The church I belong to had an auction recently to raise funds for its outreach program. This year I donated three plaque mounted split crosses. Split crosses are made by making two intersecting cuts in a length of metal and opening those cuts up in a specific way creating a cross with a diamond shape in the middle. They look really nice when done well and I’ve made a few of them in the past so I know how they’ll turn out.
I made these particular crosses out of some discarded railroad spikes. I chose the spikes because I had them in my stock inventory and the dimensions were decent. I also like the symbolism of turning spikes into crosses to help raise money for my church. I bought the bare plaques from Michaels Craft’s because I wanted the rough, hand-forged look of the crosses to work with the proper, cleanly milled edges of the commercial plaques to show a union of thrift and wealth.
I also took the time to record the process of making these plaques. I recorded footage of the entire process for one specific plaque, edited it and put it on a flash drive to be auctioned off with that specific cross. I also uploaded a copy to my YouTube channel. You can watch it below.
I’m pretty happy with how they came out and I hope they do well at the auction.
As I've said recently, 2018 has been a year of intense change in my life and my opportunity to be creating with metal has had to take a backseat to the remodeling of my life. That doesn't mean it hasn't been on my mind. I find that even if I can't swing the hammer my self, I get pleasure and inspiration from watching others being creative. Most of this comes in the form of watching other create. I am an avid fan of Forged In Fire (which I greedily consume via Amazon.com) and I subscribe to several channels on YouTube. There is a channel in particular that I want to talk about right now.
Let me set the stage.
One Friday afternoon I found myself in a particularly foul mood, I took up residence in a chair in the living room in full grump-mode. These are not particularly flattering details about myself but it's important to the story plus the more I call these traits out, hopefully the more I will be able to recognize their onset and be able to subvert them. Anyway, Jessie was trying to brighten me up a bit and asked if I wanted to watch a blacksmithing video or something. I responded with a indifferent grumble of syllables so she turned on the TV, pulled up YouTube, did some searching and hit play and I soon found myself watching a guy with a birds-nest of hair and beard grinding on a large plate of metal with an angle grinder while NOT WEARING A SHIRT! Such was my introduction to Michael Cthulhu.
Believe me when I say I have spent more than a few hours removing metal with an angle grinder and the idea of not wearing a shirt during this process is ludicrous. This brazen disregard for everything my previous Safety Coordinator had spent decades pounding into my brain proved to be a worthy opponent to the gloom that had been holding me captive and soon I was fixated on this crazy guy who, it turns out, makes giant swords for people.
In fact, what endears this artist to me is that he does amazing work with what looks like a crazy mix of in various states of ill-repair. While I know from experience what it takes to make videos like the ones he produces, the average viewer is left with an impression of a madman in the woods using scrap metal and cobbled together tools to create beautiful and detailed works of art that happen to be absurdly large swords.
He started off making short "smash" videos using swords he created for customers to destroy various chunks of wood, ice and mannequins, some of which were on fire. These are often quite theatrical and only 3 or 4 minutes long. He then posted a "build" video where he filmed his creative process of laying out and fabricating these swords from scratch which were often over an hour long and discovered people, like me, would watch these as well.
My goal here is obviously to get you to watch a couple videos from Michael and hopefully subscribe to his channel so that when we are together next we can sit and talk excitedly about this build or that. With that in mind I spent some time and picked a couple videos hoping to entice you into checking him out.
A great deal of the swords he builds are from video games so I am quite ignorant about them, however, he did do a build related to something I am at least aware of and have interacted with.
Star Trek
These videos are related to Michael's build of "The Sword of Kahless" which, in Star Trek cannon, was the first bat'leth ever forged. Here is the "Smash" video for this build.
See, wasn't that FUN!!! He used a Sharpie to paint his face like a Klingon! It's a beautiful piece of work. However, to really grasp the level of detail and effort he put into this weapon, you really should check out the build video. It's a little bit longer but it shows just how talented Michael is. He's pretty good about explaining what's happening on the screen at any moment. Also, he has an accent which makes him even easier to watch.
Man, what did I say about detail. All that pattern grinding by hand!!
As I said before, I really connect with how these videos turn out because it reminds me of how I am when I'm working on something. I'm muttering to myself, trying things that sometimes work and sometimes don't. I like the realism of the videos. The Discovery Channel did produce six episodes of a show called "Big Giant Swords" where Michael and a crew of people he assembled built some swords. I have watched clips from the show on YouTube but it just wasn't the same. It seemed too polished and gimmicky. I believe that was cancelled shortly after it was started so now he is back to being his own entity.
It's kinda strange because, as a fabricator/blacksmith, I don't really have a desire to build stuff like this. We are talking about swords that are sometimes over 100 lbs and 6 feet long. I'm not really even into blade-smithing, I just really enjoy watching people being wonderfully creative in whichever medium excites them. Plus some of the skills, tricks and equipment are transferable.This isn't to say that if someone approached me about making a knife or a sword that I would reject the idea right away. I'm more than willing to discuss any idea. I've made knives and at least one Uruk Hai sword for a friend and it was fun but they aren't my main focus. He has started a patreon to help pay for the immense time it takes to make these videos. He has said that most swords take about a month to build and each build video takes about a full work week to edit and assemble. I hope to be able to jump in on that in the near future. Until then I will be waiting eagerly for the next build video to be posted.
This is the year of change for me. I've never been someone to try to map out my future with any real degree of determination. I have a things I'd like to see happen and if they get put into motion I try to have them play out as beneficial as possible. My experience with this silly journey called life has taught me that, at best, you have to be adaptable to the circumstances that are presented to you.
By the end of this year, through a not uninteresting sequence of events, I will be able to say that I have, changed jobs after 22 years, bought my first house, got baptized and married. The first two of these items I did within days of each other. Any one of these are fairly significant life changes and all but one of them were no where near being on my radar even 8 months ago.
But life, as I seem to live it, demands adaptability.
With all of this going on I haven't been able to put hammer to steel in my forge for many months. Today I had a small window of time so I chased out some mice and a few spiders and fired up the forge. A successful session in the forge is usually diametrically opposite to living my life. I like to know what I'm making, what tools I'll need, how long I'm dedicating to each project and as much else about that time as possible in order to be a economic with that time as possible. I still need to adapt to situations as they arise but I'm usually quite focused. Sessions like today are much more day-dreamy and if I get anything to come out, I'm pretty happy. I was able to get a split cross or a Frederick's cross done but it was a hastily cut with a cut-off wheel rather than a band saw or hacksaw and rather sloppy job. Still, it looks alright and the sense of accomplishment was nice.
I do have some other things I was to do in the near future including a couple videos but we will see how that plays out in the coming weeks.
I've always been creative. I grew up where I had to spend a lot of time entertaining myself. One day I would be trying to play a garden hose like a bugle and the next I would be climbing around in the backyard tree line like I was Rambo. At an early age my dad would have me help work on the lawn mower and change oil in the vehicles so I developed some mechanical aptitude.
Where we lived was a short distance from the village hall where, on Saturday's, the community would bring their garbage for removal. Rural community home pick-up service wasn't available at the time so we would load up the garbage cans, drive to the village hall and get in line to dump everything into a compactor that would fill a container and be swapped out by truck when full. In addition to standard garbage, they had a bin for scrap steel and other items not suitable to be compacted with the garbage; things like used or wrecked bicycles for instance.
I don't know how or why it started but I began asking the guy running the compactor if I could grab some of these bike. The used ones were still good enough to ride and the damaged ones had parts to fix each other and soon I was gathering parts together and building complete bicycles. This culminated in me building an entire bmx style bike made entirely from different salvaged bikes. Nothing was from the same bike. The forks, frame, rims, tires, tubes, pedals, gears, bearings, even the bearing cups were from different bikes. I rattle canned it flat black and called it (obviously) Frankenbike. I enjoyed making something functional out of these parts people had given up on.
Fast forward several years to my journey into blacksmithing. For over 20 years I've been working at a final stage manufacturer of utility equipment and in addition to the various skills I've learned, I've also had access to a great deal of scrap metal. I always loved looking through the scrap bins at the different shapes and daydreaming about what it could be made into. On occasion there would be a scrap that was too perfect to leave so I would check with the supervisor and get permission to take it home. The company was quite generous and as long as there wasn't any misconduct, either displayed or perceived, they were open to those requests. So when I started blacksmithing I was able to grab small bits of stock or cut off scraps that I could work in the forge to build skill. I really liked the idea of taking this piece of metal deemed unusable and reforming it into something aesthetically pleasing and sometimes function.
Sounds familiar, right?
I, too, recognized this theme in my thinking. I get as much joy, if not a little more, from turning a rusty chunk of rebar into a couple nice wall hooks as I do turning new steel into corkscrews. There's an obvious material cost savings, though the effort of harvesting and processing the steel needs to be considered. It also requires some knowledge to determine which metal is useful, can it be worked with the tools available, is it galvanized or coated with something equally as dangerous. Heating up galvanized metal releases fumes which are deadly. Metal can be soaked in vinegar and cleaned but sometimes the health hazards are just too much to make it worth using. A couple hooks or brackets aren't worth respiratory failure or nerve gas exposure. These are things I've learned through reading material online or from experiences at my actual job.
Ultimately it boils down to this, I enjoy harvesting scrap steel for my projects. I love the excitement I feel when I look at something and see the potential in that raw form and the satisfaction of coaxing that vision into a reality. Many people enjoy the idea of recycled or re-purposed material as a way to be more conscious of What we consume in this little rock we ride through the universe.
So if you see something lying by the side of the road or leaning against a dumpster and it ignites your creativity, consider doing something with it. You may find yourself in a new hobby as well!
