ArtMetal

Well, I'm back. The marathon journey of the last four months is finally over. Four weeks at Chris Gavin's shop in Baltimore, two months at Touchstone as the Resident Artist for the Blacksmith Studio and lastly two weeks at Penland as Mark Aspery's Assistant. Money is low and it's time to try and make some :-) Luckily I have plenty of handyman work to fall back on. (sometimes I think I should just do that, as the standard rate around these parts to $30-35 an hour. But I like the iron too much to ever stop.)

Touchstone went well. Some of the classes were cancelled, but still I got to attend some good ones. Fred Crist's on door knockers and Gothic creatures was my favorite. Plus I was able to attend a dry stone masonry class and learned to cut big rocks into little rocks. Very cool and very satisfying. The last class was on sinking and raising vessels, a class I really enjoyed. I became involved in the selection and scheduling of next year's instructors and was asked if I would be willing to return as the resident. At first I thought "No" but after looking at the schedule, I realized it would be really good for my development as a smith and so I accepted. So next year, I'll once again spend my summer at Touchstone. After I get it polished, I'll post the class schedule. There are some really good classes coming up.

However, as much as I enjoyed Touchstone, the two weeks at Penland gets first prize. If you haven't ever taken a class there, words would fail to convey what a wonderful place it is. The two weeks working under Mark Aspery as his assistant was equally good. The class subject was "Leaf making and related tooling" We spent the first week making the tools and the second using the tools to make leaves. We made stakes and hammers for the repousse work, but before we could make the hammers, we had to make the hammer eye drifts. But before we could drift the hammer eye's, we had to make the slot punch to start the eye. Before we could do that, we had to make a hot cut chisel to cut the steel to size. Etc....
The showpiece was the Acanthus leaf out of 14 gauge plate, but before we could cut out the Acanthus leaf shape, we had to make the cold cut chisel.

There was a real focus on providing the student with not only the skill of leaf making, but the skills at the forge to make their own tools. We were not allowed to use the grinders and other power tools available, everything was done at the forge. Only if you got behind, could you speed things up with a bit of belt sander use. :-)

Gerald