By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 21, 2003; Page B01

At 2,000 degrees, iron gives in to your will. You sweat. You calculate angles. Hit it skillfully and your hunk of metal can become a twisting arm of a chair or a curlicue on a railing or even a delicately wrought deer or a razor-sharp sword.

At least that's the hope of students in Pat McGuire's Saturday blacksmithing class in Sterling, being held in an era when crafting iron is more popular among Americans than at any time since the period between the world wars.

A smoking forge spread heat Saturday morning in the already hot, heavy July air of an earth-floor barn in Claude Moore Park. Funk and Motown cut in and out from the radio as McGuire warmed the first piece of iron to a glowing orange, held it on an anvil mounted on a tree stump and struck it.

Soon the radio was drowned out by McGuire and his three students in a syncopated beating of metal, the teacher's even, ringing hammer against heavy iron, the students' three hammers tapping a tentative response as they chipped off their own pieces of glowing scale.

"It's a powerful feeling," said Barbara Fink, 33, a mother of two from Potomac Falls who had never even lighted a fire until she tended coals in the class. "You've got fire in your hands."

Another student in the five-week course, Chris Oltyan, 24, also of Potomac Falls, said he likes to create something tangible, in contrast with his work on the business side of a technology company.

It's hard to get more elemental than banging on iron just out of the embers, and these days, metal experts said, renewed interest in blacksmithing coincides with new demand for ironwork in custom homes.

The Artist-Blacksmiths' Association of North America now claims about 5,000 members, double the number 10 years ago, said LeeAnn Mitchell, the central office administrator.

This is not horseshoeing, which is the purview of specialized blacksmiths called farriers, or welding, in which solder is added to fuse metals. This is hammer against iron against anvil to create and restore ornamented utensils, grids, gates, furniture and tools.

Only a fraction of the new blacksmiths make their living from the sale of such items as $10 hooks and $40,000 balconies, said Mitchell. Many more are like teacher McGuire, who drives a school bus for pay but who, for the joy of it, keeps a forge in the back yard of his Herndon townhouse.

"Hammering a piece of hot iron just gets in your blood," said Daniel Boone, 66, of Louisa, Va., who said he is part of 15 generations of blacksmiths, including his famous great-great-great grandfather, the frontiersman of the same name.

The work has deep cultural roots. Smiths can claim a patron saint, Dunstan, and many laudatory paintings, songs and poems that include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's ode to the smith's "large and sinewy hands" and arm muscles "strong as iron bands." A version of the poem was put to music as "Blacksmith Blues."

In the days when there was a blacksmith at every crossroad, smiths made hinges, horseshoes, nails, chisels, hammers, saws, calipers and wheels.

They also made spit jacks (a clockwork mechanism driven by weights to rotate a spit by a fire), sugar-nippers (a hefty pair of pliers with a curved cutter to nip granules of sugar from the sugar block), and froes (used for splitting roof shingles). They were the first mechanics and are reputed to have done some dental work and occasionally performed marriages.

Legend has it that master blacksmith Samuel Yellin -- so good he was known as the devil with the hammer in his hand -- went to Ellis Island to recruit immigrant smiths straight off the boat for his 1920s shop, which employed more than 200 people from across Europe.

High-end blacksmithing was wiped out in the United States by the Depression, said Nol Putnam, 69, of Flint Hill, Va., a professional smith and hobbyist historian.

During World War II, citizens relinquished their ironwork to be melted down for the war effort. After the war, the trend of mass production and cookie-cutter decor made hand-crafted iron an anachronism.

Then, in the 1970s, self-taught blacksmiths began to create a renaissance of the trade. "I had a book in one hand and a hammer in the other, and I went at it," recalled Putnam, who quit his job as a high school history teacher to make a living by metal. There were no rules because there were almost no smiths, and the main imperatives were craftsmanship and creativity.

Today he takes pride in such fanciful creations as a six-foot-tall, 14-foot-wide driveway gate whose panels are filled with leaves made of brass, copper and iron, as well as work he has done in the National Cathedral.

His work is not without its sacrifices: Like other smiths, he has lost some hearing from the loud clatter of his hammer. Blacksmiths burn their hands so often that their skin loses its sensitivity, and the dazzling light from glowing metal can injure the eyes.

Still, in McGuire's class, students were eager. They turned scavenged rake heads into hand-forged key racks like ones that sell for about $20 at Pier 1 Imports, and they even made some of their own tools for the job.

All that banging can be a release of aggression, said the gentle, soft-spoken McGuire, 47, who admits that he has hit pieces of metal he had named after people.

But McGuire said the craft is more than heating and beating; it's also learning to gauge your metal by color, to make the desired impact with each strike, to make iron move with grace.

"It's calming," Oltyan said after wiping sweat off his face with the bottom of his T-shirt.