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.