With bellows, anvil and hammer, try blacksmithing at Red Mill Museum in Clinton

Red Mill Museum Village instructor David Ennis, center, boosts temperatures in the forge fire pot to near 2,900 degrees Farenheit, while student Nelly Fokken and reporter Warren Cooper wait until their wrought iron rods get ‘dazzling white.’ The pair spent three hours learning about blacksmithing and swinging a hammer at hot metal in the museum’s forge to create decorative hooks in a test of the museum’s new blacksmithing classes, set to start next spring.

CLINTON — Anyone who has ever wondered how poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s village blacksmith managed it can take a turn with bellows, hammer and anvil next spring at the Red Mill Museum Village.
The instructor is David Ennis of Alexandria Township, a semi-retired real estate broker. Ennis began learning the smith’s art and craft four years ago at Peter’s Valley Craft Center in Sussex County. He’s since been an artist in residence at Peter’s Valley, where one of his weather vanes adorns a building.
Nelly Fokken, a Clinton Township resident who serves as a tour guide at the museum, is at the Red Mill forge on Saturday to “try out” the Day 1 instruction.
Ennis hands Fokken a heavy leather apron, which blacksmiths once wore, and plastic safety glasses, which they idn’t. .
Ennis creates an updraft in the chimney then fills the firepot with yesterday’s coke, the remains of soft bituminous coal that has had its volatile organic chemicals burned away. He sprinkles a little water on the coke and heaps on bits of fresh coal. Above a thousand degrees or so, the coke forms a shell that traps heat, allowing for temperatures inside to grow hot enough to soften metal. Ennis banks and rebanks the coal, piling it over the glowing coke.

Ennis shows Fokken the proper technique, holding the round rod at an angle to the flat top of the anvil then squaring it, rotating in quarter turns under the hammer.
As the coke burns, it leaves behind a metal residue called “clink,” for the sound it makes. Heavier than the coke, it robs the forge of heat. Ennis turns a crank at the bottom of the fire pot to let the clink drop into an ash can below. Increase the air flow and the temperature climbs from 1,195° F, to 2,700°F, heating the metal from “dull cherry red” to “dazzling white.” In the dark blacksmith shop, the color of the metal tells the smith how hot it is.
Too cold and the hammer has no effect. Too hot and the metal can actually burn up. When it’s just right, Ennis says, the metal “moves like modeling clay.”
Fokken pushes a 3-foot long half-inch diameter iron rod into the glowing center of the forge and, after a moment, draws it out. “More air, more air,” says Ennis. “Let it soak.”
The fire grows to a low howl. A moment later, the tip of the rod glows yellow-white.
Fokken sets it on the anvil and begins beating the glowing end with a two-pound hammer.
The anvil is a massive presence in the forge, this one weighing 337 pounds. Its shape hasn’t changed since medieval times, Ennis says. The smith’s two-pound hammer can spring back from its surface with enough speed and force to strike a distracted smith in the forehead and kill him, Ennis says.
Ennis grips the searing metal rod with tongs after scouring it and bending it at right angle to break the emerging hook from the rest of the rod. Out of sight to his right is the ‘plunge bucket,’ a half-barrel of water used to cool the metal down. Spring blacksmithing sessions can be booked now, as holiday presents. The Red Mill plans eight-hour, hands-on weekend seminars.
Fokken is concentrating hard, squaring the tube and drawing the metal out of itself with repeated blows. Thinning and rounding, thinning and rounding, each time returning to the forge to bring up the heat. The tip is soon a point, which Fokken curls back on itself, then plunges into a wooden half-barrel of water, the “quench bucket,” to cool just the last inch. Then back into the fire it goes. When the next few inches glow, she pulls the rod out and bends it around the horn of the anvil. After a plunge into the quench bucket and a spell in the coke fire, the next few inches become glowingly malleability. Fokken holds the rod with tongs, scores the glowing section with heavy blows then twists it until it parts.
She reheats that end, pounds it thin, pierces it with punch and, voila! She’s made her first hook.
Spring blacksmithing sessions can be booked now, as holiday presents. Call 908-735-4101 for details. The museum plans eight-hour, hands-on weekend seminars.

By nj.com

The iconic image of the village blacksmith pounding out plowshares is part of American lore. Many don’t realize, however, how the craft has blossomed in the hands of his contemporary counterparts.

Every day forges are fired up and metal heated, twisted, bent, stretched and hammered into objects as beautiful and artistic as they are functional.

Montana is home to dozens of these skilled artisans. According to Jim Bolinger, president of the Northern Rockies Blacksmith Association, per capita, Montana boasts a huge number of top-level blacksmiths.

“We have an immense file cabinet of blacksmith brainpower,” he said.

Elegant chandeliers, lanterns and sconces; intricately designed gates; decorative balustrades; spectacular fireplaces and grilles; and unique furniture are just some of the items created by these artist-blacksmiths.

Many got their start the time-honored way — making horseshoes.

“I know a lot of blacksmiths like me who cut their teeth as farriers,” said Scott Espelin of Butte.

Espelin began small, making branding irons, steak forks and other trinkets. Twenty-four years later, he’s a full-time blacksmith operating the Wild West Ironworks.

“I just don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t blacksmith,” he said.

Were it not for a young generation eager to revive his time-worn trade, the blacksmith would be frozen in time, forever hammering iron beneath Longfellow’s chestnut tree.

“Two hundred years ago every village had a blacksmith who’d make whatever was necessary,” said Morris Hallowell, a Livingston blacksmith. “Then came the industrial revolution, Eli Whitney and interchangeable parts for the Model T or tractor. Hand forging fell into decline and virtually disappeared.”

The blacksmith renaissance began in the 1960s and ’70s when white-collar youth began returning to earthy endeavors like carpentry, farming and other hands-on work. By then, books or information about forging were nonexistent and only a handful of blacksmiths were still in business.

Rather than simply fashioning horseshoes and farm equipment, these young metal workers turned to creating architectural and ornamental objects. And as the ranks of blacksmiths grew, so did a culture of openness among them, a willingness to share information less common in other artistic circles.

“We’re not secretive about what we know,” said Joel Machler, who operates the Beaver Creek Forge in Bozeman. “We really enjoy passing on what we’ve learned.”

No blacksmith is without his or her trademark forge, anvil and hammer. Although many prefer the practicality of propane-fired forges, others still fuel their forges with low-sulfur coal, charcoal or coke.

All serve the same purpose, to heat the raw stock to temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees until it glows with a bright yellow orange hue indicating it’s soft enough to manipulate.

Old-time blacksmiths worked primarily with wrought iron, which came from iron ore. The ore required smelting to separate the iron from the ore. Although the term “wrought iron” once described that specific ferrous material, it is now used to describe any decorative ironwork.

Steel is now the predominant raw stock, although artist-blacksmiths also incorporate materials such as bronze, copper or brass in their products.

Blacksmiths not only design and hand-forge ironwork, they also often make the tools, or jigs.

Tony Stewart’s Iron Thistle Forge in Whitefish is littered with piles of metal bars in various configurations, each one designed for a specific

purpose.

“I’ve made literally hundreds of tools,” said Stewart, “some of which I’ll only use once.”

Stewart’s workshop, typical of his trade, is a melange of old and new — a coal-fired forge, assorted anvils, hand-built tools and a treadle hammer share the crowded space with two propane-fired forges, pneumatic hammers, a plasma torch and other equipment he’s designed.

“The point is to create something uniquely made from your shop,” said Stewart, “by using traditional equipment and techniques that give a job a certain aesthetic quality as well as new ones that make it easier on your body.”
“Everything had to be rediscovered,” Hallowell said.
The love of the medium — the metal itself — and the creative outlet of manipulating it into something functional, decorative, or both draw blacksmiths to the trade.

“You develop an intimate connection with metal,” said Stewart, “and you can anticipate how it will behave just by looking at it.”

Hallowell describes how he felt “smitten” the first time he entered a forge some 10 years ago.

“I like metal because it doesn’t talk back,” he said, “and with enough heat and force, it’s like modeling clay that you can stretch, shrink, expand and bend to your will.”

The forging process is a source of endless fascination for diehard blacksmiths. Espelin was mesmerized by the transformative nature of steel when, as a youngster in 1970, he watched his dad repair a piece of equipment on their Helena Valley farm.

“I still remember the old Kirby vacuum cleaner that was used as the blower for the handmade forge of bricks and concrete,” he said. “Seeing Dad heat up the piece until it was red-hot then hammering it straight was amazing — and the process still amazes me to this day.”

Blacksmiths can attest to the physical demands of the trade, but that doesn’t preclude those who lack bulging biceps, including many women such as Lyndel Meikle.

A park ranger at the Grant Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Deer Lodge, Meikle caught the blacksmithing bug when she began giving interpretive demonstrations in 1985.

In addition to introducing thousands of visitors yearly to traditional forging methods of the late 1800s, she also has been teaching basic blacksmithing at the local high school for the past 18 years.

Meikle admits that strength is important, but isn’t averse to asking for help.

“As a female, you can think things through, or you can muscle them through,” she said, “but they get done either way.”

More than just physical prowess, blacksmithing requires mental focus and technical expertise.

“While it doesn’t require much skill to start forging, it takes an artistic sense of line, balance and proportion as well as a vision of design to become truly skilled,” Hallowell said.

Stewart recently completed an impressive gated entrance to a private residence that was custom-designed to conform to the slope and contour of the land.

“A large job like this can be incredibly nerve-racking because of its scale and need for total precision,” he said, “Even the slightest discrepancy becomes massive across the span of the panels.”

In an age when most household items are manufactured in bulk, a durable, handmade object has lasting beauty and value, Stewart said.

“When a lot of work and time has been invested in creating an artisanal product it has more intrinsic as well as aesthetic value than something made in a fabrication shop,” he said. “It’s truly a labor of love.”