Happy New Year!!

Well it’s 2013 and everyone here at Fox River Forge is looking forward to some very exciting things in the next few months! Followers of our FaceBook page know that we began a major overhaul of the smithy near the end of November. Andy and I have been working with one of my friends and coworkers named Steve to bring F.R.F. inside! Progress has been great. There will be a full post including a video of the remodel as soon as we are up and smoking again. I’ve said on many occasions that I am learning blacksmithing buy taking online courses at The University of YouTube – Waukesha and that the two main Masters I am apprenticing under are both from different countries. So with the New Year upon us I thought I would give credit to these two individuals who have taught and inspired me. The first Master is a Canadian gentleman based in Nova Scotia named Dan Brazzell. His was the first blacksmithing video I saw when I typed “Blacksmith” in the search engine. This one here. I get a kick out of him and his work is great. He has many useful “how-to” videos worth checking out on his channel in addition to some of the more entertaining ones. Check out his website(http://www.modernblacksmith.com/). The second Master and the one that has really been responsible for me learning the most is a young man from the Netherlands who goes by the handle TechnicusJoe. I was referred to him by some other video I was watching and now I regularly watch his videos, often more than once. Listening to this guy explain what he was doing and watching him work has help a great deal. He is exceptionally knowledgeable considering the fact he just turned 17! In this video he explains the process of thinning and stretching out metal called “drawing out”. There have been many videos I have watched and many hours spent reading both internet articles and books as I learn these skills but I credit these two guys the most both for encouragement and education. I will keep you posted on events as they occur but until then I hope you have a great New Year!

Fire It Up!!!

Greetings Friends! It’s been a while since I made any noise here and the forge has been cold for way too long. I have been busy at my “9 to 5” during the week being a proper, contributing member of society. I have also been working at a haunted attraction during the month of October which is what ate up all my weekends. I don’t mind because I LOVE working at The Haunted Woods every year and I’m already looking forward to doing it next year!! While I haven’t been putting hammer to iron, I’ve still been working on some ideas for the forge and I want to take this time to make a formal and exciting announcement. In late November, Fox River Forge will undergo an extensive remodeling and we will emerge as a completely enclosed smithy! I have been talking with a friend and colleague named Steve Baker and he has generously offered to help get us out from under the tarp! He is further aiding in our growth by donating lumber to the project which helped save us well over $1000. Add to this that Steve is a gifted carpenter who has his OWN sawmill who shares a lot of the same values and interests in hand-crafted work as I do. Steve and I both work at the same company and for a while we worked together on 3rd shift in the service department. I credit Steve with my learning to weld in the first place. His generosity is stunning and Fox River Forge will be indebted to him for a very long time. We made the first step in this project today. I grabbed the trailer and met him at his house where we loaded his truck and my trailer up with the lumber we will be using for the floor, roof and some of the walls. He also hooked us up with a wood-burning stove so we can work comfortably this winter!!! Over the next couple of weeks, I will acquire some other supplies so that when building day comes we can move through it without having to stop and run for parts all the time. I’ve very excited to see how this turns out. I will of course be documenting everything and a video with be forthcoming. Until then, I wish my hunter friends good luck and safety with the coming weeks and a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there!!

The Barski Bowie

For over a decade I have been supplying nightmare to anyone who was brave enough to check out The Haunted Woods hosted by The Bear Den Zoo in Waterford Wisconsin. I play a character named Hector Barski. Hector is a serial killer to traps his victims and proceeds to do all sorts of unspeakable things to them with all sorts of unspeakable tools. The most infamous one of all is a 12” long Bowie style knife he made out of some scrap steel he had around his farm. The Barski Bowie was designed to instill fear and remove body parts. It is sharp enough to do the job but not enough to make it quick and painless which is sort of the point. I was asked, by a fellow actor at the woods, to make a copy of Hectors knife. I agreed. Here is the result.

A Spike knife for Larry

Friends are a great thing to have. A good friend of mine named Margot shared my post about Rob’s spike knife with one of her friends in San Francisco and he ended up ordering one! He also liked the box with the hand print on it well enough to request his came with one as well as a video. Here is the video. It is extremely gratifying when someone you have never met shows a great deal of enthusiasm for something you’ve done. I am looking forward to see what else emerges from the fires at Fox River Forge.

A spike knife for Eric

A while back I made a knife for my friend Rob out of a railroad spike and he showed it off to one of his friends who decided he wanted one as well. Rob contacted me and we planned one out. I also decided to make a video of this process so here it is. So there. I got it packaged up and shipped out to Washington State.

The "Alpha Bastard"

I recently made a knife out of a bastard file. I was working around the forge and I saw something in the dirt that looked too uniform to be a rock. I dug it out and discovered it was an old broken bastard file. I’ve heard of people using files to make knives because of the high carbon steel used in file making. I’m really proud of this knife and how it came out. I look forward to making a few more. There are things I’d like to try out, specifically with the handle.

My first "Blacksmithing Tattoo"

I was recently at the forge working on a pair of “bolt head” tongs. I was preparing to make a rivet to assemble them so I put a heat on my rivet stock and cut a piece off. I accidentally cut all the way through the stock so a chunk of very hot steel fell on the wood floor and immediately began to smolder. I bent dawn to pick up the chunk with my tongs and put my hand on the anvil for support. Quite quickly I realized the error of my ways as I heard and felt the other section of stock start burning my hand. I yanked my hand off of it and immediately plunged it into my quench bucket. I went over to my lunchbox which was filled with ice, but some in a handkerchief and began icing the burn. I grabbed the two hot chunks of steel with my tongs and tossed them in the quench bucket; made sure nothing was on fire and applied some burn cream I keep in my first aid kit. I then made this video. I have spent the last 16+ years working in manufacturing and have been very well trained on safe working procedures. This video demonstrates that all the training in the world is useless if you ignore it. I was working with a scrap of steel less than 6” long and heated to around 1300°. I should have been wearing gloves. If I had been wearing gloves I may have not suffered any sort of injury. Instead I got a 3rd degree burn and if not for the first aid training I got at work and some advice taken from a blacksmith, whose class I attended last year, the results may have been far worse. I encourage everyone to take at least a basic First Aid and CPR class. I won’t go into a long and preachy sermon about preparedness here (I’ll do it here instead) I will simply ask that you please take the time to learn how to do whatever you do safely..and then do it that way!!