dunces about laughing? *ggg*

 Jan forging a blacksmith´s knife...

 ...and Tamás grinding his little scroll knife.

 Martin´s on fire;-)... (Hey Martin, how was the weekend? - Absolutely fantastic-I was on fire!*ggg*)

 The projects of Friday: Blacksmith´s knife by myself(spring steel), Damascus knife by myself (spring, file and crucible steel and 1045) Novgorod striker, blacksmith´s sickle, Damascus billet (spring, file, crucible steel and 1045), blacksmith´s sickle, scroll knife (spring steel), bushcraft whittler (train waggon leaf spring steel, blacksmith´s kniefe by Nick (spring steel), BBQ eating fork by Nick (super-tactical hardcore spring steel;-)) and two more spring steel blacksmith´s knives by myself.

Then it was getting dark and we got out the BBQ, had a sit-down and some delicious food and one or the other beer and chatted the night away... perfect. There also was forging on Saturday and a hike on Sunday and some more forging on Monday... but there have to remain some stories to be told on another occasion.

Martin Troy is forging damascus;-)

Last weekend Martin from Ireland came visiting to do some forging and general horsing around;-), and yeah, here´s the story;-).

Martin arrived on Thursday night, well, actually well into the night, because flight was all messed up. We had a  chat, and were off to sleep, for we wanted to be at the smithy early - for a TV film team had announced their venue. I´ll spare you the entire story, just in case, you know;-) and might do a post about all that happened if they mess up;-). On the other hand, all was good, the weather was being fine, and we were doing a lovely hike to a great place to meet some friends and forge weird stuff. Martin was planning on making a straight razor for a good friend of his, who is a hairdresser, and a San Mai Damascus for another friend and customer of his, with crucible steel we found in the local woods around my place as a cutting edge. I showed him a bit around the place, and our senior blacksmith introduced him to the tools. For the Damascus he cut up an old sawblade and we had prepared some file steel to go along with the crucible steel. In the meantime I took care of the folks and showed the TV crew around.

Michael was there and did some forging of some very ambitious projects... and I am quite astonished at his progress at the moment. He does some sophisticated projects and while sometimes he gets frustrated and is a bit eager, he does some amazing stuff!
Currently he is finishing off a Damascus boot knife and working on a project that is secret still, but knowing what he´s about, I can say I am pretty fond of it... I hope to be able to keep you posted!

 

Kai was there, too, and demonstrated his amazing skill of putting g his hands into his pockets;-) and Nick showed everyone how to burn your project properly;-), just kidding of course;-P. We exchanged some weird jokes and wicked humour as usual...

While I was showing Martin around, I found this carpenter´s axe lying around in the shed that I really wanted to share with my trusty readers;-).

You can see the offset and the forged socket-way cool, if you ask me, and one day I hope to do something like this!

Martin prepared the billet for tacking together and was off for the welding.

...while I was doing spark analysis on some steel I found in the woods. Apologies for the lousy picture, but I was doing this freehand with lousy lighting. If you look closely you can see some dark red sparks on an old chisel I found in the woods, which hint on it being alloyed with cobalt or tungsten... we´ll see how the forging will go. This is what I find exciting and challenging-making do with what you find and working the story into it!

When I do spark analysis I always use spring and file steel for comparison to evaluate the carbon content as precisely as possible. It´s not that precise, to be precise, but actually works for me... and I am not being particularily nice to my blades, so to say, ahem;-D.

Then Martin was ready for the welding and drawing out and he apparently liked our power hammer;-).

Henning dropped by and did some forging himself. Apart from being  one of the nicest guys I have met, he quite certainly has a lot of talent. He did a hardy tool from an old railroad screw and did a very great job at it. Nick lent a helping hand. While Nick might not be the best blacksmith there can possibly be and often simply refuses to listen when he is being tutored by Kai or myself, he is a very important guy to keep things running smoothly. He keeps everything together with good humour and patience, always has a big deal of empathy for everyone´s problems and does a great job with kids. And of course, he is one of my best friends.
 

Then Friedhelm and Bernd came by with a friend of theirs, Gunther the boar. Gunther was not feeling that well that day and had a laydown while Friedhelm did some first aid to dress him up for dinner;-).

...in fact, Gunther was bleeding all over the place...

...and suffered from a severe hangover;-). Kidding aside, Friedhelm, who is a hunting instructor and game warden, gave us valuable insight into the bureaucratics of hunting in Germany and dressing techniques. We learned a lot by simply watching, and toasted to the dead animal. For even if we did some wicked jokes on that, that´s not to say we had no respect. I can´t explain that to a veganist, but I daresay my trusty readers know what I mean when I say so.

There´s a difference between hunters and shooters, so to say, and Friedhelm quite certainly is one of the former variety. He simply loves his hunting ground and cares for it because he´s been growing up there and understands each and every rock in the forest. He knows and loves and therefore cares about his hunting area.

Here he explains skinning techniques. In general itr´s about the balance between cutting and working the skin loose .

Like this...

After processing this was left for Bernd, the red baron;-) to take with him.

 

Martin suffered several mishaps, unfortunately, but in general, we made do and had a ball with it. The crucible he originally brought was too brittle, but I had some left that was processed already. Then the billet burned off, but I had some Damascus billet left that he could use. Unfortunately, Bernd had ordered a hunting knife, and we were kind of eager to get all that stuff together... but when you get eager, you get problems. So the San Mai did not quite weld in. Martin, however, is not one to do it the easy way and tried a traditional Japanese technique instead of just tacking the billets together and then welding it all together. When all runs good, everything is good, but with this technique everything must be perfect and there´s no room for errors... turned out the edge steel fell out constantly, so he called it a day and made the straight razor instead from a piece of Damascus he had brought. 

It was well into the evening, when we set the BBQ and did some feasting and had a beer. It had been a great day in great company with a lot of positive energy around. It was a very intense atmosphere and I should say we all have prospered from it.

I look forward to the next sessions! It is just perfect that while having fun you can do a good job keeping something alive. I also learned a lot from Ernst, our senior blacksmith. who gave me a good tutoring on the power hammer. I always find it amazing that he can do that delicate a work with the machine, and slowly begin to realize that it might be possible. I like this last picture, by the way. It tells the story of how I see this stuff. At the moment, everything seems to be very dark everywhere. But there is a smithy lit, and the flames of the forge are roaring violently. That which cannot be mended is welded in the forge; and by doing so we slowly start learning from each other to agnize the name of steel. There are people from 8 to 77 years old at the smithy, girls and guys, Germans, Irishmen, Saami and Swedish people, and we all learn from each other and cover the ground we stand on. It makes me proud to have a part in that. It is a beginning. Not an end.