No 3 - Can't think of any more witty titles

Well I hope you have had good Christmas, I did.  Me, Bronson (the forge cat), a piece of steak and peace & Quiet.  What more could you want?

Bronson

On the subject of Bronson, his face swelled up at the beginning of the month which meant a trip to the vets!  I should explain.  Bronson is named after “Charles Bronson”, not the actor but Britain’s most notorious prisoner and self-proclaimed hardest man.  Bronson was thrown over the fence of the farm one night about 5 years ago in a cat carrier.  When they tried to get him out he attacked claws, teeth the whole 9 yards, then refused to go near anyone.  I think he was abused, not found out by who but I never give up hope.  With a bit of patience, after about 2 years I could finally stroke him.  Now he lives in the forge and will get on my lap.  He will still avoid most people and will not be in the same vicinity of kids for any reason.  But I cannot pick him up, so taking him to the vets is a challenge! Good news, the morning of the vet trip the swelling had gone down.  Thank God for that.  I should point out that he isn’t violent.  He runs away.

Well December went well, bit quiet on the work front as we needed to finish all those small jobs before Christmas and have clear run on the several projects we are starting in the New Year, but boy was I busy with sending out gift vouchers.  Very popular this year so our courses – www.blacksmithingcourses.co.uk – over the next couple of months should be packed.

On the subject of courses great news.  At the end of February we will do our first course with Not in Education  Employment or Training (N.E.E.T) kids!  For years many of us have tried to get these kids into the Forge and Rural Arts Centre, but have always met with resistance for some reason or other.  These kids tend not to like authority or formal education (wonder if that reminds any of my old teachers of anyone).  The forge is the kind place that has a great chance to make a difference to their lives.  Having met a couple of them recently they are good kids, a little mis-guided perhaps, who can be an asset to our community. We will run this session free of charge, so a big thanks to all who have attended a course, and to those who will in the future.  You have made this possible.  Also a huge THANK YOU to Fiona, Stepney City Farm’s new education officer, who approached us straight away to see if we could help.

Ah yes, I mentioned last month about the railings (Stairway to heaven coming out the speakers at this very moment – Loud but not enough to annoy the neighbours (I hope) – There are some benefits to the missus being away) at St Johns Church Hampstead.  Quite a straight forward job on first inspection, clean up the wrought iron top rail, repair the cast uprights and back stay……. Voila job done!  Yeah if only life was like that! This has to be the hardest cast iron I have ever come across, even Neil – with 50 yrs experience – was surprised.  As with all jobs like this, cast that has been smashed is like jigsaw puzzle.  It also means that we weren’t always able to use all the original materials as too many joints weakens the uprights, so we have had to strengthen with new steel.    You may wonder why we do not just have new upright cast.  Well we always try to use as much of the original as possible.  Our repairs are also visible as this helps to date the ironwork and also, as with all historic structure, tells the story of the church.  Me And Billy spent two days doing the install and it was awful couple of days.  The job went well but it rained constantly!  The new railings were fixed using traditional lead pouring at the bottom and lead fixing at the top.  One problem though.  Hampstead is expensive!  Never thought I’d say this, but the cheapest place for lunch?  Starbucks!  What’s the world coming to?  On the positive side the insurance company paid out in record time.  Have also surveyed the rest of the ironwork at the church that need some TLC or repairing correctly in some cases, so hopefully in the very near future it will be back to its former glory.  I love my job:)

Repaired Railings at St Johns

Lead Pouring

The Rural Arts Centre had its Christmas Crafty Saturday at the beginning of the month and a very busy day.  A little story about Jack.  He is the eldest son of one of the farms trustee’s, Richard, who for some strange and unknown reason told me that I was a bad man and Santa was only going to bring me coal for Christmas!  One thing Jack I’m a blacksmith.  Things that I can burn in the forge – Good.  Jack, along with loads of other kids, young & old, played in the forge.  Jack has now decided he’s going to be a blacksmith and work in forge.

Jack in Action - He's the little one

And that’s all that happen this month.  Looking forward to Lizzie coming home and another exciting year in the forge.  I hope you all have enjoyed the festive period and have a peaceful and happy 2015.

STOP PRESS - Clear your diaries on 4th-7th Aug 2015. Planning has begun on a 4 intensive blacksmithing course at the forge.  Only 3 places will be available.  Keep an eye in this blog and www.blacksmithingcourses.co.uk for details in the near future.

No2 - I'm a blacksmithing blogger! (so I'm told)

Quite an exciting month and busy!  Which is always good (or so the bank account says.  Don’t think my body agrees!).  

Well Billy is back! (With new bright white overalls!  Just the ticket for a forge!)  Don’t how much that means to any of you so I will explain.  Billy is the volunteer apprentice at The Blacksmiths Workshop Stepney City Farm and has had a couple of months off on a training course (and yes he now has a sensible blue pair).  Thankfully he hasn’t forgotten any of the skills he picked up before he went.  Except how to put sugar in Tea/Coffee.  That said, he didn’t sus that before he went on the course.  Anyhow, he has sold his first piece!  Well done Billy, better at this blacksmithing game than you thought aren’t ya?

Billy in Action

The first Saturday of November was the Halloween festival at Stepney City Farm and the Halloween Crafty Saturday for those of us who have workshops in the Rural Arts Centre at the farm.  The festival was more low key than in recent years, but the forge was packed all day with kids basically bashing metal into shapes and generally making a lot of noise.  Great Fun for the kids! Great fun for me!  This is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my job.  The kids’ enthusiasm and sheer enjoyment at doing something risky makes it all worthwhile.  The pics show that we did meet with some success on the anvil.  Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised.

Made by the kids on Crafty Saturday

On a less joyful note I decided to quit the Foundation Degree I was doing.  Won’t go into details but it just wasn’t for me.  Restoring and preserving historic ironwork is what I do and I prefer being out on the ground doing it.  That said I did learn something amazing that answers a question many of us have probably often asked!  Did you know a pass mark for a degree is 40%?  Yes forty fucking percent!  It’s true!  Now then, even I know that is less than half!

Enough ranting. 

Did a small repair job at Burgh House Museum in Hampstead.  A nice little place but needs some renovation.  There are lots of regulations covering historic buildings and these small places have very little money, so pay it a visit and leave a donation.

Lots of students on courses this month – www.blacksmithingcourses.co.uk - including 2 brothers who came to an Introduction course, loved it that much came back the next week!  This month also saw our first students on our all day Basic course. What a good day this was.  A lot less hectic than the 2 hr Intro course.  Had them making fire pokers which involved drawing a taper up to 8” long, although I wasn’t in a sadistic mood so said they did not have to go that long if they wished not to.  They ALL did!  What do you think of them?  This was also Billy’s first sessions helping with the teaching.  Had the following feedback from a student on that:  “The teaching was excellent”.  Billy is going to lead the course we are running on the 10th.

Student drawing a taper on the Basic Blacksmithing course

Two courses run this month for the farms Young Volunteers.  Hard work (but teenagers always are!) but damm good fun.  One even gave us the very high praise of “yeah it wur alrite”.  The missis, Lizzie, (and one of my very first blacksmith students) helped with the sessions and really enjoyed herself.  Might even think of paying her next time (probably won’t but don’t tell her that).

Instructing Stepney City Farm Young Volunteers

We have had yet another repair job come in for listed railings from a church.  Just like the 2 we have already done this year, this was also smashed by a vehicle.  Read somewhere this week that the government wants to change the driving test.  Fantastic!  Here an idea:  How about including vehicle control?  I’m sure it was on the test when I did mine (nearly a ¼ of a century ago…….Fuck time flies).  Opps……..rant No2 over, unless you’re reading this on the farm website then its rant No1 (I’ll try not to do that again).  Cast Iron posts and finials with a wrought iron top rail.  Interesting point about this one.  We were appointed by the insurance company and were also the highest quote.  Don’t get a much better recommendation than that!  More on this next month.

Broken main post and back stay from the Grade 1 listed 18th Century railings at St Johns Church Hampstead

Well all that leaves to say now is that I hope you all have a Merry Xmas (I’m a scrooge so don’t feel you need to say it back) and please spare a thought for all our service men and women that will be away from their families over the festive period deployed on active service, and if you can spare a few quid donate to Veterans Aid – Caring for veterans in crisis now.

Its hard work this blogging malarkey, but I’ll give it another try at the end of December.

No1 - Is this most boring thing you have ever read?

Well, here is my first blog.  Having attended the blog workshop run by 2 of the trustees at Stepney City Farm, Tor & Tori, we shall find out if they were bad tutors or I was a bad student!  Seriously though I'm defiantly a better blacksmith than I am a blog writer.  Here goes!

I've been working on a interesting project over the past couple of months with Neil Stuart of The Blacksmiths Workshop Stepney City Farm.  The Restoration of two 18th century cast iron plinth lamps and the making of two exact replicas that will be installed at White’s Club in Piccadilly.

Having stripped down the 2 originals the patten maker was called in to discuss how the pattens would be made to enable the mould to be made for casting.  The pattens were hand carved in wood  and then sent to the foundry for casting.  Unfortunately this ended in more components that were originally cast due to the clients budget.  More work for us!  Thankfully that means more money for us and the farm!   Time to put the originals back together.  Easier said than done!  The components had been fixed together for over 200years so they took some dismantling as well as damage and wear that has occurred over the centuries.  We have kept to traditional methods as far as possible with drilling ‘n’ tapping and using rivets.  In a small amount of cases, due to the extent of damage, we have had to resort to more modern methods such as welding and the use of special glues.  With the arrival of the new components from the foundry (eventually!  Which idiot said management restructuring was a good thing?  Never heard of the saying if it ain’t broke don’t fix it ?) we were able to assemble the the replicas.  The fun and challenging bit was making the new doors from brass T section (Damn that stuff is expensive!) as they curve in various directions, But me and Neil both being engineers at heart we love a challenge and got there in good time.  Now the lamps will be sent of to the glass benders to be glazed  and hopefully we will be able to see the lamps installed and working by Christmas!

The Blacksmithing courses have been getting more popular,  www.blacksmithingcourses.co.uk,  and the 2 sessions I ran with the farms Open Volunteers ended up with loads of smiles all round and days of verbal praise for me (which I find very embarrassing!)

Just got through the first 1/2 of term on my foundation degree course.  Yep now I know why hated school the first time round,  but I'm taking this more seriously and have high(ish) hope for my first assignment.

Looking forward to next month I have 2 courses with the farms Young Volunteers,  which if I survive I will try and write another blog next month.