[TheForge] jesse james/uri hofi

[Ron Childers]

The Hofi hammers and technique seem to work. Tom Clark used them at a
hammering contest at Madison, Ga several years ago and beat several
younger contestants. The last drawing-out contest I remember involving
Tom was him getting there late and wanting to participate after I had
declared Jordan Thomas the winner. I told Tom he was too late but he
wanted to play and challenged Jordan to a hammer-off. Tom was in his
80's and Jordan in his 20's but Tom wouldn't quit and finally beat
Jordan. Using Hofi's method, Tom won a lot of hammering contests- Each
contestant gets a 2' piece of 1/2" to draw out- I gave Tom a 6" piece as
a joke and told him that was his handicap...He was a bit obstreperous
but I miss him. Ron C 


-----Original Message-----
From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mark A. Pesetsky
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 10:49 AM
To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] jesse james/uri hofi ( was Re: Why an acetylene
leak is not desirable)

I've seen some Hofi videos and from what I seen of his work he is no
Yellin:

http://www.samuelyellin.com/

Hofi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SAWr0c_wpo

I watched the bike build off and it is true that JJ did minimal forging.
They showed a formed leaf as a decorative piece for the bike, but I
don't recall seeing JJ forging that out. Even if he did that is a pretty
elementary task to travel all that way to Hofi and learn how to do that.
I did see him do a local heat on some fairly large SS stock that he was
using for the frame and front end and do some simple forming by way of
simple bends. But for the most part all of the forging was nothing to
write home about. It was, however, more forging than either of the other
two shops did, that was none.

These guys do have a lot of talent, but not when it comes to true
blacksmithing. I will say that JJ's shop is AMAZING!!!! But hey, when
you sell bikes for 50-100k a piece and silly people buy them, you can
amass a small fortune I guess. Not to mention the fact of the TV shows
and merchandising.