I know that the quality of some of these photos is bad, it was dark in that barn… and smokey… and I didn’t want to bring the big, good camera, so I brought my old one… which hates low light… but look how happy I am… and look at my once pristine leather apron, which is now burned and smoke and soot stained… much like I am.

I loved everything about the blacksmith class I took. I hope you read the two earlier posts, so you can learn all about what we made… a steak-turner…

I couldn’t take any pictures of me hammering my own project on the anvil… I don’t have enough hands. That is another of the students.

That is a horrible picture, but it captures, in a sense, my favorite part of the project… putting twists in the bar. That is our teacher, showing us how to do it. You have to heat up the part you want to twist, then cool the metal on either side of that in the quenching water. Then quickly, so it stays hot, you clamp it in the vice, and stick a two-ended monkey wrench on it and twist, trying not to bend it side to side.

Then he showed us how to taper a five inch point on the other end… not a square taper this time, but a rounded one.

He made it all look so easy.

Okay, I got my steel bar with the loop and knot I made at one end,  the double ended monkey wrench, and a wooden hammer and wooden block… so you can knock any bends out of the twisted part without flattening the twist edges. Notice my new gloves are now broken in.

Oh yeah… I got me some twists! You only needed to do one twist to pass the class. I did four… in alternating directions, twisting a different number of times every time I reheated it and twisted it again.

That looks so awesome. Then it was just a matter of lots of heating and pounding to lengthen and round the end to a nice rat tail.

This was not as easy as it sounds… Then, I had to make a bunch of complicated bends to make the twisted hook that you actually use to flip a steak on a barbeque…

And there you have it… my very first blacksmith project… From a plain, square, 18-inch-long bar of steel to an actual tool. I can’t wait for the next class, where we are going to make blacksmith tongs!!!