After a somewhat shocking hike to the ironforge, I was greeted by Daniel and the folks. Daniel had forged a pipe accessory set (for cleaning up his pipe) and had brought some brochures and geological probes for display.
Also he had dug up some coal all by himself!
Nick and Jonas were forging a walking stick tip from spring steel.
They insisted on hot punching a fixing hole... ;-)
Dirty fire. And no, they would not listen. So I stopped telling them.
Period.
We go through 25kg of coal each Friday, with huge amounts of slag.
I am not to be made responsible for that anymore.
(Not that I were in the first place).
Katrin, our owner´s daughter came by to try a project of her own. I was very delighted to see that she had a lot of fun. She was thinking about starting a goldsmith apprenticeship once... these rae rings she ad made then. She started a ring hot-forged from 6mm stainless steel and a leaf-ring with my help.
This is the oak that our senior blacksmith had planted when she was born. And this is the reason we do what we do.
Period. ;-)
She was a bit sceptical of both my skills and her getting away unscathed by the fire... but all turned out well.... ;-) at long last...
Jonas at the forge....
..had acquired a new handle for his hammer. By the way, lot of our folks put their trust into Krenzer tools, which are produced in the immediate neighbourhood of our smithy. More:
www.krenzer-hammer.de.
They look like this, see? ;-)
Then on Saturday we did a hike to the ironforge again. It turned out the forge had to be remain cold for some time, and we joined in to take away the construction platform from the ruin part of the building, for it was needed outside. Bit of an ordeal, but my utmost respect goes to the girls, Natalie and Katrin, who really know how to work and can teach the guys a thing or two about both power and comradeship! It was a right joy to work with them, and in no time the job was done, and ere we knew we were sitting in the sun and had a sip of beer with Ewald and Gudrun, forging plans and planning what has to be done next. I really liked that. Something is moving now, and it really good to see things are happening!
Natalie and katrin were heaving and puffing..,
Hats off to Katrin, who is afraid of heights and went up the platform no less for´t. In fact, her courage encouraged myself to join in and confront my own fear of heights.
Natalie ws in command, because she is a learned painter and knows a thing or two about construction platforms.
Then we were off to the forge, and I showed Katrin the ins and outs of knifemaking with C45 wall hooks. We chose that steel because it is easy to work with for starters and you can make a decent blade from it with little effort. We carburized it a bit in the forge...
She ws a bit impatient, but to be honest, she was one of the most talented clients I ever had.
...
Fire, steel...
..and the blade that was born from it.
There´s a message in a nutshell. I daresay the other folks can make it out... ;-)
Anyway, it was hard work, but also good fun to see good things happen.
