Alex Bealer Blacksmith Association

Jim Batson and the Alabama Forge Council is celebrating the 20th anniversity of this annual bladesmithing event. Admission is Free! Please pre-register by postcard. Send your name address and phone number to : Judd Clemm, 111 Yorkshire Drive Athens AL 35613

All past Bladesmithing Demonstrators have been invited to return for a homecoming. This year's demonstrators are Wade Colter & Rick Dunkerley form Montana, Richard Williams from Dolloywood in TN, and Alan Longmire form Virginia.

There will be a Blacksmith class held here in Ga next year in May. The instructor will be Mark Aspery. The class size will be from 8 - 12 students. The class is set to start on May 14th (Wednesday) and finish on Sunday evening.

Be thinking about attending, because when registration opens in November, it looks like the slots will be filled quickly.

Alfred McClure

I learned something at yesterday’s guild meeting. “Pickling iron”. This is a simple technique to remove scale and clean up a forged piece before finishing it. This sounded like something a lazy person like me should try out! The process is: place the forging into a plastic container, cover it in vinegar and let it sit overnight. (no large investment in time or cost). I tried it overnight. I took the heart hook from Dan Tull's demo and left it overnight in a bath of apple cider vinegar. This removed the scale and borax residue without brushing. This hook was left with a dull, clean surface.

This month's meeting was hosted by Linda Holmes-Rubin at her home shop in Canton. Beautiful property, but leave early, it's no small trip! Tony led a medium-short business meeting, and then Lance Ziegler demonstrated the Clay Spencer tire hammer.

I didn't have my camera with me, but if folks will upload the pics they took (instructions on how to upload pics are here) then I'll insert them into this article.

In an article on brazing in a gas forge was advice to place item in a cold forge with brass brazing material in place and heat the forge until the brass melted then let forge cool and brazing is done. What about the flux in this method? How is it added? the only thing I can think of is to posibly dip the two items to be brazed in a water solution of flux while the items are hot and hope that they will get coated as the water evaporates and leaves flux on the metals.

April's meeting was at Stephen Fowler's up in Acworth. Steve makes blades in Japanese and other styles. He demonstrated on basic knifemaking.

Steve's shop is in the corner of his garage. I'm sure I wasn't the only one excited to see someone turning out good looking blades in a shop that was put together in places with chewing gum and baling wire. He's got a homemade forced-air gas forge and put together his own anvil out of a length of forklift fork welded to a piece of 5x5 inch square stock. Ingenuity is high, and he gets the most out of his tools.

This month's meeting was at Tom Davenhall's shop and concentrated on gas welding.

Before we got to the main event, Dan did a quick demo on twisting and making basket shapes. He did a 4-piece square twist, and a 7-piece round twist. There was trouble with the coal (anybody want free coal? Ask Tom D...) and then the weld failed on the first twist. Dan insisted this was a feature of the demo, citing the "Coe Doctrine" that every mistake a demonstrator makes is one you don't have to make at home.

All you need to learn forging in one book

• step-by-step illustrations and text
• setting up a shop
• forging and heat treating tools
• forge welding
• forging scrolls, leaves, heads and more
• plans to fabricate your own coal forge and anvil
• more than 20 projects and over 400 drawings

Hey, I'd like to suggest finishing as an upcoming demo topic. It would be great to see a summary of different methods of finishing mild steel with a discussion of durability and pros/cons of each.

Ideally, it would be cool to have about twenty slugs of plain stock finished with different techniques to see the differences in finished product.

Any thoughts?

~Tom K.