Skill Set Breakthrough!

Greetings everyone!  Things have been moving along here Fox River Forge. We will be moving, yet again, in the near future to our final location but in the meantime I have been able to put hammer to steel a little more regularly. 

I recently achieved a very important personal goal I set; forge welding. This is exactly what it sounds like. I was able to weld two pieces of metal by heating the metal to near its melting point and hammering it together to form one piece. 

The first weld I achieved was some flat stock I bent into a ring and welted the ends together.  After that success,  I decided to try it again with the purpose of making two connected rings. 

Success was sweet. They aren't very pretty and I think the integrity of the weld may be low to moderately decent, what I learned about the process from these successes was immense. I'm very proud of this. I will be working on this skill more in the future. It is a very important skill for a blacksmith to have. 

A lamp for Kim.

Greetings friends. Long time, no word. I apologize for that. Things have been kinda crazy for me both with the forge and outside the forge but that's a story for another time. This post is about my very first lamp! Late last year I contacted a friend of mine who is a potter about making me several coffee mugs. After some discussion we worked out a work in trade where she would make the mugs and I would make her something at the forge. After some brainstorming we settled on a desk lamp. She wanted it to be completely original and of my own design and wanted no input on it what-so-ever so it would be a surprise. The only thing I made her decide on was if it was going to be painted or raw. She chose painted. Here are some pictures of the process.

Once it was finished, I went looking and found a lamp shade took it home and made a video.A video I made once I put a bulb in it and put the shade on it can be watched HERE.