[TheForge] Re: Dewalt new hammer and sledges

[Mike Spencer]

Rob Fertner wrote:

> By the way, I haven't seen anything from theforge lately. Is it
> still active?

Yes, just not very. :-)

In fact, since the Spring AR arrived I've been meaning to post here.

I was pleased to see the long piece on Tom Bredlow.  I saw him demo at
the first big ABANA conference, Carbondale in 1976.  It was that
conference that spurred me to make a serious effort to move out of the
woodshed [1] and try to be a real blacksmith and one of Tom's pieces
was part of that. [2]

He had a door bell in the conference show, mounted on a piece of 2"
white oak.  There was a lovely large escutcheon incised to look like
wood grain running around two knot holes and a turn-key.  When you
turned the key, two iron mice alternately poked their heads out of the
holes and retreated.  On the back was a bell pirated from an electric
door bell (or maybe from a 1200 phone set) that made a hopelessly
pathetic clonkety-clonk when the key was turned.  The front escutcheon
was held in place with 3 beautifully forged nails and one common wire
nail which, as one would inevitably do when driven into oak, had bent
over, crumpled and been bashed down tight anyhow.

The workmanship and humor of that doorbell just grabbed me as just the
kind of thing I would like to be able to make.  There were several
other demos and show pieces that urged me along but I never forgot
Tom.

In his demo, he told a story about the stagecoach shown in the AR.  He
had made it, had it sitting around.  Some guy came in, looked around,
asked how much for the stagecoach.  Still early on and, as he told it,
unused to people with both taste and money, he replied very fast and
soto voce, "That'summathousanddollars."  The guy immediately
said, "I'll take it." to which Tom couldn't help himself replying,
"You wiilll??!"  Early 70s dollars so maybe $6,000 today?

Sometime in the 80s on a visit to the US, I heard a rumor that Tom had
left smithing due to a serious health problem.  Good to read that his
eccentric "retirement" was nothing of the kind and that he's still
doing what he wants to do.

So TheForge isn't dead.  Maybe the young guys have injudiciously
strayed off into FB and we'uns old guys are maybe slacking off a bit
but we ain't dead yet.

> "Today was in the 70's and Tomorrow will be in the 80's. How's your
> weather?"

In Wichita?  Oh dear.  We were thinking here that it was about to be
Spring but today we had a foot of snow, the kind that lades every
twig and branch with picturebook decoration.  If the wind comes up
before rain or sun changes that, we'll have another exciting power
outage as laden branches and bent-over birches thrash or fall on the
lines. 


- Mike

[1] http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/temp/shed.html

[2] Forty year old memories recounted.  If I got anything wrong,
    apologies and feel free to correct me.

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