[TheForge] Re: Advice for a beginner

[Mike Spencer]

Bob Ehrenberger wrote:

> ...time spent doing basic exercises will pay off in the long run.

It certainly will.  Compare what musicians, jugglers and others do to
master their skills.  Recall the story from the German smith who
demoed at ABANA in the late 70s. He'd had two apprenticeships.  In the
first, as a very young guy, the master showed him around the shop,
then gave him a hammer and anvil and a block of lead. He was to beat
that block out in to 1/4" -- probably 8 mm -- square.  He might be
interrupted to to do gofer tasks or watch something or help with it
but when he wasn't needed, back to the lead block.  At the end of the
day, the master fingered through the resulting coil of square, tossed
it into a pot and melted it down.

Next day, the same. Did that for a *year*, after which, the
apprentice was deemed to have enough hammer control to be allowed a
forge and some hot iron.

But there are some of us -- I'm one -- who rebel at the notion of
pointless exercises.  I probably wouldn't have lasted a week with the
lead block.  If you're one of those, you'll shudder at the thought of
the smithing equivalent of playing chromatic scales over and over.

In that case, try to find some little thing that you can make, however
poorly, that you or your friends would find useful or that you can
sell for however little. And make a dozen of those each morning, or a
hundred a week, applying a critical eye to how well each turns out,
how fluidly you move getting from the raw stock to the finished
piece, where each hammer blow takes you in preparation for the next.

Same effect, exercise-wise, but you don't feel immured in pointless
slogging. 

It was little hooks for me.  First drive hooks because I didn't have
electricity for drilling an 1/8" screw hole and punching it wasn't
doable.  Then screw-attached hooks. Forty years ago, I could get 50
cents apiece for the good ones and use the less good ones myself.

> When I took a class from Tsar, he told us that when he apprenticed
> with Hoffie he had to make 50 nails every morning before starting
> the day to develope his hammer control.

Nails are good if you love nails, know someone who does or have a
friend who's building an 18th c. reproduction house (possibly willing
to pay you for your best nails.) Screen door hooks -- the forged
equivalent -- are good, too. In 1/4" sq for actual screen or outhouse
doors, 1/2" sq. for holding up trap doors or hatches.  More hammering to
them than you'd think with a break from hammering on each one to make
a twist. :-)


FWIW,
- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^