The blacksmithing courses started last week with a 3-day workshop in Huancayo, Peru. I thought I would post a couple of pictures of the first city I will be touring to give these workshops. When I first arrived to Lima, I spent three days with the blacksmithing crew of Aceros Arequipa making hot and cold chisels including removable steel handles. This was quite a task since we had to forge 34 chisels made of 1-1/2" high carbon steel all by hand. No power hammers! This task did help me train the smiths on how to effectively buddy forge with large sledge hammers. They also learned the process of heat treating and hardening the tools steel using magnets for temperature control of the hardening process.

The workshops I am giving include the forging of a bookend holder which is designed on the principles of the Nazca lines. For those of you not familiar with the Nazca lines, they are very large petroglyph's drawn on the desert floor which can only be seen from the sky. Why these petroglyph's were made by the ancients is a mystery. Some say that it was to communicate with ET's. Others say that they were drawn to help shamans steer themselves in the correct direction when they astral traveled. I chose the Nazca line theme so that the blacksmiths would have the ability to sell a product to the tourist market. Something small enough to fit in a suitcase and something that will capture the tourists vacation to Peru.

It is interesting working with the Peruvian smiths. Very few of them have any knowledge of hand forging hot steel. They are very enthusiastic in learning new techniques. You can tell that they have a great desire to learn and to do their best. But they also seem to have a tendency to not always hear the things that are important. Things like, don't use a glove with your forging hand, or strike while the metal is hot. Simple things that make life as a blacksmith easier to bear. But at the end of the day, these smiths have learned these simple lessons and they now understand the reasons behind the statements.

Huancayo, Peru is 14,000 feet above sea level. We rode on a very modern two story bus for 6-1/2 hours from Lima and arrived late at night. It took well over a day to get adjusted to the high elevation. Feelings of nausea, headaches, dizziness, are all common for most folks visiting the high sierra Andeas mountains of Peru. The workshop was held at a private club under a large open-air canopy. We had 16 anvils and 6 forges set up to accommodate the blacksmiths attending this workshop. The only real problem I had with the set up was the use of terrible anthrocitic coal. The forges had to be completed restarted every couple of hours due to the buildup of slag. I will be suggesting the change to gas forges for future workshops. Maybe even have a workshop on building a gas forge.

Out of the three days in which we had a total of 57 attendants, only 4 or 5 did not get to finish their projects. Most of these smiths were extremely happy that they have had the opportunity to learn new techniques and to actually complete a project of their very own. Past workshops have not allowed for every participant to carry a completed project home. It's not easy to design something that everyone can finish in one day. Actually its more like a 6 hour day due to the fact that I had to teach each technique before they were able to actually perform on their own. As you can see from this guys smile, he was very happy to take home his very own Colibri hummingbird bookend!