[TheForge] Vacation and fireplaces

[Dave Brown]

Two weeks back I went to Elk River, MN and spent a week with Gene Olson.  I 
was gonna say I "visited" with Gene, but I spent more time working than 
visiting.   Gene had a project, a fireplace surround, that had to get made 
and installed that week.  I guess he felt it was an opportune time to 
invite me up for a week's visiting.  <grin>  To be fair to him, I knew 
there was work to be done, just not how much since he underestimated the 
job ... or maybe he overestimated how much help I would/wouldn't be.

It wasn't a blacksmithing job, it was basically a shear, cut and weld 
project in 14ga mild steel sheet.  The fireplace surround was basically a 
box to fit around a pre-fab fireplace.  The surround was to be set square 
to the wall, but the fireplace itself was set at an angle to the room.  Not 
a big angle, but enough to require a gusset that was 4" high and 1" deep at 
one end, and 4"high but 16" deep at the outer end.

Work went smooth enough and I got in lots of practice TIG and MIG 
welding.  Picture a box 132" tall by 34" deep by 54" wide.

Gene was in a tizzy Monday morning, he hadn't slept well.  Why?  The day 
before he had purchased a very large English Wheel and had woken up at 3AM 
in a cold sweat about whether he had made a good decision or not.  See, he 
didn't have any projects at the moment that required the use of an EW.

Now back to the story.  The box building and welding went just fine with 
nary a hitch and only a couple of burn through's where I was TIGing.  Then 
we got to the gusset part.  You all get three guesses where we ran into 
problems ... the first two guesses don't count.  Yep, shaping the 
gusset.  You see, it wasn't flat, it wasn't a constant angle, it wasn't a 
constant bend, nor a constant curve.  Everything was "compound" in that 
dreaded gusset.

We tried this, then we tried that, then we grunted and groaned, and 
eventually got around to swearing.  But it was nice calm, serene even 
tempered swearing ..... NOT.  As we were standing there trying to figure 
out how to get what we wanted I looked over Gene's shoulder and what did I 
spy?  You guessed it, the EW.  So I says to that oversized, long haired, 
pony-tailed, and bearded Swede ... "Gene, isn't this the kind of stuff you 
bought the EW for?"  Ya shoulda seen the look on his face as he 
said:  "DUH?"  So we went to work experimenting and curving and bending and 
twisting and planishing.  Wouldn't you know it, the EW was just what the 
doctor ordered for this job.

It was all down hill from there.  We had planned to finish the job on 
Tuesday night and do the install Wednesday.  Yeah, right, Wednesday turned 
into Friday turned into Saturday.  But we did have a few laughs and Dave 
Hanson  came to visit one day and then he and his wife came to visit 
another night.

Sunday, before I left, I got my pay.  Gene spent the morning showing and 
teaching me some chasing and repoussee techniques for making leaves.  He 
had an acanthus leaf that he had made for an example, but for this lesson 
we made an oak leaf.

All in all it was a good visit.  I'd do it again.  Not because of Gene, 
though.  It's Chrissy that makes the trip worthwhile, plus the visits from 
Mr. Hanson and his bride, and other Guild of Metalsmith members that show 
up now and again.

Dave Brown
Heritage Smithing
Green Bay, WI  


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